TWP 003 - Passion vs Paycheck - The Constant Struggle of Pakistani Professionals

In today's episode I want to go over a commonly misunderstood concept - Passion. Thing is, being in Pakistan, how we approach passion needs to be different. It's easy to pursue passion when your needs are met, it's hard to do so when the average salary barely pays rent. So join me as we uncover perhaps a new way to think about Passion when it comes to your Paycheck.
Hosted by Saqib Tahir

Read companion summary article: https://sknexus.com/twp003/

Chapters
0:00 - TWP 003 - Passion vs Paycheck - The Constant Struggle of Pakistani Professionals
0:51 - Disclaimer on Episode
1:12 - Common roadmaps for Pakistan professionals
3:15 - Passion Vs Paycheck - Intro
5:53 - Common Trap for Salaried Employees
8:12 - What is Passion? My perspective
10:18 - Passion Vs Profit
10:42 - Defining a framework for Passion
12:07 - Defining a framework for Profit
14:30 - Summary of Passion vs Profit
14:54 - A brief look into Ikigai
16:22 - How to develop a Passion
16:42 - Fix your knowledge diet
17:32 - Fix your environment
18:41 - Arming your boredom
19:14 - My road to community engagement
20:49 - In the car segment: Pains of Content Creation

Further learning and references
https://sknexus.com/be-more-than-a-manager/
https://sknexus.com/thinking-differently-about-money/
https://thefutur.com/content/follow-passion-or-profit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrismyers/2018/02/23/how-to-find-your-ikigai-and-transform-your-outlook-on-life-and-business/
https://discord.bsides.pk/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sadaschool/
https://www.facebook.com/pakistanipcgamers/

Chapters

• 0:00 TWP 003 - Passion vs Paycheck - The Constant Struggle of Pakistani Professionals
• 0:51 Disclaimer on Episode
• 1:12 Common roadmaps for Pakistan professionals
• 3:15 Passion Vs Paycheck - Intro
• 5:53 Common Trap for Salaried Employees
• 8:12 What is Passion? My perspective
• 10:18 Passion Vs Profit
• 10:42 Defining a framework for Passion
• 12:07 Defining a framework for Profit
• 14:30 Summary of Passion vs Profit
• 14:54 A brief look into Ikigai
• 16:22 How to develop a Passion
• 16:42 Fix your knowledge diet
• 17:32 Fix your environment
• 18:41 Arming your boredom
• 19:14 My road to community engagement
• 20:49 In the car segment: Pains of Content Creation

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to another episode of The Wandering Pro. This episode is coming after a very long time because The Wandering Pro's mission was always to unlock career mindset content, right? And time and time again, in any server or any community group, especially where there are people with a young mind, whenever we talk about a long-term commitment, passion is something that surfaces again and again in the conversation. That, brother, we have a passion for this, but we don't have the money for it. Or we have a passion for this thing, but it hasn't been done for so many years. Or what is passion? And just a general confusion around passion. And there have been a lot of discussions on this. What it boils down to is, for me, what I understand the problem is, that there is a big confusion when it comes to understanding what passion is. That being said, I want to say that this episode will be a little more opinionated. And what that means, I will cover at the very end of the episode, if you care about that. Because when it comes to topics like discussing what passion is, or what is fulfillment, or what is mindset, these are a little subjective things. And then, like, you have to take them with a grain of salt. Right? So, first of all, I want to start out by defining what are the two common roadmaps in Pakistan that I have seen, that I have experienced, that have come before me in my exposure. The number one roadmap is, the child goes to school, his parents say something, he goes to university, he studies very well, his goal in life is to study, to get a job. When he graduates from his studies, he gets a job, gets a job, gets a salary. Then he keeps working for a long time, his salary keeps increasing. And he spends his life doing it, doing it, doing it. And then there comes a time in his career, or in his life, roughly around, I would say, 30 to 40 years of age. Where he goes and realizes that, man, I don't have any passion, I just go to work, I work, I go back home. And, like, the job I'm doing, there's no fulfillment in it. I'm running from paycheck to paycheck. And that guy starts to burn out. And then, roughly what I've seen, that around 40 years of age, when he becomes a managerial challenger, he reaches a very high managerial level. It's like, full, like they say, peak, anti-fulfilled guy. Who complains all the time, who whines all the time. And he's very salty. This is a typical, like, Pakistani uncle, who you will see if you get up and sit with such people. Who never had any passion in their life. And they've just led, like, a road map life. This is an extreme example, just so you know. Now, the second extreme example that I've seen, is that, like this, the university was saved. There, he went to certain communities, or because of the online digital world, he caught some passion. He then, with a lot of difficulty, balanced his studies and passion. Along with his studies, he did his passion. Then, when it was time to get a job, he found out that his passion had no job. There was no opportunity. And then, that guy, slowly, slowly, got frustrated, okay, okay, okay. Usually, what happens, which you see on Reddit these days, you see on Twitter as well. Bro, leave this country. There's no opportunity in this country. Go