Entrepreneurial Journal #4

"Do what you love. You'll be better at it" -Francis Ford Coppola 

Out of all the things that we've been learning this past week, this might be one of the most influential to me. Now, there are things that we just can't do as a career that we love because there is no market for it. However, when we are looking for our life's work, it is important to find something we love. That love provides us with the motivation to weather the storms that will inevitably come to us in our working lives. If we love what we do, we will work harder, sacrifice more, and expend more energy driving it toward success than if we simply find something we're good at, but don't like it so much. 

Don't think that those unmarketable skills can't be beneficial in your life as well. For about 10 years now, I've been heavily involved in fantasy football (I even have a Twitter account where I talk about it @FantasyOutlaw). Now, it may seem like a strange thing to love, but it really has given a lot of perspective of things that excite me. Through pondering about why fantasy football appeals to me so much, I have found that I'm a big fan of evaluating individual players and forming them into a team. From this, I have gathered that building a team of individuals, whether in a company or in my own entrepreneurial venture, is something that I feel I have competence in and a strong desire to be successful. It appeals to me. It makes me feel successful when I find an individual or player that no one expected to be successful to find success as a member of my team. 

Later, I found a man online who had an interesting exercise for finding your passion. He said to list your 3 favorite movies (mine are Silverado, Moneyball, and The Avengers), then to look for themes within the movies that could explain why they appeal to you so much. Within all 3 of these movies, I see a team being built to overcome a large scale problem. Just as I found with my fantasy football love, I would thrive in an area where I'm able to build a team in order to solve a problem. 

Having love as the basis for setting your career path is one that I see many people debate. But this is one of the most compelling arguments as to why doing what your love is one of the best things we can do when looking for our career.