Cal Newport is a professor at Georgetown who recently wrote a book explaining why following your passion is bad advice. He also wrote a story on Huff Post recently on the same theme. In other news, Huff Post is passing off ads for books as editorial content. But that is a subject for another post, and probably not much of a surprise anyway.

Professor Newport refers back to Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame to support his thesis. However, his thesis exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of following your passion. I’ve watched dozens of episodes of Dirty Jobs. Every single person they ever profiled on that show was passionate. How the hell else do you get up and do some of those jobs every day? If you are going to do something every day for 20-40 years you have to be doing it for more than the paycheck. That is the very definition of passion. If you are happy your itch in life is being scratched. Every single one of those people got something big from the job, even if that something big was nothing more than financial security or a sense of accomplishment from helping others. If financial security is your passion and pig farming delivers it, you just followed your passion right through a pig farm.

Another example. I’m passionate about computers and technology. However, by the time I realized this I was seven years into a sales career with a mortgage and two kids. So I turned my passion for computers and software into a career selling technology. Yes, if I could do it all over again I would probably be a software engineer. However, a series of choices made that career difficult to pursue, but I stayed close and for 15+ years I’ve made a living as one of the few technology sales people that doesn’t need a sales engineer within 3 feet at all times. I followed my passion, just not the obvious and direct route. I’m successful in tech sales because of my passion for technology. I’m not passionate about sales at all.

I would argue that most successful and happy people are following their passion. That passion may be money and power, and the person may be a royal asshole or Congressman, but they are in fact following their passion. That passion may be math, and the person may be an actuary. Maybe the passion is hiking and the person has a job that works a 4 X 10 day so that he can hit the trails every Friday morning. The number of passionate hikers is much larger than the number of available jobs at REI. A lot of those people will need a less direct route to fulfilling the passion. Most of us will probably end up taking the indirect route.

Newport ends with what he thinks is a more appropriate sound bite. “Don’t follow your passion, let it follow you in your quest to become useful to the world.”

I can’t imagine a more dreadful existence than just being useful. Robots are useful. Tools are useful. People are passionate. Life is not a dress rehearsal. We get one shot on this earth. Find your passion. Follow it to wherever it leads you. And have fun doing it.

About two years ago I proclaimed my intention to eliminate as many of Google’s services from my personal work flow as possible. About 10 months later I announced my failure. However, I didn’t really fail as I never gave up. Today I am mostly Google-free in my personal work flow. My employer utilizes Google Apps extensively, so there isn’t much I can do about that.

The first change I made two years ago was change my default search engine from Google to Duck Duck Go. That change stuck and I rarely need to do a secondary search on Google. In fact, DDG as always done a much better job of filtering out the spam blogs that tend to gum up the first page of results on Google.

Google shutting down Reader forced my hand in that area. I installed Tiny Tiny RSS and haven’t looked back. It works just fine and the Android app is good enough.

Mail was a major sticking point for a while, mostly because I had a web host that had puny email offerings, but I didn’t want to undergo the hassle of moving 5 or 6 web sites to a new host. So I kept trying various email services and never being happy. Once I finally gave in and moved my web sites to a host that provided reasonable email storage it’s been fine. ODonnellWeb email is all run from the web host, so I don’t need Gmail at all. I had a Gmail account from back when they were still very hard to get, so that address is in 1000 places. I forward Gmail to my domain account and change the addresses as I can. However, I suspect that Gmail account will always exist, but I just won’t use it. I’m using my old 1990s Yahoo address as my sign up / throw away email account.

Calendar has been another PITA area. I’ve installed several open-source calendar tools on my web account, only to find them all lacking in some way. For now I’m on Yahoo Calendar, which isn’t ideal. However, the Caldav syncing seems to work more consistently than Google’s ever did so I Caldav it to Thunderbird on my desktop and the stock calendar on my phone so that I don’t need to use the Yahoo Android app for anything.

Photo sharing is another area where I’ve been able to mostly get rid of Google. I do cheat and let photos from my phone backup to Google, but they stay marked as private. I have gotten lazy at times at shared photos from Google+, so I’m trying to not do that. I have an open source script on my server that indexes and displays photos. It’s not as pretty as Google+, but it’s functional enough for the relatively few photo albums that I share. I did check out the new Flickr, which is very nice. But then I’d still be depending on a service I don’t pay for.

