Coaching practices for Choose Your Influences
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Choose Your Influences, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I admire a lot of people’s work and consume a ton of it, but it just washes over me and never feeds back into anything I make
- I keep relying on sheer willpower while everything around me
- I keep choosing projects based on what I think will impress people or do well, and then I stall out halfway through because deep down they never actually moved me
- I’ve started noticing that some of the rooms and group chats I’m in pull me toward a version of myself I don’t respect, and I want to spend more of my time around the people who quietly bring out my better self.
- When demands pull me in different directions I just bend toward whichever voice is loudest, because I’ve never actually pinned down my own criteria
Practices that may help
- Collect your influences deliberately
Curate the artists, ideas, and work you love — your taste is the raw material you will recombine.
Steal Like an Artist, in Practice - Manage your inputs and influences
Curate what you consume and who surrounds you — small inputs compound too.
The Compound Effect, Made Practical - Follow genuine interest, not strategic interest
Pursue the thing that genuinely excites you — even if you cannot explain why or see how it fits.
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making - Cultivating a community of mutual virtue
Choose your regular social environments with the question: "Does this community draw out my better self?"
Confucian Self-Cultivation: The Mencius Approach - Write your own internal standard
Articulate the values and criteria you’ll use to judge your own choices, independent of approval.
Self-Authorship: Moving From the Socialized to the Self-Authored Mind - Map your three circles honestly
Separately answer each circle — passion, best-at, economic engine — before looking for the intersection.
The Hedgehog Concept - Social proof
People look to what similar others are doing to decide what’s correct, especially under uncertainty.
Cialdini’s Principles of Influence - Curate your comparison pool deliberately
Choose who you regularly compare yourself to — peers at a similar stage, not outliers at the peak.
The Comparison Trap - Allow multiple active interests without forcing a hierarchy
Having more than one developing interest is not a sign of lost focus — it’s how passion develops for many people.
Passion vs Interest: How to Actually Find Work You Love - Sample widely before committing to a niche
Premature specialization forecloses interests you haven’t discovered yet.
Passion vs Interest: How to Actually Find Work You Love
Related concerns
- How To Find Interests
Premature specialization forecloses interests you haven’t discovered yet.
Sample widely before committing to a niche
- When The Hedgehog Concept Map The Three Circles
Separately answer each circle — passion, best-at, economic engine — before looking for the intersection.
Map your three circles honestly
- Collect Influences
Curate what you consume and who surrounds you — small inputs compound too.
Manage your inputs and influences
- Find What You Love Doing
Track the activities where time disappears — they point toward love and skill at once.
Follow flow as a clue
- Find Your Passion Myth
Paul O’Keefe and colleagues found that people who believe interests are fixed ("find your passion") tend to abandon pursuits when they get hard, while those who see interests as developed through effort stay curious and persistent. The evidence suggests "follow your passion" is not just unhelpful advice — it may actively discourage the effort that transforms shallow interest into deep, sustaining work.
- Follow Your Interest
Paul O’Keefe and colleagues found that people who believe interests are fixed ("find your passion") tend to abandon pursuits when they get hard, while those who see interests as developed through effort stay curious and persistent. The evidence suggests "follow your passion" is not just unhelpful advice — it may actively discourage the effort that transforms shallow interest into deep, sustaining work.
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