Thought Instrument

Open up any newspaper or magazines and you probably would almost always find articles about successful people saying the reason they achieve success is largely because they have listened to their own inner voices to go against the grain and follow their own intuition. Career consultants and self-help books will probably also tell you that in order to find meaning in the work you do. However, the co-founder of the popular Life Design Lab at Stanford, Bill Burnett, thinks that "following your passion" is a dysfunctional advice anyone could ever give. According to the Director of the Center on Adolescence at Stanford University, Professor William Damon, only 25% of the young people aged 12 to 26 know where their passion and interests lie, while the remaining 75% are simply clueless. The studies also revealed that for most cases, personal interests only start to surface after several attempts at trying out something. Therefore, we can all be glad that designing a good life d