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Follow Your Passion is Terrible Advice and Here's Why - FutureIQ

13,213 views Wait, is this logic right? • May 15, 2025
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Slog Reference: Dont Follow Your Passion

Description

Follow your passion is terrible advice. And yet people passionately follow this advice. Interestingly enough, this idea of following your dreams was not so popular till the 1990s, after which it has been a widely romanticised notion. And we're here to bust this myth today.

In this episode, we give many different arguments as to why this is terrible advice along with several real life examples. Being passionate about something will not always result in success and can in fact be the source of one’s unhappiness. Passion is fleeting, passion doesn’t equal talent or competence, passion can’t give you financial security, etc. While there is a plethora of reasons why passion doesn’t always equal success, but does that mean that you should never follow your dreams?

Is there a correct way to follow your passion? And how does one find meaning to life if we do not follow our passion? We’ve discussed all these questions and shared some ‘good advice’ based on research that can help you to design your life while not giving up on your passions and yet finding the happiness and success that you desire.

Related Videos:
Why Doing Nothing Makes You More Creative - The Hidden Power of Boredom: https://youtu.be/WaAAto_010k
A cow on a golf course taught me how to deal with unfairness in life: https://youtu.be/77_YwP9aok8
Only Lucky People Become Successful: https://youtu.be/mczq-E79emo
Talent VS Hard Work - Effort Shock: https://youtu.be/8SuR0lJR8ig
You'll Always Lose Interest in Everything: https://youtu.be/NFqC7mlZlQw
The Invisible Supply & Demand in Our Everyday Lives: https://youtu.be/imweTGK0Myk
Sunk Cost Fallacy, Loss Aversion and Endowment Effect Explained with Examples: https://youtu.be/pgH79XsGlo4
How to Become Expert in Anything? Deliberate Practice: https://youtu.be/tysT6DMFGH4
Believing is Seeing - How Bayesian Priors Trick Your Senses: https://youtu.be/bxx-My8J_kM

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Chapters:
00:00 Follow your passion is BS
01:30 Roti, Kapda aur Makaan
02:43 You cannot step into the same river twice
03:33 You might be kinda, sorta.. bad at it
04:14 It’s been a haard day’s night
05:37 Maybe you’re ordinary and that’s okay
07:45 When can you trust your passion?
09:50 Kids, listen to your parents
11:35 Follow your.. Blisters?
15:53 You’re the Architect of your life

Editing Sources:
Google n-gram viewer for "follow your passion"
https://designingyour.life/
James Clear: Staying Focused when you’re Bored
DocBhooshan on distinguishing between real passion and hype

Research Sources/References/Credits:
https://www.peoplematters.in/article/watercooler/find-your-purpose-because-passion-is-overrated-19253
https://markmanson.net/screw-finding-your-passion: Mark Manson: Screw Finding Your Passion
https://shrikantemergic.wordpress.com/2023/07/08/passion-and-self-expression/: Shrikant on Follow your self-expression
https://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article5073-follow-your-bliss-or-follow-your-blisters.html: Joseph Campbell - Follow Your Bliss … ters
https://hbr.org/2020/11/what-you-should-follow-instead-of-your-passion: Follow your blisters
https://hbr.org/2017/10/you-dont-find-your-purpose-you-build-it: You don't find purpose, you build it
Mastana - 1954 - Jhoom Jhoom Ke Do Diwane - https://youtu.be/X-mpRoAhRw0

