This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I think there's a distinction between "do whatever you can't stop thinking about", which I believe to b

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I think there's a distinction between "do whatever you can't stop thinking about", which I believe to be good advice, and "find your passion", which I believe to be well-meaning but ultimately misleading advice. Something like "find your passion" implies that you have a single passion hidden away inside you that you need to unearth. Once you find that thing -- knitting, sailing, whatever it is -- then you can do that activity for the rest of your life and be happy. This, in my experience, is wrong. If rather than searching for your passion you instead focus on following your curiosity, you give yourself permission to play. This may end up leading you from domain to domain, but you'll find yourself energised and intrinsically motivated to do the work. This is the feeling I personally try to cultivate. It lifted me out of a depression 10 years ago and has seen me grow my skill set considerably since then. I think the problem with this generation is not that they don't want to do hard things, but that they've lost touch with what they're even curious about.