You want to live passionately, but instead you feel you are following a pattern you didn’t intend to weave. The worst part is, you’re not even sure you know what living passionately means.

This is the feeling I have been wrestling with on and off for the last few years.

I live in a westernised, first-world country. Education is subsidised by the government, and we don’t have to pay our tertiary education fees until we earn over a given threshold. When you do finally earn enough to begin to pay back your loan, the money comes out quietly, near-invisibly.

Your options are limitless. And if you are someone like me, the paralysis of choice sets in.

Everything fascinates me to a degree. Even when I narrow my interests down to the things I care for the most, they are still vastly separate and branching fields. Which is why I decided to work in the field of technology and media – I felt I’d have the most flexibility to work with a variety of organisations.

It wasn't the solution. I felt like my attention was still divided, that the passion wasn’t really there. Where I am right now is nice, but I don’t want to still be here in ten years.

Where did I want to be, then? I didn’t know.

Recently, I received the best piece of advice I’ve ever had on the subject, and I wanted to share it here, too.

The thing you are most passionate about, that should be guiding your attention? It is the thing you spend the most time talking about.

When I began to think of it that way, there are only two things I spend a great deal of time talking about in any detail. And now I have narrowed my focus considerably. It’s a start. The rest will come.