Related Slog Matches

Dont Follow Your Passion

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70.53

Transcript

I had a classmate in IIT who was a brilliant director and actor. He spent most of his time in IIT doing dramatics and getting awards for it. Do you know what he's doing now? Uh probably a accomplished is a software engineer. So I asked him why didn't he pursue his passion? Clearly he was passionate about dramatics and he said follow your passion is [ __ ] advice. Usually what happens when you follow your passion is that you don't follow your money. You become a starving artist, you become disillusioned with art and then you end up with neither art nor money. Okay. I agree partly about what you've said, not the starving artist part, but we've
always been told as kids to follow your passion, follow your dreams, do something unique in the world. And and that's what we are going to analyze in this episode. Okay? But follow your passion isn't something we've always been told. Okay, just look at this graph from Google. It clearly shows that that took off in mid 1990s. Okay, before that it wasn't much of a thing. Okay, yeah. What happened in the mid 1990s for this graph to take off like literally all countries in the world got richer, right? Before that, parents really didn't say follow your passion. Okay, they said try not to starve. Get a job that gives you enough money that you can pay for food and a house, right? Yeah.
Right. So, um, basically follow your passion is incredibly bad advice. Okay. Uh, why would you say it is bad advice? I have a bunch of reasons for that. Okay. Let's start with reason number one. Okay. Okay. So, for example, look at this lovely quote. Pick the field you love, study hard and you will never work a day in your life. True. Yeah. Because nobody is hiring in that field. Okay. Also true. So passion really doesn't pay your bills. Okay. But then the world has enough software engineers. The world has enough doctors and lawyers. Well, if you paid any attention during our episode on supply and demand, you would know that the fact that their salaries are high
means that the demand for them is high. The world does in fact need more of them. Okay. True. True. And there is a huge supply of podcasters and content creators right now. So the demand is No, that is basically the software engineers and the doctors realizing that they're not so passionate about this and they try to follow their passion. and they run a podcast for 6 months and then they go back to making money. So they are still following their passion. Well, that is the problem, right? Many times the reason they give up after 6 months of podcasting is because passion can be momentary. It is fleeting. That's reason number two for not following your
passion. It's difficult to sustain it for a long time. Yeah. Probably because they're curious about that passion of theirs. They're probably trying to explore that passion of theirs. That's a great thing. Curiosity is a great thing. Exploration is a great thing. But let's not mistake that for a follow your passion thing which is going to drive all your decisions for the next 20 years, right? But here's the thing. If they stick with that curiosity for a certain period of time and they go through the dip, they can still come out of the dip at the other end of the dip.
We've done an episode on the dip. can come out of the dip with a passion for that thing. Well, yes. Okay. So, then we come to reason number three which is that just because they think they have a passion for something doesn't mean that they have competence for it. They might not be any good at it. Right? I know any number of people who are very passionate about cricket but they're never going to make a career in cricket. Okay, football in my case but uh he is right. I knew very early on that I had a passion for football but I did not have the jobs for it. Uh because competence also requires some amount of passion for you to put
into that particular. Yeah. So you know before we start telling everyone follow your passion, follow your passion, we should check for competence, right? Yeah, that's actually a good idea. We should check for competence. That brings us to reason number four. Okay. Follow your passion is bad advice because it gives people the impression that things should be easy. If it is like hard work and if you feel bored then you are doing something that you are not passionate about. Right? Okay. But that's [ __ ] in most cases. Right? Even if you're passionate about something, if you want to make a long-term career in it, it is going to be hard work. Right? We have done multiple episodes on this. There is
effort shock where we pointed out that even Sachin Tel Dulkar Yeah. who probably has a god-given talent for cricket and who has probably the most passion on cricket of anyone in the world. True. His coach has pointed out that the reason he's successful is because he was the hardest working student. Yep. And I have I have no objections to this. I completely agree that uh passion only counts towards probably the first step. You still need to put in a lot of hard work to reach those heights that we are talking about such in Tendulkar level heights or whatever is your god in whatever sport or passion you choose. Correct. I have no objections to this. I agree with this
completely. Even if you do have a passion to continuously make yourself better, you do need deliberate practice. Yes, we've done an episode on deliberate practice. We'll line it up and put links in the description. So, go check that out. Another problem with follow your passion is that not everyone has a passion. This is so common in India where kids have to decide their entire future after 12th standard. Right? And the schools are such that you haven't just been given much time to discover what you are really good at, what you are passionate about. That is true and that is something I've been thinking for a long time that we force our kids to decide what they are passionate about
