Re-igniting passion

I assume that most--if not all--of us reading this blog chose the professions we're in (or studying for), whether it's programming, design, teaching, marketing, music, running a business, heading a church, writing, whatever. But the tough problem is holding on to that initial feeling of energy, enthusiasm, optimism, passion we have at the beginning.

I recently saw the most dramatic difference between that initial passion and the just-a-job attitude, when I went to the CUSEC conference (Canadian University Software Engineering Conference) in Montreal. What happened at that conference was something I never could have expected.
[UPDATE: article about the conference in the Concordia Journal]

The first strange thing was that this well-organized, well-run conference was put on entirely by... students. From the moment I got there, I kept looking for, well, the adults. Here's the conference chair/founder (long-term student John Kopanas, in the front center) and the rest of the commitee:

The second strange thing was that these young student organizers, and ALL several hundred of the attendees, expressed a passion for software engineering that I had never seen or heard! Not in my 20 years in technology. It was impossible to talk about anything meaningful in the tech world without hearing about a fresh approach, new perspective, or a sincere and thoughtful concern. Their energy was shocking. The conversations hopped from professional ethics to the cultural impact of their work as software engineers. Ethics? Cultural impact of their work? Half these guys weren't even old enough to drink beer in the US.

I don't know what they put in the water up there, but we could use some down here. Because too many of us (me included) tend to let that early enthusiasm slide... we forget why this thing we do used to matter to us, and we might start wondering why we ever got into it the first place. We start phoning it in.

Forget how that ultimately affects the end user, what about us? What would my days be like, for example, if I could always remember (and re-experience) the "I Rule!" feeling I got when my first program compiled. What would it be like if I remembered how excited I was to get my very first email from a reader telling us that the book made a difference in his life? What would it be like if I remembered how lucky I am to be doing something that--at some point, anyway--I really REALLY wanted to do?

I'm reading a book right now that is probably the BEST book on teaching/learning I've ever seen--What the best college teachers do, by Ken Bain. It involves a long-term study of the best teachers (and "best" is measured in extremely important and meaningful ways, not simply by test scores, grades, or student evaluations). Apparently ALL of the best teachers kept their teaching fresh and inspiring no matter how many times they had to teach the same damn topic, day after day, year after year. From the book:

"Jeanette Norden told us that before she begins the first class in any semester, she thinks about the awe and excitement she felt the first time anyone explained the brain to her, and she considers how she can help her students achieve that same feeling."

"Teaching is not acting, yet good teachers do expect to affect their audience when they talk: to capture their attention, to inspire, to provoke thoughts and questions...this practice has all the power of careful analysis, but it also entails thet energy of feelings and attitudes that no induction and deduction can achieve."

We can't expect passionate users, if we ourselves can't hold (or rediscover) the passion we felt for the work we chose. That doesn't mean we have to love our actual job -- I've had plenty of JOBS that could suck the life out of the most inspiring work on the planet. But I'm not talking about the job, which you can change, this is about the actual thing--teaching, writing, programming, delivering a sermon, playing with your kids, training your dog, giving a presentation, managing a team, evangelizing a cause, whatever it is.

One year ago, I wrote about the same topic--wondering how some musicians can play the same song a thousand times as though it were the first time. So consider this my annual reminder (to myself as much as anyone else) to NOT PHONE IT IN.

How do we do that? If you've got some good tips, I'd love to hear 'em. But perhaps the simplest (and yet hardest to do) answer is to sit your ass down and force yourself to remember.