somewhere else. Try to make money with your passion. And that is where, I think, the main issue is, that people often confuse passion with paycheck. And that's what I want to clarify in today's episode. In order for you to have passion, let's separate paycheck and passion. Because that is not supposed to be in the same sentence. Especially when you're starting out. So, here's the thing. There are two main problems. One is not in your control, and the other is in your control. The thing that is not in your control, that is simply the opportunities that are around you, the environment that is around you, and the so-called job market, or the common socio-economical issues, your culture, it's not in your hands. You can't change these things alone. That needs massive government, or legislative, or cultural shift, to update these things, so that these things change. It's not in your control. So, if you use these things as an excuse, to be honest, it doesn't serve anyone. Because as I said, this is not something in your control. And if you use these things as an excuse, you're simply doing work. So, yes. That means it is much harder for us in Pakistan to pursue our passion. Because at the end of the day, a common thing is that when you talk to white people, whenever I work in an American company, I talk to white people. They are so passionate about their job. And even if it's not about the job, they have weekend plans, they have side hobbies, home projects, and I don't know what else. And the reason is, because even if a white person does a basic job, he'll get a good income, he'll be well fed, he'll have time left over to pursue his passion. But that is not the case in Pakistan. In Pakistan, even if you're working with 5-6 years of experience, and your salary is just enough to pay your bills, and that doesn't leave any time over to pursue your passion. They say, there's no price for passion. It's very expensive. Here, people don't have the money to nurture their passion. So, that's what I'm saying. There are things, I understand, that are not in your control. And I'm not blaming you for it. But I'm just asking that you don't blame those things also in return. Because that won't bring any productive increase in your life. That brings us to the other thing. The things that are in your control. And this is why this whole podcast exists. The blog that I write exists. Or whenever you talk to me, I exist. That there are things in your control. And the thing that is in your control is basically your mindset. Mindset is in everyone's control. And changing the mindset, it's a very simple concept. But it's really hard to implement. Once you do it though, in the long term, you'll see that the difference, how you think about different things, that just gives you an unnatural advantage compared to other people. Right? So, what is in your control? Your mindset is in your control. And which mindset am I talking about? Specifically, the mindset that I'm targeting when we talk about passion, is that, when a person leaves the university, his first hunt is to find a good salary. To spend my money. I want to do a job. I want to spend my salary. And that's fine. You go find a job. Find a salary. But what happens is, when a person gets stuck in a cycle, from job to salary, your salary is increasing every year. Your expenses are increasing every year. Your increments are increasing. As you keep balancing that, your life becomes that you have to balance your salary with expenses. Okay, now I'm alone. Now I have a family. Now I have kids. Expenses are increasing. Similarly, you keep increasing your salary. Keep increasing your salary. Keep increasing your salary. And what happens with that is, in your mind, subconsciously, something happens. That if I have to take any action, it should directly affect my salary. So, if I'm doing a job, and someone tells me, why don't you learn this? Why don't you learn about laptops? So, my filter immediately becomes this. If I learn about laptops, my salary is increasing. Okay, it's not increasing. Then I don't want to learn. And then, you start rejecting, without knowing, like you subconsciously, you start rejecting anything that doesn't have a direct impact on your salary. Because you're stuck in that loop, that if it has an impact on my salary, then only I'll do it. If my salary is increasing, then only I'll learn something new. Then only I'll have a passion. Then only I'll take out time for myself. Otherwise, I won't do anything that doesn't have a direct impact on my salary. Because, again, as I said, we get stuck in that hustle and bustle, that expenses are there, salary is there. Expenses are increasing, I have to increase my salary. Expenses are increasing, I have to increase my salary. So, there's a negative feedback loop that starts going on. And that's the thing, like, right? Money is important. And job is important. That's not important. But how you think about money, I think, is way more important. And people, especially in Pakistan, need way more education on that topic. And especially, in the upcoming episode, we'll talk more about how to think differently about money. But to bring the point home, the thing at the end of the day, you need to realize that if you're in the early stages, if you're out of university, you have your first job, you have your second, third job. You have to understand that you're stuck in this loop that everything you seem to be doing is just purely that I have to earn money or I have to increase my salary. And you don't seem to be doing anything that has nothing to do with money. If you're stuck in this loop, then there might be a problem