Submitted by Kevin1 on
in
Forums
I’ve been listening to the ‘Don’t follow your Passion’ podcast and think it is good advice.
Passions don’t necessarily equate to something you can earn a living off.
Even if it does, the competition for jobs of passion are very intense because the number of people passionate about something generally far outweighs the number of people earning a living off it. Consider the number of professional sportspeople verses the number of people passionate about sports. Or the number of professional authors as a % of those who like to write.
Therefore, if you want to follow your passion, you can expect that you will almost certainly be poor as a result. In order to be in the minority who do make a living from their passion, then you will almost certainly have to have (1) a lot of natural talent, (2) a willingness to put in an enormous effort to be great, and (3) some significant luck along the way.
Therefore, if you intend to follow you passion, do it with your eyes open
- Do it only if you are prepared to sacrifice of lots of years effort to become great
- Do it only if you are prepared to sacrifice lots of years living in relative poverty
- Do it only if you are prepared to go through the above with only a very small chance of succeeding.
I think this is good advice. The huge number of articles I've seen imploring people to quit their day job and follow their passion rarely touch on how difficult it can be. They only ever seem to talk about how much more satisfying it is. My concern is that for almost all of them, it would only be satisfying if you could make it successful and thus only a very small % will ever find that satisfaction.
Kind regards
Kevin