
Ask HN: How to find your passion? - mockingbirdy
Hello HN, I need some life advice.<p>I&#x27;m a freelancing software developer who builds full stack web applications, apps and more. But something&#x27;s wrong.<p>I&#x27;m 20yo and study computer science for 2 years now (although I&#x27;m not very committed bc of the following): It drives me mad when I visit clients e.g. web shops and see all those programmers sitting in front of their computers. They may be happy, but I can&#x27;t imagine to do this. I also don&#x27;t want to be a consultant working 80-hour-weeks doing legacy SAP maintenance or building yet another website to manage some documents.<p>I&#x27;m always seeking for opportunities to build a start-up. I&#x27;ve got chances to get &quot;CTO&quot; positions (you know what that means in early start-ups) and significant shares. But the problems weren&#x27;t interesting or meaningful.<p>I&#x27;m into that &quot;crazy professor&quot; style of working i.e. solving challenging problems while being in a project for just a short amount of time (only some weeks). That would suit my style bc I despise routine. I can imagine to optimize workflows (digitalization) where I just analyze the processes, make them faster and go to the next project. I&#x27;m currently doing this for a company and it&#x27;s exciting to see the direct effect of my work. - I&#x27;ve built several bots (e.g. solving reCAPTCHAs, simulating user interactions, nothing sketchy), but I don&#x27;t know if that&#x27;s a direction I want to really dive in (it&#x27;s pretty simple).<p>I&#x27;m also interested in ML and currently learning it, but without good ideas for applications it&#x27;s just another thing in the tool belt. But I don&#x27;t want to do R&amp;D, I want to use it.<p>So here I am, wondering if software is even the right field for me - I don&#x27;t want to build compilers, websites or maintain legacy codebases. The &quot;sexy&quot; stuff e.g. web dev is something I <i>can</i> do but don&#x27;t like. I can sit 3 days in a row and build applications - but I don&#x27;t want to wake up in 10-15 years and ask myself: &quot;wtf am I doing? my life can be reduced to LOC.&quot;
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mockingbirdy
I would love to hear your practical tips on how to find your passion. I also
play some instruments and want to solve challenging problems (that don't have
to be technological) and I'm interested in politics, business development and
psychology. There has to be something I can develop a deep passion for.

I don't want to make the mistakes that Smith talks about here:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_h...](https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career)
(tl;dr - don't find my passion)

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itronitron
I don't know that passion is something you can find. I think you need to
iterate on things you enjoy doing and over time you can find the common
thread. It sounds like you don't want to get stuck in a routine so I'd
recommend working for a design studio that has a track record of bringing in a
variety of projects. I also recommend doing the Clifton/Gallup Strengthsfinder
test as that will give you valuable insights.