with your definition of passion and versus paycheck. Let's define that. So, first of all, what is passion? The goal of passion should be, especially in an environment like ours, it should not be, as I mentioned, that you shouldn't have a paycheck. What it should be is that, look, you need to have a sense of intrinsic fulfillment. And this fancy English means that, look, after 10 years from now, after 20 years from now, what do you want to be known for? That is something that you need. You need to have an answer to that question. That might not be a good answer. It can be if that was your passion, but 99% chances are that is not going to be a good answer to that question. Basically, what it means is that when you're in your later stages of life, you don't have any massive regret when it comes to your career and profession. Let's leave personal life aside. We're just talking about career and profession. And the second thing you need to understand is that passion, it always, almost always, opens up more opportunities for you. That's the reason we're covering this episode and we're talking about this, is that that's what people don't understand. But that's not how you have to think about it. You have to think about passion in a way that eventually, when I combine my skill set and my passion, there might be a bigger opportunity that opens up to me that I wouldn't have otherwise. And most passionate people have this. They have a passion for 8-10 years and they get into a skill set. Eventually, a time in their life comes where they're like, yeah, okay, the thing I'm earning my paycheck from, the thing I'm earning my salary from, I'm not satisfied with that. So I have this passion that I've been doing for 8-10 years. And they combine those two things. They combine the skill, they combine the passion, and then they make something great. Right? And that's the end goal you have to think about. You don't have to think about what's my paycheck for the next month. If your thoughts end there, passion is not the answer for you. Your thoughts should be long with passion. Okay? So this is just like some basic definition of what passion should be, in my opinion. So with that being said, I would say a common thing that I often tell in my articles and to other people that my personal framework is passion versus profit. Okay? There are two things in life when we talk about career and profession and the intrinsic fulfillment of a person. There is what you seek with passion and what you seek with profit. And profit you can change with paycheck, income, whatever word you like. But we won't keep passion as passion because that's that. So as I mentioned, passion needs to be something in which you don't expect any return or don't expect it immediately. Then it needs to be something which is lifelong. Very long term. 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. You will never get bored of it. You will never get tired of it. It is something which you can consistently follow left and right. And then the third thing which we have in Pakistan now, I always suggest that if you can find a way that your passion overlaps a little with whatever your skill set is or whatever you make money from, that is also a good thing. So these are like two to three pointers that I always say when someone is defining their passion. And the benefit of all these exercises is that when a person asks you that what is your passion? You have a good answer for it, right? The answer should typically be something that is long term. Something that has no return immediately. Something that might overlap with your skill set. It's good if it does, not bad if it doesn't. And if someone asks you what is your passion? And you say that my passion is such and such thing because there is a lot of money in this field. That's not a good answer. It's not your passion. It's just a temporary cycle going on. Tomorrow it will be like there is no money in that field. And you will switch to another field and you will say e-commerce is my field or designer is my field or I have started selling like this. So that's the thing that people often throw this word around. They confuse their vocation with their passion. It's kind of frustrating and that defeats the purpose of having a passion, right? Now we come to profit or income. Income, profit, paycheck is also very important to have. But we need to define it with two or three things. So number one is income and profit needs to be something which is related to selling your skills, right? If you have a skill set you are selling that skill set and you are getting compensated for it, right? That is the rule number one of a good income source or a good profit making source. It's your skill set. You are selling it and you are making money from it. It's a skill set. You are not selling a scam. You are selling your skill. You have a particular set of skills and you are selling it. You are getting paid for it. The second thing about having a good profit sense is it needs to be something that is sustainable and scalable. Okay? These are two different terminologies. Both mean that sustainable is which you can do conveniently in the sense that you are investing 40 hours a week which is the average expectation. You invest 40 to 50 hours a week on that thing and you are getting an income which is sustaining you and paying your expenses. But at the other hand there is 2 years, 3 years ahead vision B, road map B that it will also scale at the same time. Even if my effort is less over time but the money is also flowing in a scalable manner. Now what happens is unfortunately in Pakistan in most jobs there is no scalability aspect. Increment is not scalable. 