Have you ever heard, “Follow your passion,” or “Find your calling!” or something along those lines? Well, here’s the problem: 56% of college grads have jobs unrelated to their major, less than 20% of people can identify a passion in their lives, and only 13% of workers actually feel engaged in their work.² I’ve always struggled with these questions, and it turns out I’m not alone.

According to Stanford professors who study Life Design, these questions don’t motivate us. They actually paralyze us. So, let’s talk about the right questions and how to actually design a life we want to live by:

• Reframing Dysfunctional Questions
• Exploring the Multiverse
• Taking Mini-Life Trials

Reframing Dysfunctional Questions

The Stanford team says those are “dysfunctional questions.” And they are “dysfunctional” because they cause us to take away our ability to function.

When people obsess over these questions, evidence shows it creates a “fixed” mindset where someone is less open to change or challenges.

I’ve personally struggled with a Fixed mindset; for example, for a long time in my life, I wanted to be a doctor, and I thought that was the only path. When I recently felt like this wasn’t actually the life for me, I struggled. Because of my mindset of thinking being a doctor was the only thing I could do with my life, I reacted poorly to my difficulties with the practice of medicine initially. I was not only slow to adapt but also felt trapped.

What I needed to do much earlier was to adopt a “growth” mindset. Where I was open to life changes and expected them, where challenges aren’t feared but embraced, and where the process is the most important thing, not the result. Change and challenge is inevitable. Life throws curveballs, like yesterday [trying to think of a funny joke like, “I tried to flip my omelet, but it stuck to the pan, clearly the most difficult thing anyone in the world can encounter.” We can’t stop the curveballs, but we can change how we respond to them. Scrambled eggs aren’t bad.

One study showed that people who have the goal of finding their passion versus developing their passion (fixed vs growth mindset) lose motivation rapidly. When I began to think about quitting medicine, I was lost. I thought I had “found” my passion, so not doing it crushed me. I sulked in the hospital, and I could remove myself from the couch.

Only after realizing I might not know what my passion is did I begin to turn my life around. I realized the next couple of months to years are going to be about developing myself and what I like to do and that it might change many times.

Within people’s area of interest, a fixed theory, more than a growth theory, leads people to anticipate that a passion will provide limitless motivation and that pursuing it will not be difficult (Study 4). When this expectation is violated, a fixed theory leads to a sharper decline in interest—as if the person comes to think that the topic was not his or her interest after all (Study 5). A growth theory, by contrast, leads people to express greater interest in new areas, to anticipate that pursuing interests will sometimes be challenging, and to maintain greater interest when challenges arise. These differences were found both when we assessed naturally occurring variation in theories of interest (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and when we experimentally induced theories, demonstrating their causal effect (Studies 3 and 5).

Dweck, C. S., & Walton, G. M. (2018). Implicit Theories of Interest: Finding Your Passion or Developing It? Psychological Science, 29(10), 1653. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618780643

Notice the last line, “causal effect,” the researchers are so confident in this theory that they believe the actual mindset (growth vs fixed) can create or destroy motivation.

So, what do we do?

Instead, the Stanford Professors say we should think about these questions:

1. Who are you? (thoughts, actions, words, purpose) What do you believe in? What is the meaning of life? Why are you here? Big questions, right? But remember, these are not fixed. Just have to think about it now and write down your answers.
2. What do you do in the world? Why do you work? What is the goal result of your work?
3. Where do you find flow? What activities give you joy and energy as opposed to draining you? In the book Designing Your Life, they have a scale of Engagement and Energy. Where is everything you do on that scale? Low engagement or high? Low energy or high? (working out, budgeting, date night)

Importantly, when you think about the answers to these questions, make sure to focus on things that are actionable from an internal locus of control aspect, as opposed to things that are not actionable, like the weather. You can’t control it. Instead of being mad that it’s raining outside because you wanted to go for a walk, the problem is that you want to go for a walk, not that it’s raining. Can you go for a walk on the treadmill? Or put on a raincoat and go for a walk outside? Where is the action step that you can reasonably take?

For example, if you want to work in a field that seems impossible to break into, instead of focusing on the impossibility of getting these jobs, instead reframe to focus on what skills you can learn to get into that field or where there are similar careers with similar work opportunities you can apply to get into. What are the actions you can take? 

When I was leaving medicine, I wanted to enter the classical “business” world but couldn’t get normal interviews as a doctor. So, I looked into certain business careers that recruited doctors.

All right, but what are the ways we can take action? There are so many careers out there and life paths. How can you figure out which one of these you want to pursue? Well, you take out your portal gun, Morty, and you try it! Jeeze!

The Multiverse Strategy

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans outline the Odyssey plan in their book, where you create a Plan A, a Plan B, and a Plan C. Just like our universe is potentially just one of many universes with different physical laws, conditions, and outcomes. 

Every path you take in life is essentially another universe. You’ll interact with different people, work on different problems, or live in a different place. But, instead of just living in your one universe, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to portal gun out and try out one of those other universes? Maybe humans have the ability to fly, or the earth is just one giant playground, or everyone is best friends with Gordon Ramsay (my personal dream). What if you could try out those universes and pick one? I can picture out now… me and Gordy (that’s what I call him) picking daisies or riding horses, or making idiot sandwiches. Now, this is what you could do, for your life!

