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What distinguishes Olympic athletes from enthusiastic athletes is that they don't have passion; they have dedication. Day in, day out, regardless of how they fe

What distinguishes Olympic athletes from enthusiastic athletes is that they don't have passion; they have dedication. Day in, day out, regardless of how they feel, they follow a structured training plan. Feeling enthusiastic on a day scheduled for resting? Tough, you rest. Feeling down on a day scheduled for training? Tough, you train. It's not about being passionate, it's about what our fathers tended to call stick-to-it-ivness. Perhaps a better example is going for a doctorate. Everyone with a PhD will tell you the critical requirement for getting a PhD (if they're being honest) is neither raw intelligence (beyond what you needed for the primary degree), nor passion for the topic, but the dedication to spend four to six years of your life in the focussed, deliberate and pragmatic pursuit of a goal. Passion will do nothing but cripple your efforts - you have to remain objective, be able to drop an approach if it's not proving useful without a second thought, and not get married to the central thesis lest it distort your results. Same principle applies to programming. Dedication, professionalism, these are the real virtues - passion just produces fanboys for whatever the method de jour is.

raganwald 17y ago
Actually, the Olympic athlete has it all. It is extremely rare to achieve greatness through stick-to-it-ivness without it having a meaning deep into your core. Lots of programmers work long hours week after week without wanting anything other than a paycheque. They write zillions of lines of COBOL or PL/1 or MUMPS or Visual Basic year after year. Yet they are mere worker bees, their contribution is to do as they are told and that's it. Passion is not entirely orthogonal to the result. And further to your discussion of PhDs, there are many PhDs whose work contributes little of importance to history. The great dissertations are from those who are passionate and dedicated. Sure, enthusiasm by itself is not helpful. Nobody serious about hiring hires passion without anything else. But I haven't read anybody saying "Hire people who are enthusiastic without accomplishing anything." So why argue that point? The OP makes the point that passion correlates negatively with performance. This is bunk.

raganwald 17y ago

Actually, the Olympic athlete has it all. It is extremely rare to achieve greatness through stick-to-it-ivness without it having a meaning deep into your core. Lots of programmers work long hours week after week without wanting anything other than a paycheque. They write zillions of lines of COBOL or PL/1 or MUMPS or Visual Basic year after year. Yet they are mere worker bees, their contribution is to do as they are told and that's it. Passion is not entirely orthogonal to the result. And further to your discussion of PhDs, there are many PhDs whose work contributes little of importance to history. The great dissertations are from those who are passionate and dedicated. Sure, enthusiasm by itself is not helpful. Nobody serious about hiring hires passion without anything else. But I haven't read anybody saying "Hire people who are enthusiastic without accomplishing anything." So why argue that point? The OP makes the point that passion correlates negatively with performance. This is bunk.