10% increment is also there and 10% inflation happens. That's why in Pakistan job is not a good way in most cases to have a scalable source of income. And we will talk more about that in different episodes. But just understand that that your job is not something scalable. It might be sustainable but it is not scalable. And maybe you are feeling it right now but when you have kids in the future especially then you will realize that okay, I have invested 5-6 years I didn't get any benefit. Again, most of the times. Just keep that in mind. Lastly, a good way to know that you have a good profit sense is that you are providing value at the end of the day. Right? It happens that I wrote an article a while ago that people become managers here. Right? I worked in a company for 4-5 years became a manager and then they will throw around that term that I am a manager in this company. But are you really providing value? No, you are standing on the heads of 4-5 people because you have not done their work for more than them. That's not providing value. So, if you are earning income or if you are making money understand that are you providing value? That is a good check to have. In summary, to define a good passion you need to look at something that has no immediate return that is long term and you should understand why you are doing that. You should have a good answer to that question. And then when it comes to profit you should always be selling a skill set that is your own skill set. It should be something sustainable and scalable and you should be providing value at the end of the day. As long as you keep 2-3 pointers in mind your passion and profit will be set. Now, what is the purpose of this exercise? The purpose of this exercise is basically that what I said this is my framework, passion and profit which I liked a lot I adopted it made some changes to it and I made it. But the end goal is the end goal is another framework. Life is based on frameworks. Who knew? There is a Japanese framework called Ikigai, okay? You can google it I will also put a link in the reference. But basically what Ikigai is all about is balancing your passion, mission, vocation and profession. So, you can understand that it has a kind of PhD which I have explained in simple words. So, that's why I am not covering that in this episode because I think it is a little more complex and it requires a certain level of self-actualization before you can say that I am going towards Ikigai, okay? First, the problem in Pakistan is that we don't know the basic fundamentals. That's why this episode is all about explaining the differences between passion and profit. That is not what passion is. Your passion can stay regardless of your career. Especially at early stages. When you are actually self-actualized and some people are more mature then sure, you can combine them. But at early stages especially when you don't know the differences between these two when you don't have a good answer for what is your passion versus what is your profit don't confuse them. Don't mix them. That's the biggest issue I see in Pakistan. And to end it off this episode I want to say that many people will say that I don't have any passion right now so how can I develop a new passion? So, the number one advice I have is go and explore, okay? What are you looking at on YouTube? What are you looking at in Shorts? Are you inspired by books or not? Are you inspired by articles or not? First of all, you need to fix your knowledge diet. So, explore a lot of different things. See who you align with. Try to go deeper into those things and, you know, understand the same pointers that I told you that is this something you can turn into a passion or not. The other thing is join communities. So, often you have seen a query in Pakistan that why is there no good content in Pakistan? Because good content doesn't make money here. Here YouTube's CPM is 100 and US's CPM is something like this. So, no one bothers to make good content. Because people don't watch that content. What people do is they are tired of their job and they come home and they keep watching mindless stuff and people keep making mindless stuff and that's how they make money. So, like this there is another thing that there are no communities here. What communities are there here? You go to Facebook Facebook groups are open where everyone is selling their iPhone or asking for Android phone. That's it. There are very few communities in Pakistan. So, number one would be like fix your knowledge diet. Number two would be that okay, go find some good communities where you can get up and start sitting. Change your environment a little bit. Like I said that you can't change the environment but you can change your own actions. You start sitting in good environments. Join some servers in which or servers when I say servers I am talking about Discord servers. There are some like Pakistan Pak Gamers server where there are enthusiasts of PC computers. You can google the word enthusiast. Something will come up. But yes go contribute in those communities. And last advice that I will have for you those people who are finding passion or not getting their passion is that like look, in my life the boredom was the biggest issue. I used to do anything for 4-5 months got bored started something new. Then again for 4-5 months got bored started something new. But now much later in my life like 10 years later I realized that I actually successfully armed my boredom. It forced me to keep trying new things and keep striking new opportunities and keep hitting new things. Like if I give my personal