10 ms·

Why 'Follow Your Passion' Is the World's Worst Career Advice

85 points by mrwnmonm 11y ago

cstanley 11y ago
I hate the misleading + provocative title used to get me to click. It actually takes away from the nice framework for 'work' communicated in this article. The title seems to suggest that 'passion' should not be a component in ones career goals, which is bs.
- iaw 11y ago
  Passion should not be a component of ones career goals. Something that you enjoy doing can be, but is not always, something you're passionate about. I obtained a degree in one of my passions and I do it as a hobby, I would hate doing it for a living because of numerous reasons even though I'm good at it and people would pay. Instead I found something that I am not passionate about but enjoy greatly that has a better working dynamic for my personality. It's my opinion that the concept of 'passion' should only play into career goals in so much as determining if the field you're interested in actually aligns with what you enjoy about the concept of that field.
anotheryou 11y ago
clickbait bullshit... how can it be the worst if it makes 1/3 of the advertised formula? Also hardly anyone sucks at their passion (and admits it to himself, which would be crucial for the calculation, too). That makes it at least 1/2 of the formula...
- jschwartzi 11y ago
  It's terrible as the sole advice anyone ever gives when you ask for advice. If you can't have all three thirds, then at least make sure you can pay bills and save money, if for no other reason than that living hand-to-mouth is an unsustainable lifestyle over the long term.
- kzhahou 11y ago
  > Also hardly anyone sucks at their passion Anecdotally, I know far too many people who have devoted years to areas they have little to no aptitude in (in the arts, and in business). They have no natural talent and are getting nowhere (by any metric, not just financial), but they do love their field.
  - iaw 11y ago
    I could not agree more. I think people are conflating the things one enjoys doing with passion.
    - markdown 11y ago
      Are you implying that if people aren't good at something they love doing, they just aren't passionate about it... and that with real passion, being great at something is inevitable?
      - iaw 11y ago
        Not in any way. I'm saying that enjoying doing something is not the same as being passionate about it. There are many things I enjoy that I don't have a passion for. Passion and pleasure are being conflated a lot here.
- hugh4 11y ago
  >how can it be the worst if it makes 1/3 of the advertised formula? Same way that "keep your face in the water and breathe every fourth stroke" is good swimming advice but if you leave out the last bit it becomes terrible advice. If that's too silly an analogy, then just remember that shooting for a random point on the "stuff you love" portion of the Venn diagram is unlikely to land you in the region you want to be in, and the part of the Venn diagram where you're doing stuff you like but which nobody is willing to pay you for is a really terrible place to get stuck.
cobookman 11y ago
Bad career advise. But great life advise. There is more to life than money and being high on the exec ladder.
- heapcity 11y ago
  everybody wants to get high somehow; but not everybody can get high on the exec ladder. Try heroin, there are more baggies than corner offices.
  - balabaster 11y ago
    There are more baggies in corner offices ;)
drdeca 11y ago
Worst? Surely not the worst possible advice. E.g. it is much better than "work with the intent to cause as much harm as possible to yourself and those around you"
- nraynaud 11y ago
  One I like is the "learn programming, there is a lot of money there".
  - foobar2020 11y ago
    It is a reasonably good advice. After all there is plenty of programming work that does not require ever learning how does quicksort work or what is a mutex. Accessible to nearly anyone with increased intelligence.
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    Definitely ROTFL! Let's take the most mind numbingly boring thing possible, cross it with something that takes ridiculous amounts of concentration, add a dash of "no normal personal will ever understand what you are doing" and top it off with "all your colleagues are idiots and you spend most of your day arguing about minutia, while they simultaneously complain about the same thing with respect to you". Every year, no matter how much money you make, your justification for a raise is, "If I'm going to put up with this crap, they're going to have to pay me a lot more than this!" If you become a programmer for any reason other than passion, you are either very naive or very courageous.
- austinjp 11y ago
  Worst career advice. Which would seem reasonably translated as "words presented as advice for career improvement which actually require serious analysis and may not be right for you in your context". But that's not as catchy.
- hugh4 11y ago
  >E.g. it is much better than "work with the intent to cause as much harm as possible to yourself and those around you" The badness of advice is surely also a function of how likely people are to actually follow it. Nobody's going to follow your shitty advice, but a lot of people really do follow their unrealistic passions all the way to a minimum-wage gig while they wait for their music/painting/acting/whatever career to take off.
jasode 11y ago
The Scott Adams (of Dilbert) slides about "Passion is Overrated": http://www.slideshare.net/Scottadams925 http://www.slideshare.net/Scottadams925
TheBiv 11y ago
"I found: a) Something I liked to do (writing) b) Something that people were willing to pay me for (writing) c) Something that I was good at (writing)" My only problem with the authors solution is that if you break down "passion" into those 3 buckets then her answer is still a general answer of "writing". I would've enjoyed the author to dig deeper into why the writing she does and the 3 points led her to find the thing she is passionate about.