I have an Android phone and a Nexus 7 tablet, so it’s debatable if I’ve removed Google from my life at all. At least they are open source though. I think the lesson here is that if you are willing to learn to work differently, not necessarily better or worse, just different, you can mostly avoid Google products online.

My Yahoo account dates back to the 1990s. For the first half of this century I still played fantasy baseball and football on Yahoo, so I was still there fairly frequently. Since I gave up fantasy sports a few years ago my time on Yahoo has been limited to logging in once in a while just to keep the account active.

My increasing frustration with Google has led me to look for alternatives for just about every Google service I was using. This process was documented on my blog. I eventually moved my blog to a new host just to get sufficient email storage to run my email on my domain account. Calendaring was my sticking point., I simply could not find a decent calendar solution. I tried running a few open source projects on my server, but they failed to work well enough in a lot of different ways. So this week I took another look at Yahoo calendar. It seems to be syncing with Thunderbird just fine, and it’s a Caldav connection so it is two way. Google still doesn’t support caldav particularly well. So I think I am a Yahoo Calendar user again.

My.Yahoo.com has also been recently updated, and it is a worthy replacement for the recently killed iGoogle, if you are into start pages. I’m not, but I just spent a few minutes updating mine to see how it looks. It’s pretty damn nice.

I’m also back to using my Yahoo email address as my subscription sign up / throwaway email address. However, I still believe it important that you not rely on a free email service as your primary email account. Remember, if you aren’t paying for it you are not the customer. You are the product.

Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

Brilliance covers some of the same ground that Greg Bear covered in Darwin’s Radio. In the 80’s, some kids started being born with exceptional mental capabilities. These “abnormals” are seen as a threat by some in the 99%. The government gets involved and starts treating these citizens very much like we treat Muslim Americans today. The government and the media are in cahoots to suppress the truth and position the abnormals as dangerous. Then it gets really interesting. I don’t want to give away any spoilers but not counting some advanced tech that we don’t quite have yet, nothing in this book seems that far-fetched. And that is sort of scary once you understand the depth of the conspiracy in this book. It’s the first of a trilogy. I’m looking forward to the others.

Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer

So why did a young college graduate from an upper middle-class family give everything he owns away and spend several years living the like of a hobo, before finally dying in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness? Krakauer can’t give us that answer, really nobody can. But he does bring Christopher McCandless to life as he tracks his journey to Alaska and tries to shed some light on what he was thinking. A fascinating and engrossing read.

The Cuckoo’s Calling by J.K. Rowling

Meh. This book got a lot of press due to JK Rowling releasing it under a pseudonym. She spends so much time describing every little scene in detail that the plot suffers at times. I would read chapters at a time and feel like nothing happened. I did finish it, and the ending had a nice twist.

The Human Division by John Scalzi

Set in the Old Man’s War Universe, The Human Division revolves around a bunch of new characters embroiled in a classic spy type thriller with somebody from the inside leaking information, formidable new challenges for the Colonial Union, and plenty of Scalzi’s trademark wit and snark. This is a fun addition to the OMW universe, and the ending definitely set up another book.

The Complete Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant

This is generally considered one of the best military autobiographies ever written. It’s a well deserved reputation. As a first person history of the Spanish American and Civil Wars, it is invaluable. Grant is an entertaining writer and writes in prose that is clear and easy to understand. I think it’s fair to say that without Grant in charge the Civil War may have turned out differently. Grant probably would not agree as it’s clear from the book that he thought the Confederate cause was doomed from the start. Also interesting was the revelation that he thought he missed a chance to capture Lee’s Army at The Wilderness. He barely acknowledges his time as President, probably because he is generally considered in the bottom quartile of US Presidents.

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail by David Miller

In 2003 software developer David Miller quit his job and started walking north from Springer Mountain, VA. He didn’t quit until he made it to the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. I’ve walked maybe 100 miles of the AT on various day hikes. I greatly enjoyed this book. It’s inspirational, even though he does a good job of capturing the drudgery of walking all day in the rain on the AT. You get a real sense of the community that develops among thru-hikers on the AT. It’s recommended for anybody that has ever daydreamed about doing what David did.

