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Abstract

an unhealthy and unbalanced lifestyle, and fosters an attitude of extreme competitiveness.If you build your life around a single passion, a single point of focus, then failure — even the possibility of failure — is enough to send you crashing down. Even if you somehow succeed, and do reach the top, staying there is close to impossible. Instead the result is, so often, a tragic tale of descent into paranoia, scandal or worse.Contrast the success of Bobby Fischer with that of Hedy Lamarr. Born in Vienna in 1914, as a teenager she trained as an actress. In 1933, at just eighteen, she married Fritz Mandl, an Austrian arms manufacturer.From the beginning it was an unhappy marriage. Fritz was controlling, and at times jealous, and soon put an end to her acting. Out of boredom she joined him for business meetings, and spent long hours alone nurturing a new interest in applied science and engineering.Eventually, as World War II loomed over the continent, she fled. Before long she found her way to Hollywood where her acting skills and exotic looks made her a star. But it was the confluence of her skills — of acting, music and engineering — that gave her an even greater success. For Hedy Lamarr, together with composer George Antheil, invented a technique of transmitting radio signals securely.Her technique — inspired by the keys of a piano — did little to change the course of the war. But after, as wireless communications grew in importance, so did her invention. It now underlies Bluetooth and Wi-Fi internet protocols, is used for sending signals into space and for making mobile phone calls.Much of modern communication now relies on something first invented by a Hollywood actress. Her achievement has since been recognised by numerous awards, and she is perhaps the only person to belong to both the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Lamarr was by no means a highly trained or skilled engineer. So how did she manage to achieve more than many who have dedicated their lives to the field?The answer lies in her rare combination of skills and fields. She was able to view engineering problems from a unique angle; to link ideas that few others could have done. The result was success, more than she would have achieved by dedicating her life to acting or engineering alone.Lamarr illustrates the second road to success. I

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nstead of committing yourself to reaching the number one spot in a given field, you can reach a decent level of skill in two or three fields. Success comes not from any one of those fields, but instead from their intersection.This is something I often keep in mind when interviewing people for technical roles. Those roles, and the positions within a company, are usually narrowly defined. We want someone who can do devops, or who can code or test, and we write the job advert to reflect that.There are many candidates who fit the box and have the needed skills. A few candidates, and these are near the top, are very good at devops, or coding, or testing. But the candidates that really stand out are the candidates that bring unusual combinations of skills. The one who can test, but also understands sales. The coder who can also write well, the devops engineer who studied music.These are the people who come up with interesting, creative solutions, who bring the experience of two different fields to suggest new ways of doing things. This is where the breakthroughs happen, when the million dollar ideas are generated.To find this kind of success you need to drop the idea of a single passion. Instead look for rare and useful combinations of skills. Becoming the greatest chemist, or biologist, or psychologist in the world is hard, and likely impossible. But add other skills to the mix. Be the chemist or biologist who understands business, who knows how to speak well.If you take this approach you no longer need to master each skill. You don’t need to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, you only need to get good enough to know a good idea, and then be good enough at business to sell it. Do this, and your chance of success is much higher.The intersection of skills offers a much wider range of possibility. Passions usually have a defined ladder to climb: national champion, grandmaster, world champion, greatest of all time. Intersections, being much rarer, lack this ladder. What they have instead is freedom. Freedom to try different ideas, freedom to fail, and freedom to rise again.So identify your unusual combinations of skills — you almost certainly have one. Instead of separating your passions, or putting them aside, try to bring them together. Apply ideas from one field to the problems of another. Find the intersections, and find the hidden possibilities.</article></body>

You Don’t Need a Passion, You Need Three

To find success, look for rare combinations of skills

Bobby Fischer lived and breathed chess. It was everything to him, his life, his one true love, his only passion. From the moment he discovered the game, aged six, he dedicated his life to it, pouring thousands of hours into playing and studying.

As a route to success it worked: by thirteen he was a national champion; at fifteen he achieved the rank of grandmaster; and then, still in his twenties, he was world champion, and recognised as the greatest chess player of all time.

Fischer’s success was driven by a single minded focus on chess. For years that was almost all he did. He knew of precious little else — something that made him boring and hard to talk to, and which fuelled his underlying insecurities and then his arrogance. It spelt, too, his undoing. Chess meant everything to Fischer, and the possibility of loss hung over him; a terrible threat that disturbed his psyche and drove his paranoia.