volume 11y ago
This is an issue that will never be settled at a high level - where it's some sort of rule everyone should live by. This is what the headline implies. Your approach is relative to your current situation. IF people realized this we'd: - have 50% less questions on Quora and Yahoo answers - better google matches for the things we need - a faster internet (or maybe not, more room for porn bandwidth?)
papapra 11y ago
Here is a summary of : So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport, which is about this subject. http://www.kevinrandom.com/1-page-summary-so-good-they-cant-ignore-you-by-cal-newport/ http://www.kevinrandom.com/1-page-summary-so-good-they-cant-... Quote: "The passion movement started in the 1970s. The core illusion: that there is a magic job out there that’s right for you, and will solve all your problems. This illusion applies to relationships too :) "
- ctdonath 11y ago
  Nobody said following your passion would solve all your problems. Following your passion will make those problems worth the cost. The problem is most people don't understand what "passion" is. Passion is what you can't not do (not to be confused with a warm fuzzy answer to "what is your passion?" which you're not really going to ever follow thru on even if handed every resource to). ETA: as far as I can tell, few people actually have passions. If you don't have one, don't pretend to follow it. A career based on lying to yourself is indeed following horrible advice.
  - AJ007 11y ago
    Few people have enough life experience to know what they want to do. There are successful millionaires who don't really have to work and don't know to do with their lives. For most, after they are married and have kids those potential goals just become fantasy. When I was young I was exposed to adults and activities from many different backgrounds outside of school. More than helping me determine what I liked doing it helped me find out what I did not want to do. Things I thought I wanted to be based on what I had seen in books and movies turned out to be further from reality. If you can gain these experiences it is a luxury. If everything matches up it is fortunate. My suggestion is the larger problem is many workplaces are negative environments and leadership is lacking. The one real job I had was in maintenance. I did shit like mopping floors and bagging garbage. My boss was great. The people I worked with were happy. I was very happy. Once I started my own business it took me many, many years to be that happy again.
    - 11y ago
austinjp 11y ago
The author's recognition that luck is a critical factor is refreshing. Happiness != success. Career != life. Work != career. Life is not one-dimensional, and luck is a huge factor in all of these.
- balabaster 11y ago
  Luck is what outsiders label reasons that you get ahead and they don't. The reason a door opened for you and not for them. The reason that you're successful and they're not. What they fail to see is that it wasn't lucky at all. It may have been luck that that particular door opened when it did, but realistically, from the inside, it was leveraging the best opportunity available at the time. If that door hadn't opened, you'd have taken another route to your objective. There is little luck involved. The only lucky thing I suppose is the probability of taking the route you did. When you climb a mountain your goal is the summit. The climber who decides "Ah shit, I couldn't do it because there was bad weather, you were so lucky that you hit the mountain when you did and had that window to summit." There was no luck involved... you would've summited anyway, you'd have just taken a different route or persevered longer to get there. That's the difference between those who make it and those who say "If only I'd had their luck." I guess you could say it took some luck for Edison to make the light bulb... but I daresay if you'd suggested such a thing to Edison, he'd have taken your head off. But that's the difference between seeing failure and seeing the thousands of incremental changes that led from something that wasn't satisfactory, to something that provides lights for the entire world...
  - askafriend 11y ago
    Let's take a step back then, as a mental exercise. Was it not luck that you and I were born at all?
    - balabaster 11y ago
      Let's step back even further... While it may be luck that life as we know it has ended where it has (so far), you could look at it like life will always find a way, we have no idea what the endgame is, but life marches forward by hook or by crook. However it does that is immaterial, it mutates in order to keep moving forward. So is it really luck? Or is it like water flowing to the sea, inevitable?
lucio 11y ago
bs. first she says that she is one of the lucky ones finding the perfect job, 3 of 3, and in the next paragraph she says "Plenty of us aren't so lucky"... ... "of us"??? You've just excluded yourself from the unlucky in the previous paragraph.
- theoh 11y ago
  There's no contradiction. Some of set U ("us") are lucky. "Plenty" members of set U are not lucky. Set U contains everybody.
reality_TV 11y ago
I haven't read the article, but why not follow your passion that at least guarantees you a job in this industry. It's not what you "TRULY," want to do, but at least your making a living in the field you have an interest and a passion for. i.e. I started up long ago & in the process learned how to code & design. A few years after I landed my first coding gig. I'm still coding for a living, while also still pursuing my startup/inventor goals. Again, I didnt read the article, but I can't see anything negative in following your passion in our industry (tech), unless you you just waste money having others build your dreams and not gaining new skills yourself.
balabaster 11y ago