More reviews

Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

Brilliance covers some of the same ground that Greg Bear covered in Darwin’s Radio. In the 80’s, some kids started being born with exceptional mental capabilities. These “abnormals” are seen as a threat by some in the 99%. The government gets involved and starts treating these citizens very much like we treat Muslim Americans today. The government and the media are in cahoots to suppress the truth and position the abnormals as dangerous. Then it gets really interesting. I don’t want to give away any spoilers but not counting some advanced tech that we don’t quite have yet, nothing in this book seems that far-fetched. And that is sort of scary once you understand the depth of the conspiracy in this book. It’s the first of a trilogy. I’m looking forward to the others.

Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer

So why did a young college graduate from an upper middle-class family give everything he owns away and spend several years living the like of a hobo, before finally dying in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness? Krakauer can’t give us that answer, really nobody can. But he does bring Christopher McCandless to life as he tracks his journey to Alaska and tries to shed some light on what he was thinking. A fascinating and engrossing read.

The Cuckoo’s Calling by J.K. Rowling

Meh. This book got a lot of press due to JK Rowling releasing it under a pseudonym. She spends so much time describing every little scene in detail that the plot suffers at times. I would read chapters at a time and feel like nothing happened. I did finish it, and the ending had a nice twist.

The Human Division by John Scalzi

Set in the Old Man’s War Universe, The Human Division revolves around a bunch of new characters embroiled in a classic spy type thriller with somebody from the inside leaking information, formidable new challenges for the Colonial Union, and plenty of Scalzi’s trademark wit and snark. This is a fun addition to the OMW universe, and the ending definitely set up another book.

The Complete Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant

This is generally considered one of the best military autobiographies ever written. It’s a well deserved reputation. As a first person history of the Spanish American and Civil Wars, it is invaluable. Grant is an entertaining writer and writes in prose that is clear and easy to understand. I think it’s fair to say that without Grant in charge the Civil War may have turned out differently. Grant probably would not agree as it’s clear from the book that he thought the Confederate cause was doomed from the start. Also interesting was the revelation that he thought he missed a chance to capture Lee’s Army at The Wilderness. He barely acknowledges his time as President, probably because he is generally considered in the bottom quartile of US Presidents.

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail by David Miller

In 2003 software developer David Miller quit his job and started walking north from Springer Mountain, VA. He didn’t quit until he made it to the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. I’ve walked maybe 100 miles of the AT on various day hikes. I greatly enjoyed this book. It’s inspirational, even though he does a good job of capturing the drudgery of walking all day in the rain on the AT. You get a real sense of the community that develops among thru-hikers on the AT. It’s recommended for anybody that has ever daydreamed about doing what David did.

More reviews

We drove up Thursday, stopping at Fallingwater on the way. My GPS took us up over a mountain on a barely paved road, but since we were only 5 miles from Fallingwater I just went with it. If I try that in December they may need to rescue squad to save us. It was an interesting road, but fun to drive on a pleasant fall afternoon. Fallingwater was awesome. It’s definitely a must see if you are ever in the Pittsburgh area. That was my first time in a Frank Lloyd Wright house and I certainly have a greater appreciation for his genius after seeing the house up close.

Since we were staying near the airport west of the city and were approaching from the southeast, we went straight into town for dinner at Hofbrauhaus, which is modeled after the beer garden in Germany that shares its name. Good German food paired with traditional German beer, what’s not to love?

After dinner we wandered around Station Square a bit – which is just a collection of chain stores and restaurants on the river. However, you can catch the Incline there to get to the top of Mt. Washington overlooking the city. It’s a sublime place to enjoy a meal or a drink on a comfortable evening.

We started Friday at The National Aviary. I thought it was a bit of a letdown. You can see everything there without rushing and take in a couple of feeding demos in less than 90 minutes. Unless you are an avid bird watcher type you can probably skip The National Aviary.