By the 1970s he could no longer handle the stress, and so he quit tournament chess and retreated into a tangled web of conspiracy theories. He resurfaced only once, to play a sanctions-violating game in Yugoslavia. For that he earned millions, but was threatened with arrest if he ever returned to America. The rest of his life was spent in exile, roaming across Europe and Asia, before he died, still consumed with paranoia.

Fischer’s life captured many of the traits commonly associated with success. We often believe that succeeding in life requires a single minded focus on one subject, to the exclusion of everything else. Reaching the top brings wealth, glory and power, as it certainly did for Fischer. But it also has a terrible price. So often those who reach lofty heights end up falling in flames, shot down by an unsustainable life.

The problem is the path to success. To reach the top in chess, or sport, or business or any of the other myriad possibilities of life takes years of overwhelming dedication. It forces an unhealthy and unbalanced lifestyle, and fosters an attitude of extreme competitiveness.

If you build your life around a single passion, a single point of focus, then failure — even the possibility of failure — is enough to send you crashing down. Even if you somehow succeed, and do reach the top, staying there is close to impossible. Instead the result is, so often, a tragic tale of descent into paranoia, scandal or worse.

Contrast the success of Bobby Fischer with that of Hedy Lamarr. Born in Vienna in 1914, as a teenager she trained as an actress. In 1933, at just eighteen, she married Fritz Mandl, an Austrian arms manufacturer.

From the beginning it was an unhappy marriage. Fritz was controlling, and at times jealous, and soon put an end to her acting. Out of boredom she joined him for business meetings, and spent long hours alone nurturing a new interest in applied science and engineering.

Eventually, as World War II loomed over the continent, she fled. Before long she found her way to Hollywood where her acting skills and exotic looks made her a star. But it was the confluence of her skills — of acting, music and engineering — that gave her an even greater success. For Hedy Lamarr, together with composer George Antheil, invented a technique of transmitting radio signals securely.

Her technique — inspired by the keys of a piano — did little to change the course of the war. But after, as wireless communications grew in importance, so did her invention. It now underlies Bluetooth and Wi-Fi internet protocols, is used for sending signals into space and for making mobile phone calls.

Much of modern communication now relies on something first invented by a Hollywood actress. Her achievement has since been recognised by numerous awards, and she is perhaps the only person to belong to both the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Lamarr was by no means a highly trained or skilled engineer. So how did she manage to achieve more than many who have dedicated their lives to the field?

The answer lies in her rare combination of skills and fields. She was able to view engineering problems from a unique angle; to link ideas that few others could have done. The result was success, more than she would have achieved by dedicating her life to acting or engineering alone.

Lamarr illustrates the second road to success. Instead of committing yourself to reaching the number one spot in a given field, you can reach a decent level of skill in two or three fields. Success comes not from any one of those fields, but instead from their intersection.

This is something I often keep in mind when interviewing people for technical roles. Those roles, and the positions within a company, are usually narrowly defined. We want someone who can do devops, or who can code or test, and we write the job advert to reflect that.

There are many candidates who fit the box and have the needed skills. A few candidates, and these are near the top, are very good at devops, or coding, or testing. But the candidates that really stand out are the candidates that bring unusual combinations of skills. The one who can test, but also understands sales. The coder who can also write well, the devops engineer who studied music.

These are the people who come up with interesting, creative solutions, who bring the experience of two different fields to suggest new ways of doing things. This is where the breakthroughs happen, when the million dollar ideas are generated.

To find this kind of success you need to drop the idea of a single passion. Instead look for rare and useful combinations of skills. Becoming the greatest chemist, or biologist, or psychologist in the world is hard, and likely impossible. But add other skills to the mix. Be the chemist or biologist who understands business, who knows how to speak well.

If you take this approach you no longer need to master each skill. You don’t need to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, you only need to get good enough to know a good idea, and then be good enough at business to sell it. Do this, and your chance of success is much higher.

The intersection of skills offers a much wider range of possibility. Passions usually have a defined ladder to climb: national champion, grandmaster, world champion, greatest of all time. Intersections, being much rarer, lack this ladder. What they have instead is freedom. Freedom to try different ideas, freedom to fail, and freedom to rise again.

So identify your unusual combinations of skills — you almost certainly have one. Instead of separating your passions, or putting them aside, try to bring them together. Apply ideas from one field to the problems of another. Find the intersections, and find the hidden possibilities.