I wholeheartedly disagree with this article... I firmly believe that if you're passionate at something, it's extremely easy to become extremely knowledgeable and/or highly skilled at it to a point that it's valuable to the world. Then it's just a case of applying your ingenuity to figuring out how to make your passion relevant. Once you make it relevant in today's ever changing market, it's then just a case of positioning it effectively to make it profitable. I refuse to believe otherwise... every passion is worth something and makes a difference. If it didn't, then why are we genetically predisposed to them? What would be the purpose in this? Why aren't we all just worker bees, all genetically predisposed to doing the same few tasks? Of course, the article is just one person's opinion and I suppose in many ways as relevant and valid as my own...
- ddingus 11y ago
  Seconded. As you find your "passion", and that might just be a set of skills you care about, or a process, means, method, value, etc... you maximize it, sell it, trade on it, share it, build it and keep moving from there. Things link together. And seeing those links and where the value is can really pay off and over a number of years doing this you can look back and know you made a difference and probably got paid well doing it. Rather than expect to find that perfect job, you do the job, and find out a little of who you are and what you really care about. The minute you know, max that out and don't look back. And when you do another job? Maybe that connects with what you did before. Bonus points for making sure that is true. Again, you find out a little of who you are and what you really care about. Wash, rinse, repeat.
- mwhuang2 11y ago
  I feel it's too idealistic to think that every passion can be profitable. College students can't all major in Netflix and video games. I've had a number of skilled hobbies over the years, but software engineering is the first one that's actually a viable career choice. A good alternative might be to look at where the demand is and where your interests lie, and try to find the best intersection of the two.
  - balabaster 11y ago
wodenokoto 11y ago
The odd thing is the author mentions that even if you don't make (a lot) of money, you are still doing what you love (and thus must be happy and succesful by any meaningful criteria), and then later fails to bring this back into the conclusion. There is probably little chance that you'll be good enough at something, to use that skill to acquire vast amounts of money if you are not passionate about that skill. But the chance that what you love is something that is In demand enough to make you rich, is also pretty slim.
JDiculous 11y ago
I agree that it's terrible advice, but the article is clickbait and lacking in substance.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
brianclements 11y ago
I think Elizabeth Gilbert had a better take on the topic: "I am a big advocate for the pursuit of curiosity. You've maybe heard me talk about this before? We are constantly being told to pursue our passions in life, but there are times when passion is a TALL ORDER, and really hard to reach. In seasons of confusion, of loss, of boredom, of insecurity, of distraction, the idea of "passion" can feel completely inaccessible and impossible. In such times, you are lucky to be able to get your laundry done (that sometimes feels as high as you can aim) and when someone tells you to follow your passion, you want to give them the middle finger. (Go ahead and do it, by the way. But wait till their back is turned, out of civility.) But curiosity, I have found, is always within reach. Passion is a tower of flame, but curiosity is a tiny tap on the shoulder — a little whisper in the ear that says, "Hey, that's kind of interesting…" Passion is rare; curiosity is everyday. Curiosity is therefore a lot easier to reach at at times than full-on passion — and the stakes are lower, easier to manage. The trick is to just follow your small moments of curiosity. It doesn't take a massive effort. Just turn your head an inch. Pause for a instant. Respond to what has caught your attention. Look into it a bit. Is there something there for you? A piece of information? For me, a lifetime devoted to creativity is nothing but a scavenger hunt — where each successive clue is another tiny little hit of curiosity. Pick each one up, unfold it, see where it leads you next. Small steps. Keep doing that, and I promise you: The curiosity will eventually lead you to the passion. And that'll be the end of boredom." [1] [1] http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/one-of-the-greatest-quotes-on-creativity-ever-i-am-a-big-advocate-for-the-purs/ http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/one-of-the-greatest-quotes-o...
somberi 11y ago
From Somerset Maugham’s novel “The Moon and Sixpence” (1) Storeve : "I don’t pretend to be a great painter,” he says early on, “but I have something. I sell.” Yet he recognizes Strickland’s (Stroeve's friend) work as genius. He tells the dealer, “Remember Monet, who could not get anyone to buy his pictures for a hundred francs. What are they worth now?” The dealer questions this logic. “There were a hundred as good painters as Monet who couldn’t sell their pictures at that time, and their pictures are worth nothing still. How can one tell? Is merit enough to bring success?” Stroeve is infuriated. “How, then, will you recognize merit?” he asks. “There is only one way—by success,” the dealer replies. “Think of all the great artists of the past—Raphael, Michael Angelo, Ingres, Delacroix—they were all successful.” (1) - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/31/the-great-and-the-good http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/31/the-great-and-t...
mariodiana 11y ago
If you wind up becoming Picasso or Eddie Van Halen or Meryl Streep, it's great advice. But if you're one of the many talented but marginally employed artists, musicians, or actors, it's not so great. The truth is that there are a lot of very talented people out there who have been seized with a passion that in most cases just does not pay out. Blessed are they whose passion is accounting.

