Passion is not something that you follow. It follows you once you've put in the work.

Passion in your career grows over time.

It's not just sitting there. The long journey to being passionate about your job starts with a curiosity about a specific skill - a sense of wonder or interest in something. It could be a new way to code, to design, a new strategic framework. The discovery of new things compels you to jump in and explore.

It's when you've completed a full cycle of exploring, testing and learning a skill that you reach a 'passion' moment. That's the point where you feel satisfied and fulfilled from the test. And it's this feeling that builds passion and appetite for more.

Passion is not something that you follow. It follows you once you've put in the work.

Once we've lit the fire for our craft or skill, we can build a compelling career. This resulting energy means we prepared to work hard on crafting our long career systematically. This process is called the The Career Craftsman approach pioneered by author Cal Newport.

Deep work is the engine room of a career

Each chapter of this beautiful adventure begins with deep work. Wake up early, take a coffee and go deep. Don't open your email. Let the mind explore, test and learn. Deep work is the practice that enables me to produce 12 podcasts and one masterclass a month.

Deep work is the engine room of a career, inside of a two-hour session of deep and focussed work that have the chance to discover, test and learn a skill or craft. When we are alone, face to face, with a new idea and we wrestle with it - we grow.

Build a career systematically

It's when we pioneer into uncharted waters of new skills and ideas we become masters of our destiny. Like an athlete getting continually better results on the field, our gifts will continual grow with regular sessions in the 'mind-gym' of deep work.

With months, maybe years, of applied deep work, we craft a career. And hopefully, we choose to use this into a rare and valuable field because this is when the most significant dividends present themselves.

Fantastic opportunities tend to present themselves to us when we have rare and valuable skills. Unique opportunities tend to blossom when we have pushed our selves to master a skill and craft in high demand.

And it's the continuous and systematic pattern of putting in the work to master something that presents the immense joy of all - the passion for our work.

If you’d like to study this thinking further, check out our three shows on Cal Newport - Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Become a Straight A Student.