After lunch at local sandwich shop and a walk around the Mexican War Streets neighborhood, we headed out to the Bayerhof Museum. The museum is just the 19,000 square feet home of the late Chuck Brown, a rich industrialist in Pittsburgh who died in the late 1990s and collected a lot of stuff in his mansion. The focus of the tour is his collection of 18th century mechanical musical devices, all of which were very cool. The house also comes complete with an observatory located above the master bedroom, and 3 secret passages hidden behind Scooby-Doo doors in bookshelves and walls. The house also features 11 wet bars and 1 indoor pool. It sounded like Chuck fancied himself as an east coat version of Hugh Heffner. The tour was really interesting, although a bit long at 2.5 hours. 90 minutes would be perfect.

After dinner at a sports pub near the stadium we made my first visit to PNC Park. The stadium is spectacular, with great view lines, comfortable seating, and a team headed for the playoffs. That said, the Pirates blew the game in epic “Red Sox” like fashion. With 2 outs and a 3 run lead in the top of the 9th, the SS fielded a routine grounder and instead of making an easy throw to first to end the game, he threw the ball into the Reds dugout, allowing the runner on 2nd to score. The Reds proceeded to score twice more to tie the game and then win it in the 10th.

We woke up Saturday AM to pouring rain which didn’t let up until late afternoon. Luckily, we had seen that possibility on the forecast so we planned all indoor activities that day. We spent the first half of the day at the Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History. We didn’t get to at least a third of the exhibits. The natural history side has a fabulous collection of dinosaur fossils, an extensive collection of gems and minerals, and dozens of large taxidermy specimens. I know taxidermy is out of style today, however all these specimens were 100+ years old and when they were collected the only way most people in Pittsburgh were going to see a bear was to see one stuffed, in a museum.

We also visited the Andy Warhol museum. I was a little concerned that it might be too avant-garde for my wife. It turned out she enjoyed it more than I did. I thought it was over priced for what you get there. Prior to visiting the museum we stepped into a pub around the corner for a snack. It was the local Ohio State alumni hangout. I was not amused.

I learned on this weekend that my wife has made it {redacted} years and has never set foot in a casino. So we stopped by The River Casino in Pittsburgh, which is your typical Midwest casino populated by local rednecks, tourists, and sad looking senior citizens. We were only there an hour, just long enough for Michelle to play the slots and decide that casinos are over rated. ( I could have told her that!). We lost $2.85 in our hour there, and the people watching was definitely worth that much. We saw a young couple arguing about whether the guy has a gambling problem and we saw a couple balancing their checkbook at a slot machine, presumably figuring out how much more they could put in to the machine that night.

As Saturday was her birthday we splurged on dinner and went Cajun at NOLA on the Square. They served us 5 lb seafood gumbo dishes that I almost hurt myself trying to finish as I felt guilty leaving any food behind when it was that good, and that expensive. I did leave a good bit of rice behind, because I’m not exaggerating about the 5 pounds. Well, not exaggerating by much.

For dessert Michelle wanted cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory, which turned into quite an adventure as the 2.2 mile drive took 30 minutes because my GPS was perpetually confused by the many roads in Pittsburgh that run parallel at slightly different elevations. We took the “scenic” route at least twice each day due to GPS not knowing what road we were really on. Pittsburgh is a great city, but it is worse to drive in than Boston. And driving in Boston sucks!

On one of those scenic detours we found ourself on E. Carson Street, which had the highest concentration of bars I’ve ever seen. There must have been 40 or so bars and pubs in a 10 block stretch, and they all looked fairly busy. I was impressed. Any city that can support that size of a bar district (and these were all local looking places, not tourist traps) is my kind of town.

Well played Pittsburgh, well played.

More pictures.

We drove up Thursday, stopping at Fallingwater on the way. My GPS took us up over a mountain on a barely paved road, but since we were only 5 miles from Fallingwater I just went with it. If I try that in December they may need to rescue squad to save us. It was an interesting road, but fun to drive on a pleasant fall afternoon. Fallingwater was awesome. It’s definitely a must see if you are ever in the Pittsburgh area. That was my first time in a Frank Lloyd Wright house and I certainly have a greater appreciation for his genius after seeing the house up close.

Since we were staying near the airport west of the city and were approaching from the southeast, we went straight into town for dinner at Hofbrauhaus, which is modeled after the beer garden in Germany that shares its name. Good German food paired with traditional German beer, what’s not to love?

