Chris Anderson: Don't pursue your passion. Pursue the things that will empower you. Knowledge, discipline, generosity.

Don't pursue your passion directly. At least not yet. Instead... pursue the things that will empower you. Pursue knowledge. Be relentlessly curious. Listen, learn. You're leaving Harvard this week, but your learning cannot ever, ever be allowed to stop.

Pursue discipline. It's an old-fashioned word, but it's never been more important.Today's world is full of an impossible number of distractions. The world-changers are those who find a way of ignoring most of them.

And above all. Pursue generosity. Not just because it will add meaning to your life -- though it will do that -- but because your future is going to be built on great ideas and in the future you are entering, great ideas HAVE to be given away. They do. The world is more interconnected than ever. The rules of what you give and what you hold on to have changed forever. If you hold on to your best ideas, maybe you can for a moment grab some short-term personal commercial gain. But if you let them roam free, they can spread like wildfire, earning you a global reputation. They can be reshaped and improved by others. They can achieve impact and influence in the world far greater than if you were to champion them alone. If we've discovered anything at TED these past few years, it's that radical openness pays. We gave away our talks on the web, and far from killing demand for the conference, it massively increased it, turning TED from something which reached 800 people once a year to something which reached half a million people every day. We gave away our brand in the form of TEDx, and far from diluting TED, it democratized it, and multiplied its footprint a thousand fold.

Knowledge, discipline, generosity. If you pursue those with all the determination you possess, one day before too long, without you even knowing it, the chance to realize your most spectacular dreams will come gently tap you on the shoulder and whisper... let's go.  And you'll be ready.

And that is how you're going to help shape a better future for all of us.

via tedchris.posterous.com