Make 100 Things

I took a course recently to find my ideal career. One of the first exercises was to watch a video on finding your passion. I’ve watched, read, or listened to a hundred similar pieces. You can take something away from all of them, but I was struck by the simple message of YouTuber ImprovementPill’s "How to Find your Passion".

In summary, ImprovementPill states that until recently, humans got our dopamine almost exclusively from making things. In contrast, modern humans primarily get their dopamine hits from their phones…instantly and 24/7. I have no idea if the former is true, but the latter is spot on.

ImprovementPill argues, that the quality and longevity of creation-driven dopamine is far greater than that of consumption-driven dopamine. He likens it to nutrition gained from healthy foods vs junk food. That analogy resonates with me. I know how I feel after making something and how I feel after snapping out of a one hour Twitter doom scroll.

The proposed connection between one’s dopamine sources and one’s inability to identify passion is quite clever. ImprovementPill believes that you can’t get a clear signal on your passion because it’s being drowned out by the noise from cheap, junk dopamine.

How do you turn this insight into something actionable? Cut out the junk and starting making things. Make music, make art, make food, make literally anything. He advises to try as many new things as possible and make note of how you feel after each activity. If you still feel nothing after trying several new things, you haven’t broken yourself sufficiently of your junk addiction.

I’m going to test out this advice. I don’t think that all of my time spent on YouTube or Instagram is bad, but I recognize that it’s mindless, not mindful. With that in mind, I want to complete 100 “maker” projects.

I’m not committing to a timeline for these projects, nor committing to writing about them on a regular basis. But I think success here would be advancing one of these projects every single day.

Cheers to ImprovementPill for the great video. Check out his YouTube channel if you have the chance.