After dinner we wandered around Station Square a bit – which is just a collection of chain stores and restaurants on the river. However, you can catch the Incline there to get to the top of Mt. Washington overlooking the city. It’s a sublime place to enjoy a meal or a drink on a comfortable evening.

We started Friday at The National Aviary. I thought it was a bit of a letdown. You can see everything there without rushing and take in a couple of feeding demos in less than 90 minutes. Unless you are an avid bird watcher type you can probably skip The National Aviary.

After lunch at local sandwich shop and a walk around the Mexican War Streets neighborhood, we headed out to the Bayerhof Museum. The museum is just the 19,000 square feet home of the late Chuck Brown, a rich industrialist in Pittsburgh who died in the late 1990s and collected a lot of stuff in his mansion. The focus of the tour is his collection of 18th century mechanical musical devices, all of which were very cool. The house also comes complete with an observatory located above the master bedroom, and 3 secret passages hidden behind Scooby-Doo doors in bookshelves and walls. The house also features 11 wet bars and 1 indoor pool. It sounded like Chuck fancied himself as an east coat version of Hugh Heffner. The tour was really interesting, although a bit long at 2.5 hours. 90 minutes would be perfect.

After dinner at a sports pub near the stadium we made my first visit to PNC Park. The stadium is spectacular, with great view lines, comfortable seating, and a team headed for the playoffs. That said, the Pirates blew the game in epic “Red Sox” like fashion. With 2 outs and a 3 run lead in the top of the 9th, the SS fielded a routine grounder and instead of making an easy throw to first to end the game, he threw the ball into the Reds dugout, allowing the runner on 2nd to score. The Reds proceeded to score twice more to tie the game and then win it in the 10th.

We woke up Saturday AM to pouring rain which didn’t let up until late afternoon. Luckily, we had seen that possibility on the forecast so we planned all indoor activities that day. We spent the first half of the day at the Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History. We didn’t get to at least a third of the exhibits. The natural history side has a fabulous collection of dinosaur fossils, an extensive collection of gems and minerals, and dozens of large taxidermy specimens. I know taxidermy is out of style today, however all these specimens were 100+ years old and when they were collected the only way most people in Pittsburgh were going to see a bear was to see one stuffed, in a museum.

We also visited the Andy Warhol museum. I was a little concerned that it might be too avant-garde for my wife. It turned out she enjoyed it more than I did. I thought it was over priced for what you get there. Prior to visiting the museum we stepped into a pub around the corner for a snack. It was the local Ohio State alumni hangout. I was not amused.

I learned on this weekend that my wife has made it {redacted} years and has never set foot in a casino. So we stopped by The River Casino in Pittsburgh, which is your typical Midwest casino populated by local rednecks, tourists, and sad looking senior citizens. We were only there an hour, just long enough for Michelle to play the slots and decide that casinos are over rated. ( I could have told her that!). We lost $2.85 in our hour there, and the people watching was definitely worth that much. We saw a young couple arguing about whether the guy has a gambling problem and we saw a couple balancing their checkbook at a slot machine, presumably figuring out how much more they could put in to the machine that night.

As Saturday was her birthday we splurged on dinner and went Cajun at NOLA on the Square. They served us 5 lb seafood gumbo dishes that I almost hurt myself trying to finish as I felt guilty leaving any food behind when it was that good, and that expensive. I did leave a good bit of rice behind, because I’m not exaggerating about the 5 pounds. Well, not exaggerating by much.

For dessert Michelle wanted cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory, which turned into quite an adventure as the 2.2 mile drive took 30 minutes because my GPS was perpetually confused by the many roads in Pittsburgh that run parallel at slightly different elevations. We took the “scenic” route at least twice each day due to GPS not knowing what road we were really on. Pittsburgh is a great city, but it is worse to drive in than Boston. And driving in Boston sucks!

On one of those scenic detours we found ourself on E. Carson Street, which had the highest concentration of bars I’ve ever seen. There must have been 40 or so bars and pubs in a 10 block stretch, and they all looked fairly busy. I was impressed. Any city that can support that size of a bar district (and these were all local looking places, not tourist traps) is my kind of town.

Well played Pittsburgh, well played.

More pictures.