even before they know what they can be passionate about. So yeah, I agree with that. And a related problem there. You might be passionate about something, but then once you enter into that field, you realize that you had no idea what that field involves and that you were passionate about just the idea of that field, not the reality, right? Reality can disillusion you often. Yeah. I know a student who thought she was passionate about chemistry, but luckily for her, she took a gap year after 12th standard.
Okay. and she went to a college and worked with a PhD student in chemistry. After doing that for a little while, she realized, oh, this is what chemistry is. I am not interested in this at all. Right. Okay. So, this can happen to a lot of people. Yeah. But in her case, could it just have been effort shock as in she didn't know the effort that was required to have a career in chemistry? And sometimes it is effort shock but many times it is not. It is just a misunderstanding of what that field involves, right? Somebody is passionate about running a restaurant. Okay?
Because they think that running a restaurant means coming up with a very interesting menu and being able to cook those things so that they taste very good, right? But in reality, running a restaurant involves a lot of marketing and HR and dealing with irritated customers and, you know, very very little menu and cooking. Okay. So yeah, if you want to follow your passion, restaurant business is not for you, right? Yeah, I I believe there is a series called the bear which basically explores some part of this, the passion part of this and also the effort part of this. But how do you differentiate between what is real passion and what isn't. So this is a serious question for
parents of 12th standard kids, right? that there are kids who are like I am passionate about doing a band and then they have to decide whether to allow the kid to follow that passion or force them to go to engineering. Right? So Doc Bushan on Twitter has an excellent suggestion for this. Right? Okay. First ask yourself is the kid willing to spend time on this? Right. If they're just passionate but they're not putting in the work then no. Then it's yeah second are they willing to give up something else for it right you can do this for 2 hours but then that means you cannot do this right good point if they're willing to give up something serious then they
are really passionate about it right good point third is that don't give them money or equipment or something like that to follow the passion until they have earned it with hard work or some achievements or something like that right there should be a juggle bundy between the money and equipment and the hard work and achievements, right? Which will also give them a sense of what it is like to earn in that passion. Another good way is talking to experienced seniors and internships. But maybe some of that has to happen after some effort has been put in. Correct. After a threshold has been reached where it is very clear that okay, this passion has led to hard work and that hard work has
brought you to a point where you need a coach, a mentor for deliberate practice. Correct. Exactly. very interesting but at the same time also a little disheartening because as someone in the creative industry myself I genuinely think that passion is necessary for creativity for insight for intuition to create good pieces of art to create good artworks I mean imagine someone like a George RR Martin or a JR Tolken not having passion they wouldn't have been able to write all of those magnum opposites that they've written Well, the important thing is that before you follow your passion, you should have a safety net. George R. Martin was a teacher. Jar Tolken was a professor at Oxford, right? Yeah. That is why they
could follow their passion. Without a safety net, if you discover that follow your passion is wrong advice for you because of the earlier reasons I gave you, then you are in trouble. But if you have a safety net, then you have freedom to explore and experiment. Now what you said about students having to choose their careers early makes sense because a lot of students are in a hurry to look for their passion without realizing that they haven't built enough of a safety net. In some students cases the parents become a safety net but in a lot of students cases there might not be a safety net. Absolutely. And Doc Bushan's advice continues saying that you know
just first do your engineering degree or whatever some degree that makes it easy to get a job and then after that you have time to follow your passion for a little bit at least. Yeah. Anil Kumbay was also an engineer before he became a cricketer. So that applies there as well. I also give advice right if your parents are rich you already have a safety net then go for liberal arts follow your passion do all of those things. We do need more passionate people out there. Yeah. Because uh without passion you would also not make the connections needed for succeeding in that industry. For example, we spoke about this in the episode on luck on how
to increase your surface area for luck and one of those methods required you to be passionate about something so that you would then become lucky in that field. Right? But the thing to really understand the crux of this episode is that passion is a result of competence and mastery not the other way around. So what you're saying is we need to first find things that we are competent at and then keep taking efforts in those things and then the mastery and passion will develop in that. Well, what I'm really saying is that you should follow your passion but do it in the right way.