85 points by mrwnmonm 11y ago

I hate the misleading + provocative title used to get me to click. It actually takes away from the nice framework for 'work' communicated in this article. The title seems to suggest that 'passion' should not be a component in ones career goals, which is bs.

iaw 11y ago
Passion should not be a component of ones career goals. Something that you enjoy doing can be, but is not always, something you're passionate about. I obtained a degree in one of my passions and I do it as a hobby, I would hate doing it for a living because of numerous reasons even though I'm good at it and people would pay. Instead I found something that I am not passionate about but enjoy greatly that has a better working dynamic for my personality. It's my opinion that the concept of 'passion' should only play into career goals in so much as determining if the field you're interested in actually aligns with what you enjoy about the concept of that field.

anotheryou 11y ago

clickbait bullshit... how can it be the worst if it makes 1/3 of the advertised formula? Also hardly anyone sucks at their passion (and admits it to himself, which would be crucial for the calculation, too). That makes it at least 1/2 of the formula...

jschwartzi 11y ago
It's terrible as the sole advice anyone ever gives when you ask for advice. If you can't have all three thirds, then at least make sure you can pay bills and save money, if for no other reason than that living hand-to-mouth is an unsustainable lifestyle over the long term.
kzhahou 11y ago
> Also hardly anyone sucks at their passion Anecdotally, I know far too many people who have devoted years to areas they have little to no aptitude in (in the arts, and in business). They have no natural talent and are getting nowhere (by any metric, not just financial), but they do love their field.
- iaw 11y ago
  I could not agree more. I think people are conflating the things one enjoys doing with passion.
  - markdown 11y ago
    Are you implying that if people aren't good at something they love doing, they just aren't passionate about it... and that with real passion, being great at something is inevitable?
    - iaw 11y ago
      Not in any way. I'm saying that enjoying doing something is not the same as being passionate about it. There are many things I enjoy that I don't have a passion for. Passion and pleasure are being conflated a lot here.
hugh4 11y ago
>how can it be the worst if it makes 1/3 of the advertised formula? Same way that "keep your face in the water and breathe every fourth stroke" is good swimming advice but if you leave out the last bit it becomes terrible advice. If that's too silly an analogy, then just remember that shooting for a random point on the "stuff you love" portion of the Venn diagram is unlikely to land you in the region you want to be in, and the part of the Venn diagram where you're doing stuff you like but which nobody is willing to pay you for is a really terrible place to get stuck.

