Why You Need More Than Passion to be Successful
hotjar.com
hotjar.com
Success is a big word which lacks information. What is success? I doubt enough people can agree on what success is for anyone to talk about it to a wide audience. For many, success is relative to others, but that's worthless because that perspective puts too much focus on the others (even if it's just a little, it's too much).
As Chris Rock said, Bill Gates would kill himself if he had Opera's money. I could feel down because I'm not where I want to be, but then I walk past homeless people on the street and realize I could be in a much worse situation. And the capable homless person might have a homeless friend who just broke a leg and can't walk. Your situation can always get worse until you're dead, in which case you don't care anymore.
We're all just trying to survive in the jungle. Even if it doesn't feel bad for us, it's still someone else's horror show. In the jungle we just have to assess our surroundings and use what we can to keep improving our situation. But we'll still always be in the jungle.
As Bear Grylls says, keep moving. Success is in the small wins that you can rack up every day by the handfulls. It's making a little progress. It's sharpening a stick. It's setting up a shelter. It's building a trap. Just keep moving. Even the failures are wins as those failures carry information.
That's probably not very helpful either. I would make a terrible self help person. ;)
Success is a big word which lacks information .. Even the failures are wins as those failures carry information.
If listening to someone else's path had no application to our own there'd be no pointing hanging out on HN, or talking to anyone in general.
To the contrary, in my experience a lot can be gleaned from hearing other people's stories.
Yes, certain motives may be similar but the method and journey are always unique
a lot of wisdom in books
> That's probably not very helpful either.
Probably the most helpful advice a normal person can get. The ability to reflect on and learn from your mistakes is essentially the only foolproof method for improving yourself.
I spent far too long wondering why Chris Rock knew anything at all about the Opera browser.
For those wondering, the joke is at 1m28s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8BtHZWGB8c#t=1m28s
A passionless life is just a slow march towards death.
Yes, putting energy and "passion" into your unique abilities may enable you to reach your potential. And perhaps ultimately decide whether this particular mutation was worthwhile, in the long run.
But if you think "purpose" has some mystical meaning, and judge your existence on achieving it... Passion has evolved only as means to an end, and is not worth glorifying. Not any more than you'd glorify "hunger" or "pain" or "pride".
It's an optimization technique in the rat race called "evolution".
I believe you need discipline as the engine and passion as the steering wheel
No he wouldn't. He's said before that once you can afford the most expensive burger, all the extra money doesn't do much more for you.
And even if he went bankrupt tomorrow, he could earn the average annual wage in one or two speaker's fees. Gates isn't going to be left hurting for money.
Following your passion leads to happiness.
No, not when it leads you to start your own business, which then fails, leaving you penniless and living on the street.
Following your passion may have a better chance of leading you to happiness than following something that you hate, but that's about it. It's not a guarantee of anything. If everyone followed their passion, then society would probably collapse due to massive unemployment and necessary jobs never getting done (like cleaning up trash). How many people really get up every day to go to work because they're passionate about their job? Not many.
People tend to downplay the requirement of a minimal level of material success for happiness, because the alternative is admitting that society isn't set up to profit from, not help us achieve, our hopes and dreams. It's part of the bootstrap fallacy, essentially - you just need to want something enough, and everything will fall in place.
The author of the post being discussed here actually had two separate goals in tandem (one to follow their passion and two to find business/monetary success as a startup), though they only really explicitly acknowledged the passion aspect.
If you seek both of these goals (following your passion and finding financial success) simultaneously you are likely to come up short on the financial success end, but that doesn't mean following your passion is always bad advice, to assume so implicitly assumes that one's only goal in life should be to be financially well-off, which is certainly not a universal belief.
There are people out there who follow their passion with eyes wide open to the fact that this decision is likely to mean they will not amass much money doing so, and I think that's perfectly fine and should be commended in many cases. Following your passion only becomes an issue when you do it blindly without thinking and end up making bad decisions like going into massive student debt, etc. There are lots of people out there who have followed their passion in a realistic manner and are living the modest life they want to live.
