I've interviewed a lot of people over the years, and somewhere along the way I started asking what they're passionate about. Not because it's on a list of good interview questions, but because the answer tells me much more than you might think. It's not the words used in the answer. Or even the body language.

It's in the eyes.

When someone tells you about a genuine passion, a light comes on immediately. And it's so obvious to see. When someone gives a rehearsed answer, the kind people think they're supposed to give, the light stays off and the words just...hang there.

"I love to travel...."

"I really like gaming...."

Sorry - but that sentence that trails off as you quickly break eye contact doesn't quite cut it. Personally, I've never found a way to fake that switch, and I've never met anyone who could.

So over the years I've mulled this over and created a hierarchy, and very often we tend to muddle the three levels together. There are: things we like, things we're passionate about, and things we're obsessed by.

They're not the same, and the differences matter hugely.

Liking something is easy and inexpensive. It’s passive. I like strong iced latte and Saturday afternoon naps. I like a well-made argument. Liking asks nothing of you.

Passion is the next level up, and it's where the eyes light up, because passion has a cost. Not just money, or time, but something in your soul. You give it time, money, attention, the occasional indignity. You can have many passions, and that's a fabulous thing, as they make you more interesting and, I'd argue, much more useful.

Obsession is the top tier, and actually rather rare. An obsession is the thing your brain defaults to when it isn't actively occupied by something you’re actually doing and which requires concentration.

It's the thought waiting for you the moment the meeting ends (and very often, when you're still in the meeting, not needing to talk and starting to zone out); the thing your mind drifts to in the queue; the last thing you see in your mind’s eye before sleep. You don't choose it so much as discover one day that it's already there. It has wriggled into your subconscious in the same way a mitochondrion successfully wriggled into a human cell one day when we were in the infancy of our species. And in my experience you can only handle one at a time, because by definition it's the thing that shouts the loudest in your mind during those rare quiet moments we all appreciate so much.

Mine, for the last year and a half, is shot put.

Yes, the big metal ball you were forced to throw in school for a few weeks, then never gave it a second thought as you moved on to hockey or football or whatever your school actually cared about.

For those of you who don't know me very well, I'm aware of how odd that sounds.

While gentlemen and ladies of my vintage have been bravely (or foolishly) taking up Hyrox / Crossfit / triathlons or learning to bake sourdough, I went back to a heavy metal ball I'd last thrown 22 years ago. It's not the standard-issue midlife crisis. But I picked it up again, both literally and figuratively, and I made a quiet decision: if I'm going to do this, I'm going to aim as high as I possibly can.

In my first outing I won the Singapore Masters title for my age group in 2024, then won it again in 2025 before setting my sights higher towards the Asian Masters' Championships in Chennai in November 2025 — winning the silver medal. The next step is the World Championships in Daegu, Korea this August. And I think about it more than any sensible mammal should. That's how I know what it is.

Here's where this connects to the working world, and why I think it's worth more than a personal footnote:

If you spend your days working at something you're genuinely passionate about, then you've won at life. Not because the work is easy, but because the light of passion has been switched on. It doesn't have to be your obsession, because that tends to be personal and the universe only gives us time for one. But the qualities that drive a passion, the willingness to be a beginner again, to be measured honestly, to chase a standard that doesn't care how you feel.... these carry over very nicely indeed.

The discipline of throwing a metal ball a few more centimetres than last month is the same discipline that makes you better at anything you take seriously. And the people I most want to work with are the ones whose eyes light up about something. Anything. Because that capacity for genuine passion is portable, and it shows up everywhere.

So I'll keep asking that question in interviews. And I'll keep watching to see if that unmistakable glow appears in their eyes.