cobookman 11y ago

Bad career advise. But great life advise. There is more to life than money and being high on the exec ladder.

heapcity 11y ago
everybody wants to get high somehow; but not everybody can get high on the exec ladder. Try heroin, there are more baggies than corner offices.
- balabaster 11y ago
  There are more baggies in corner offices ;)

drdeca 11y ago

Worst? Surely not the worst possible advice. E.g. it is much better than "work with the intent to cause as much harm as possible to yourself and those around you"

nraynaud 11y ago
One I like is the "learn programming, there is a lot of money there".
- foobar2020 11y ago
  It is a reasonably good advice. After all there is plenty of programming work that does not require ever learning how does quicksort work or what is a mutex. Accessible to nearly anyone with increased intelligence.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Definitely ROTFL! Let's take the most mind numbingly boring thing possible, cross it with something that takes ridiculous amounts of concentration, add a dash of "no normal personal will ever understand what you are doing" and top it off with "all your colleagues are idiots and you spend most of your day arguing about minutia, while they simultaneously complain about the same thing with respect to you". Every year, no matter how much money you make, your justification for a raise is, "If I'm going to put up with this crap, they're going to have to pay me a lot more than this!" If you become a programmer for any reason other than passion, you are either very naive or very courageous.
austinjp 11y ago
Worst career advice. Which would seem reasonably translated as "words presented as advice for career improvement which actually require serious analysis and may not be right for you in your context". But that's not as catchy.
hugh4 11y ago
>E.g. it is much better than "work with the intent to cause as much harm as possible to yourself and those around you" The badness of advice is surely also a function of how likely people are to actually follow it. Nobody's going to follow your shitty advice, but a lot of people really do follow their unrealistic passions all the way to a minimum-wage gig while they wait for their music/painting/acting/whatever career to take off.

jasode 11y ago

The Scott Adams (of Dilbert) slides about "Passion is Overrated": http://www.slideshare.net/Scottadams925 http://www.slideshare.net/Scottadams925

TheBiv 11y ago

"I found: a) Something I liked to do (writing) b) Something that people were willing to pay me for (writing) c) Something that I was good at (writing)" My only problem with the authors solution is that if you break down "passion" into those 3 buckets then her answer is still a general answer of "writing". I would've enjoyed the author to dig deeper into why the writing she does and the 3 points led her to find the thing she is passionate about.

volume 11y ago

This is an issue that will never be settled at a high level - where it's some sort of rule everyone should live by. This is what the headline implies. Your approach is relative to your current situation. IF people realized this we'd: - have 50% less questions on Quora and Yahoo answers - better google matches for the things we need - a faster internet (or maybe not, more room for porn bandwidth?)

papapra 11y ago

Here is a summary of : So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport, which is about this subject. http://www.kevinrandom.com/1-page-summary-so-good-they-cant-ignore-you-by-cal-newport/ http://www.kevinrandom.com/1-page-summary-so-good-they-cant-... Quote: "The passion movement started in the 1970s. The core illusion: that there is a magic job out there that’s right for you, and will solve all your problems. This illusion applies to relationships too :) "