example 1 year ago randomly out of nowhere I was like dude so I am really good at talking to people writing this online stuff also did some podcasts. But since then I have never taken any initiative in communities. So right around that time I made a Discord server in the name of Sada School. I joined that and it was a freelance centric let's say Discord server and I did a lot of freelancing at that time. Did really well performed quite high. So I was like okay this is a good opportunity for me to learn how to engage in a community. So I did a lot of engagement they made me a moderator I ran that community for 3-4 months now it is dead. But that started a cycle. Then I left that I found out about another community besides Pakistan which is a cyber security community. My cyber security has nothing to do with it. I am a product manager and that too on a non-tech site. So my technical and whatever conversation was going on there I don't understand 80% of it. But I still joined and started engaging in that community. Because I was providing some value to that community because it was my career I grew up in Pakistan I talked to people and it was like okay I can still provide value in a cyber security group which has nothing to do with my skill set because I am not a cyber security professional. That's the thing I want you to learn as long as you are providing value and there is a need for that that's fine you don't need to be the next Elon Musk or the next Jeff Bezos or whatever that if I combine passion and this perfectly I will become a billionaire that doesn't happen. Just find happiness in little things and arm your boredom. Right? Keep exploring. Like don't sit idle. Don't do anything. And because I feel that in every episode I will have to write a poem so at the end I will just say that what happens in the world people don't find success and fulfillment by doing extraordinary things they find success and fulfillment by doing ordinary things for extraordinary lengths of time. As always see you in the next episode and in today's episode we will discuss some feedback. I want something unstructured in every episode where I just can't share my thoughts. So in today's episode in the car section I want to talk about content creation in general. Whenever we start making content the most difficult thing you have to fight is imposter syndrome and the second most difficult thing is what people will say or people who are listening will they value it or not. And that's fine. Okay? What I want you to understand as a listener is that the podcast of Isra like the one I just started is more opinionated and more experience based. And the problem with that is usually there will be a set of people on whom those things may not apply or their situation will be very different. And which is fine. See, when we are making content of Isra my effort is to structure it so that it applies to the maximum number of people. Not everyone, maximum. There is a difference between the two. There is a difference between 100% and maximum. So the nature is that there will be some people to whom this advice or whatever I say will not apply at all. And that's fine. And I will say some things that you will outright reject or you will get frustrated by it or you will be like he doesn't know what he is saying. That is also fine. But there is a lesson in there for you as well. See, whenever you follow a content creator or a thought leader or read a book or do anything you don't have to 100% agree with everyone. I consume a lot of content in my personal life about tech because that's my passion. And I am enthusiastic about it. So it's not like I 100% agree with what Linus is saying or what Marques is saying or I 100% agree with how the ATP boys are fanboying Apple. And I have been watching Alex Armouzi for the past 1-2 years so I don't agree 100% with what he is saying. Because what happens is often the things he says I am sitting in Pakistan and I am saying that it is not relevant here. He is talking about electric cars and there is no electricity here. So relevancy is the number one issue. A lot of things he says that don't apply here. Everyone says read Rich Dad Poor Dad. Read Rich Dad Poor Dad and read the book. More than half of the books are about mortgaging houses and making real estate supremacy. And there is no mortgage scene here. So that's the reason I started this podcast that there is very little content out there which is relevant for the Pakistani audience. But as a result of that there will be a lot of things which are relevant for the Pakistani audience but there can be other issues like people don't have the opportunities or people don't have the background to understand what I am saying. It's fine. All I am asking you is be more open and you don't have to 100% agree with everyone out there. In real life with your friends and family this is a normal thing. We don't agree 100% with everyone and that's fine. For some reason when it comes to the online world there is social media there is content I am talking about big content creators you will read their comments and people are abusing them for no reason without listening without understanding without understanding the use case they will be like I don't know what is being said. Just want to share that it's fine. I am trying to improve and if you have feedback you can always send it to different channels which will be written in the description below but it's normal. Just normalize people sharing their opinions and experiences and if you like them share with others and if you don't like them give feedback. Don't get angry. Getting angry won't help anyone. Okay?