Stop chasing "your passion." Start prototyping your life.
"Follow your passion" sounds inspiring. It's actually terrible advice — at least according to Stanford's Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, authors of Designing Your Life.
The problem: most people don't have one. Citing fellow Stanford researcher Bill Damon, Burnett notes that fewer than 20% of people have a single, identifiable passion. That leaves the other 80% feeling broken for not having a calling to follow.
So what should you do instead? Get curious, then run small experiments. Burnett's take: even at rock bottom, there's always something that pulls your interest — chase that thread, not a grand life mission. He and Evans call this "prototyping": instead of betting everything on one big career decision, test an interest cheaply. Talk to someone doing the work. Try a small project. Get a taste before you commit.
This matters most for people who feel boxed in by their degree. Burnett calls the pressure to pick the "right" major a dysfunctional belief — a major just organizes your four years of college, not the rest of your life.
Evans adds another myth-buster: your job doesn't have to deliver both a paycheck and your sense of purpose. Meaning and money can come from different places.
And the bigger point underneath it all — there's no secret answer waiting to be "figured out." As Evans puts it, you don't solve the problem of purpose. You just keep moving.