ctdonath 11y ago
Nobody said following your passion would solve all your problems. Following your passion will make those problems worth the cost. The problem is most people don't understand what "passion" is. Passion is what you can't not do (not to be confused with a warm fuzzy answer to "what is your passion?" which you're not really going to ever follow thru on even if handed every resource to). ETA: as far as I can tell, few people actually have passions. If you don't have one, don't pretend to follow it. A career based on lying to yourself is indeed following horrible advice.
- AJ007 11y ago
  Few people have enough life experience to know what they want to do. There are successful millionaires who don't really have to work and don't know to do with their lives. For most, after they are married and have kids those potential goals just become fantasy. When I was young I was exposed to adults and activities from many different backgrounds outside of school. More than helping me determine what I liked doing it helped me find out what I did not want to do. Things I thought I wanted to be based on what I had seen in books and movies turned out to be further from reality. If you can gain these experiences it is a luxury. If everything matches up it is fortunate. My suggestion is the larger problem is many workplaces are negative environments and leadership is lacking. The one real job I had was in maintenance. I did shit like mopping floors and bagging garbage. My boss was great. The people I worked with were happy. I was very happy. Once I started my own business it took me many, many years to be that happy again.
  - 11y ago

austinjp 11y ago

The author's recognition that luck is a critical factor is refreshing. Happiness != success. Career != life. Work != career. Life is not one-dimensional, and luck is a huge factor in all of these.

balabaster 11y ago
Luck is what outsiders label reasons that you get ahead and they don't. The reason a door opened for you and not for them. The reason that you're successful and they're not. What they fail to see is that it wasn't lucky at all. It may have been luck that that particular door opened when it did, but realistically, from the inside, it was leveraging the best opportunity available at the time. If that door hadn't opened, you'd have taken another route to your objective. There is little luck involved. The only lucky thing I suppose is the probability of taking the route you did. When you climb a mountain your goal is the summit. The climber who decides "Ah shit, I couldn't do it because there was bad weather, you were so lucky that you hit the mountain when you did and had that window to summit." There was no luck involved... you would've summited anyway, you'd have just taken a different route or persevered longer to get there. That's the difference between those who make it and those who say "If only I'd had their luck." I guess you could say it took some luck for Edison to make the light bulb... but I daresay if you'd suggested such a thing to Edison, he'd have taken your head off. But that's the difference between seeing failure and seeing the thousands of incremental changes that led from something that wasn't satisfactory, to something that provides lights for the entire world...
- askafriend 11y ago
  Let's take a step back then, as a mental exercise. Was it not luck that you and I were born at all?
  - balabaster 11y ago
    Let's step back even further... While it may be luck that life as we know it has ended where it has (so far), you could look at it like life will always find a way, we have no idea what the endgame is, but life marches forward by hook or by crook. However it does that is immaterial, it mutates in order to keep moving forward. So is it really luck? Or is it like water flowing to the sea, inevitable?

lucio 11y ago

bs. first she says that she is one of the lucky ones finding the perfect job, 3 of 3, and in the next paragraph she says "Plenty of us aren't so lucky"... ... "of us"??? You've just excluded yourself from the unlucky in the previous paragraph.

theoh 11y ago
There's no contradiction. Some of set U ("us") are lucky. "Plenty" members of set U are not lucky. Set U contains everybody.

reality_TV 11y ago

I haven't read the article, but why not follow your passion that at least guarantees you a job in this industry. It's not what you "TRULY," want to do, but at least your making a living in the field you have an interest and a passion for. i.e. I started up long ago & in the process learned how to code & design. A few years after I landed my first coding gig. I'm still coding for a living, while also still pursuing my startup/inventor goals. Again, I didnt read the article, but I can't see anything negative in following your passion in our industry (tech), unless you you just waste money having others build your dreams and not gaining new skills yourself.

balabaster 11y ago

I wholeheartedly disagree with this article... I firmly believe that if you're passionate at something, it's extremely easy to become extremely knowledgeable and/or highly skilled at it to a point that it's valuable to the world. Then it's just a case of applying your ingenuity to figuring out how to make your passion relevant. Once you make it relevant in today's ever changing market, it's then just a case of positioning it effectively to make it profitable. I refuse to believe otherwise... every passion is worth something and makes a difference. If it didn't, then why are we genetically predisposed to them? What would be the purpose in this? Why aren't we all just worker bees, all genetically predisposed to doing the same few tasks? Of course, the article is just one person's opinion and I suppose in many ways as relevant and valid as my own...