Essentially, there isn’t just one life option in front of you. Although maybe it seems like right now because that option takes up 95% of your thinking, it takes up 95% of your thinking (and time) because you have designed your life for that thing to take up that much of your time and thoughts.

The Stanford professors have all their students go through an exercise, or the Odyssey plan, where they imagine three options and picture themselves 5 years from now in those lives:

1. Plan A – Life goes great as it’s going now, on-trend
2. Plan B – The current path disappears. What talent, side hustle, or dream do you explore?
3. Plan C – money and reputation don’t matter. No one will know what you do. You have enough money to live any kind of life you want, but you can’t generate any more money no matter what you do. What do you do?

Be as descriptive as you can with personal goals included, such as:

• Create a six-word headline for each life
• Marriage/learning a language/walking on a wire
• Resource dashboard: do you have the resources, time, money, skill, and contacts to pull off your plan?
• Likeability: do you feel cold, warm, or hot towards this plan?
• Coherence: does the plan make sense?
• Geography: where do you live? What experiences will you gain? What will life look like?

For example, my Plan A 2 years ago was, “A Gastroenterologist – Poop is Life.”

My Plan B was “The YouTuber and Author – Solopreneur”

Plan C was “The Backpacking Nomad – Walden Life.”

Now, here’s the exciting part: we will prototype, or try out, living these lives in small doses. 

Mini-Life Trials

So, we are going to take out our portal gun and enter one of these universes in the multiverse, but instead of quitting everything and going all-in on this one thing, we all know Morty might screw something up, which is why we are only going to do small “trials” of each of these universes.

The levels of exploring the multiverse:

1. Research: what are the careers? What are the day-to-day responsibilities? How much does it pay? What’s life like? Who are the best people in the world in this area? What would it take to get a career in this area? Specifically, where, when, and how would I work?
2. Conversations: 15-minute to 1-hour conversations with someone who currently works in that career.
3. Experiences (“trials”): Shadowing for a full day, working for a day, volunteer work, internships, or any form of a work trial

Actions you could take:

4. Research: What does life look like for plans A, B, and C in the future? Is it a certain job title? A location? A place in life? Research each plan and learn as much as you can about what that life might look like. Take notes.
5. Conversations: Reach out to people at those places of life, see if you can interview them or shadow them
6. Experiences: Schedule experiences over the next year for each of the life plans and then review those experiences, especially for joy and energy. If something sparks, start planning more and more in-depth experiences.

So, for example, say your plan B is being a chef. Can you chat with any cooks? Could you try shadowing a service one night? 

Do you want to become an investor? Maybe you spend an hour a day reading investing books and noticing your excitement or lack thereof for the book.

Do you want to become a painter? Maybe you can interview a professional painter and see what their life is like.

Importantly, whenever we commit to something or try something new, it’s important to go back to that initial research paper and remember we would all benefit from having a “growth” mindset instead of a “fixed mindset.” Life is unpredictable; our passions and interests evolve, and failure is a feature, not a bug. My goal is to play more Infinite games, as described by James Csrse’s book “Finite and Infinite Games,” where the goal is not to “win” but to keep trying things, growing, and exploring, where there is no endpoint and no way to win, I just keep playing the game. For example, my relationship with my parents is an infinite game; I can’t “win,” so I just keep trying to improve it and keep playing it. Reading is an infinite game, “I can’t win,” because you can’t read everything, and my goal isn’t to do that but to keep learning and enjoying amazing writers.  Also, my reading speed is dreadfully slow, and there are these annoying people that can memorize entire books in like 10 seconds, crazy…

All right, so, overall, according to these Stanford professors, most life advice is backward. Realize that the command to “follow your passion” is usually misguided. Instead, try to explore the multiverse by trying out mini-experiences in different life paths. 

That’s my goal with Zach Highley videos: to share what I learn by trying crazy new things. But, often, I can’t fit everything into a YouTube video, and YouTube doesn’t let me say certain things… So, every Tuesday, I send out an email to 5,000+ people called the Tuesday Tune-Up, which has evidence-based secret advice on gaining health and wealth that you can read in less than 4 minutes and take action immediately. Click the link to join today!

When I first considered quitting medicine, I thought I was “losing” the finite game. I didn’t make it to an attendance! I wasn’t a doctor anymore. And many people on the internet and in real life reiterated to me that “I had made a mistake.” However, now that I’ve been out of medicine for 6 months, I realize that quitting wasn’t a finite game. I couldn’t win or lose. It was just part of the infinite game of my career, like the infinite game of my relationships with family members and friends. The best thing for me was to leave. To try new moves. To talk to new people. To fail. My goal isn’t to find the “perfect” path but to keep trying new things and embracing the process of failure, growth, and connection. I’m not here to win. I’m here to play! Other than Fortnite. No one can convince me to play Fortnite. 

Thanks for reading!

Zach

Work cited:

1. Dweck, C. S., & Walton, G. M. (2018). Implicit Theories of Interest: Finding Your Passion or Developing It? Psychological Science, 29(10), 1653. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618780643
2. Gallup Poll (2013): Job Engagement