There is a right way. Well, there is a bunch of ways that famous people have suggested. Let me go through some of them and see if they make sense to you, right? Mark Cuban says follow your effort, right? Okay. Um, so the point being that unless you're able to put effort into something like we talked about, you are not going to get really good about it and you will not be passionate about it. Right? True. So follow the things that you seem to be putting effort in. Second is follow your self expression right meaning that if you're experimenting with various things you will notice that some things you are naturally good at right so go after that
after a while you might either hit a wall and then you don't feel like putting in the effort in which case you stop but if you can continue to put effort into that and you are good at it then I mean that is your swadha suadharma okay interesting You can combine this with follow your purpose. Purpose not passion because passion is different from purpose. Right? Yeah. The idea being that passion is what you enjoy doing. Purpose is what you should do. Right. Correct. The idea being that the only way to be truly satisfied is that if you believe you're doing good work, great work. Right?
Right. Steve Jobs has said that the important point is not just to follow your passion but something larger than yourself. This is also the secret to happiness. True. I agree. One very interesting thing I heard someone say is follow your blisters. Follow your itch. Right? So something that keeps irritating you. You keep getting drawn to it. Right? So it indicates that this is something that if you succeed at doing that it'll make you very happy. Right? So you should add that as a layer to your follow your ex as in if something is causing blisters is if something is so problematic that you find yourself getting blisters while doing it but you still do it. It means
that there is a purpose to it there's a passion to it. So yeah it makes sense. Yeah there's a link to an article about follow your blisters. Take a look at that. But also follow your commitment. Right. Okay. So commit to something and then you will after a little while become passionate about it if you stick with it. Right? This is my opinion about arranged marriages also. What explain the idea is that if you commit to something and to making it work over time you will find more and more reasons to get engaged with it, more and more reasons to like it. If you pay attention to our episode on believing is seeing and bean updating, you will see how that
works, how that reinforces and ultimately becomes passion. This is a very interesting take on the entire arranged marriage versus love marriage debate that I hadn't thought of, but it makes sense when you think about it because you're putting work in an arranged marriage. uh that work kind of uh in a very positive interpretation of the sun cost fallacy makes you passionate about the marriage itself about your partner in the marriage. So that is a interesting point right and I can generalize that that purpose passion is not something you find okay it is something you build right there is a wrong Hollywood version of your purpose or your passion right like oh the two most important days in your life are the
day you are born and the day you find out why like Neo waking up one day to realize oh this is what he was made for right but reality is not like that reality is that you build your passion through hard work, through commitment, through effort and then you find your purpose. I agree. A different way to put it is that you should design your life. Okay. Design your life. Yeah. So this idea is from Stanford design school. There is a website. There is a book by Bill Bernard Dave once. What they say is to put it more succently. Passion is the result of good life design not the cause. Oh, that's a very interesting way
to look at things because when you actually find your passion, you realize that it wasn't there all along. You've built up towards it. In a sense, this reminds me of this Japanese concept called eeky guy. If you look back at this episode, you might be a little confused because we started saying follow your passion is bad advice. Yeah. And then we continued it by saying follow your X, follow your Y where the X and Y just sounded like other words for passion, right? But that is not really true. Okay, they are different. And I think I brings it all together nicely, right? It does. I says that you should be doing something which is a
combination of do what you love. Correct. Do what you're good at so there is competence. Correct. Do what you can be paid for so the world actually wants that. Correct. and do what the world needs. So that is purpose. A higher purpose, a mission, something to aim to, something that will improve the world, right? So when somebody says follow your passion, don't just pick what happens to be at the top of your mind right now as your passion, but instead there is a lot of experimentation, a lot of hard work at the four circles of the eeky guy where you do that experimentation to figure out, okay, this is the set of things I love. This is the other set of
things I'm good at. This is the third set of things that people are willing to pay for. There is scope as any 12th standard parent will tell you and this is what the world needs and then find the subset correct and that will become your passion if you stick with it and work hard. In fact, I recommend this as an exercise to many people I meet who are searching for their passion. I basically tell them to take the four headings of these four circles as four columns. Fill in those four columns and find the common thread that runs through it. That common thread becomes your eeky guy. And uh once you find your icky guy,
you'll find yourself a lot happier. In fact, if you have found your icky guy, comment and let us know what that is and how you found it. We'd be very interested to know. But uh yeah, it seems like we started off by saying follow your passion is bad advice, but that's because it's only half the advice. Correct. The other half is that there is a right way to follow your passion and it involves a lot of experimentation and hard work and it will come a little later. It will come if you stick with it. Shriant Naven sticking with future IQ.