ddingus 11y ago
Seconded. As you find your "passion", and that might just be a set of skills you care about, or a process, means, method, value, etc... you maximize it, sell it, trade on it, share it, build it and keep moving from there. Things link together. And seeing those links and where the value is can really pay off and over a number of years doing this you can look back and know you made a difference and probably got paid well doing it. Rather than expect to find that perfect job, you do the job, and find out a little of who you are and what you really care about. The minute you know, max that out and don't look back. And when you do another job? Maybe that connects with what you did before. Bonus points for making sure that is true. Again, you find out a little of who you are and what you really care about. Wash, rinse, repeat.
mwhuang2 11y ago
I feel it's too idealistic to think that every passion can be profitable. College students can't all major in Netflix and video games. I've had a number of skilled hobbies over the years, but software engineering is the first one that's actually a viable career choice. A good alternative might be to look at where the demand is and where your interests lie, and try to find the best intersection of the two.
- balabaster 11y ago

wodenokoto 11y ago

The odd thing is the author mentions that even if you don't make (a lot) of money, you are still doing what you love (and thus must be happy and succesful by any meaningful criteria), and then later fails to bring this back into the conclusion. There is probably little chance that you'll be good enough at something, to use that skill to acquire vast amounts of money if you are not passionate about that skill. But the chance that what you love is something that is In demand enough to make you rich, is also pretty slim.

JDiculous 11y ago

I agree that it's terrible advice, but the article is clickbait and lacking in substance.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

brianclements 11y ago

I think Elizabeth Gilbert had a better take on the topic: "I am a big advocate for the pursuit of curiosity. You've maybe heard me talk about this before? We are constantly being told to pursue our passions in life, but there are times when passion is a TALL ORDER, and really hard to reach. In seasons of confusion, of loss, of boredom, of insecurity, of distraction, the idea of "passion" can feel completely inaccessible and impossible. In such times, you are lucky to be able to get your laundry done (that sometimes feels as high as you can aim) and when someone tells you to follow your passion, you want to give them the middle finger. (Go ahead and do it, by the way. But wait till their back is turned, out of civility.) But curiosity, I have found, is always within reach. Passion is a tower of flame, but curiosity is a tiny tap on the shoulder — a little whisper in the ear that says, "Hey, that's kind of interesting…" Passion is rare; curiosity is everyday. Curiosity is therefore a lot easier to reach at at times than full-on passion — and the stakes are lower, easier to manage. The trick is to just follow your small moments of curiosity. It doesn't take a massive effort. Just turn your head an inch. Pause for a instant. Respond to what has caught your attention. Look into it a bit. Is there something there for you? A piece of information? For me, a lifetime devoted to creativity is nothing but a scavenger hunt — where each successive clue is another tiny little hit of curiosity. Pick each one up, unfold it, see where it leads you next. Small steps. Keep doing that, and I promise you: The curiosity will eventually lead you to the passion. And that'll be the end of boredom." [1] [1] http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/one-of-the-greatest-quotes-on-creativity-ever-i-am-a-big-advocate-for-the-purs/ http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/one-of-the-greatest-quotes-o...

somberi 11y ago

From Somerset Maugham’s novel “The Moon and Sixpence” (1) Storeve : "I don’t pretend to be a great painter,” he says early on, “but I have something. I sell.” Yet he recognizes Strickland’s (Stroeve's friend) work as genius. He tells the dealer, “Remember Monet, who could not get anyone to buy his pictures for a hundred francs. What are they worth now?” The dealer questions this logic. “There were a hundred as good painters as Monet who couldn’t sell their pictures at that time, and their pictures are worth nothing still. How can one tell? Is merit enough to bring success?” Stroeve is infuriated. “How, then, will you recognize merit?” he asks. “There is only one way—by success,” the dealer replies. “Think of all the great artists of the past—Raphael, Michael Angelo, Ingres, Delacroix—they were all successful.” (1) - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/31/the-great-and-the-good http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/31/the-great-and-t...

mariodiana 11y ago

If you wind up becoming Picasso or Eddie Van Halen or Meryl Streep, it's great advice. But if you're one of the many talented but marginally employed artists, musicians, or actors, it's not so great. The truth is that there are a lot of very talented people out there who have been seized with a passion that in most cases just does not pay out. Blessed are they whose passion is accounting.