The Passion Fallacy

The advice to "follow your passion" is a common trope in career counseling and entrepreneurship. However, it is a fundamentally flawed strategy for a number of reasons:

• It assumes you have a pre-existing passion. Many people don't have a clear passion, and this advice can make them feel lost and inadequate.
• It ignores the importance of skills. Just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you're good at it. To succeed in any field, you need to develop a valuable skill set.
• It can lead to a sense of entitlement. The passion mindset can lead to the belief that you are owed a fulfilling and adventurous career, without having to put in the hard work to earn it.
• Passion is often a byproduct of mastery, not a prerequisite. As Cal Newport argues, passion is the side effect of getting really good at something.

A much better approach is to focus on developing a valuable skill set and then finding a way to apply it to a problem that people are willing to pay to have solved. When you are engaged in meaningful work that you are good at, passion is likely to follow.