Daniel Kranseler likes to stay busy. So when the 15-year old Bellevue resident heard about Seattle Next Fifty’s P3 Project last year, he knew he wanted to get involved. Why? The project was about passions – and Daniel had a lot.

“I was doing a lot of things with my time and thought this program might help me narrow down what I wanted to do,” Daniel said.

That list includes tennis, soccer, piano and reading.

“What it ended up doing was just add more things to my list of things I wanted to do.”

Daniel learned about the P3 Project while exploring the Seattle Next Fifty Learning Committee last year. The idea for the project was to help people pursue their passions. Unable to decide on one passion, Daniel wrote an essay explaining his passion was life and was asked to join the project as the youngest member.

Led by the Center Point Institute, the P3 Project asked 50 participants – 25 Voyagers and 25 Guides (ages 14 to 75) – to work together over the course of nine months.

Every week, participants were asked to make a video blog and submit it to to the Institute answering two questions: What have you been wrestling with this week? And what have you found out about your passions?

Daniel’s video blogs usually focused on his work with his two professional piano teachers, as well as his new-found interest in engineering – which he discovered through working with his guide, Brad Gibson.

Gibson, who worked as a software engineer before starting P3, says he got involved with the project because, like Daniel, he had some questions about where his interests truly lie.

In addition to three all-day group meetings, Gibson and Daniel met every other week over the course of the study to talk to him about Daniels’s interests and providing him opportunities to explore those interests.

“When Daniel would talk about his passions he could see [which ones] made him light up.”

Gibson said Daniel is an inquisitive kid whose mind seems to cater to the more mathematical, scientific side of things. That’s where robotics and engineering came in to play.

“A job is so much more enjoyable when you are interested in what you are doing,” Gibson said.

Gibson reached out to some of his colleagues and was able to take the 15-year-old to meet with a working mechanical engineer.

Gibson said the project helped both the Voyagers and Guides to not be afraid to go after what they want most in life. Gibson has since left his job as a full-time software engineering and is building his own photography business.

“We have so much capacity to do so many things,” Gibson said. “But we limit ourselves because of fear, excuses.”

Through P3, both he and Daniel were able to push their limits and overcome these fears.