The actual message shouldn't be to never follow your passion, but to be realistic about the trade-off that usually has to be made between following your passion and being financially successful, and then this realism has to be applied to big life decisions.
The brutal trap is people who chase wealth as a proxy for social status; as you become more successful your peer group tends to change, so you never get ahead of the curve.
Passion implies that there is likely a sense of purpose, fulfillment or fun in it.
If you do something you are very passionate about, money matters a lot less.
They are usually self defined based on outside influences.
Though your success and happiness really is a state of mind.
To me content is a much better life goal now that I am getting old. It's 100% my responsibility if I will be content.
The main problem with the passion debate is it's often made more about daily motivation and the meaning of life which are mainly concerns of employees, not entrepreneurs (many of whom became entrepreneurs by overcoming those concerns). And the reason why there is so much despair and disappointment in the workplace giving rise to all this passion-talk is because there is simply more boring work than fun work. Most jobs are boring, and if you couldn't find a fun job, you're probably stuck at a boring one. It's just a numbers game.
Of course passion can be harmful if not used properly, just as gasoline will blind you if you pour it in your eyes or set it on fire. But when used properly, passion is one of the few unfair advantages because it cannot be bought or obtained at will. Most everything else, even experience, are technicalities, and can be bought from the standpoint of an employer. Passion is non-technical.
However, just as easily, there are jobs where I am excited to go to work and am able to embrace the fact that I am having fun while doing so.
No doubt there are more boring jobs than fun ones though.
And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.
Per last month's discussion on "On Finding Your Purpose: An Extraordinary Letter by Hunter S. Thompson" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379809
Hiding the light might be a way to failure. But showing it might doesn't seem to be a guarantee of success either, specially if the light ain't that bright. And this is where the bottom line is for most people: "would I rather be rich and bored, or poor but living the dream?"
I'd rather be rich because it's impossible for me to be bored. Probably that's why I'm poor.
I'm snug as a bug in a rug right now, and about as "floating" as one can get, but my husband and I are saving money and paying down debt like gangbusters so we can buy a farm in 7-10ish years and leave this lifestyle behind us.
I'm a shell of a human when I'm not following my passion.
First, how do you define success? Is it making a lot of money? Is it being happy doing what you do? For me it is to eliminate the need of working for someone else 8h a day and invest my time completely into myself and the things I want to do. And for that, passion is something that drives you to this success. But even more so: You need to work your ass off - and that is the hard part.
To go home after a long work day and STILL work on your own ideas, on your own business or similar. And if it fails and you crash, you continue with the next idea and push yourself up. Maybe you gave up your job to pursue your idea and it fails? Find a new job, get money, get up and keep trying. That's why you need passion - to keep you going and bear with the stress.
Sure there are lucky people who make the big hit in their first try but for most of us that won't happen.
I am nowhere near successful. I was almost there with my first project but not anymore. But I love what I'm doing and I love coding on interesting concepts and ideas with friends even though it eats a ton of time and pushes stress. If I didn't have passion for it, I would have probably already burned out and given up.
That's the important difference in my opinion: Are you someone who has the will to succeed and willing to keep trying and trying again? Or are you someone who is happy to rely on someone to give you money and hope to get successful through that? (Be it stocks, big paycheck, buyout, etc)
Having passion is dangerous. Here are a couple of examples:
1. A couple of years ago, my then GF was at my place during the summer. For the first two weeks I didn't see her -- she was sitting next to me -- because I was completely hooked on a computer graphics final school project. The only thing I saw was my screen and I did the eat, sleep, code thing. I didn't know it was a thing, I had so much passion I just did it. She became very pissed. I didn't care. She became sad. I still didn't care. I was hooked, I was passionate. When I finished. the project I made it all up, but man, passion is dangerous.
2. There was this assignment for security class, it was really hard. I was pretty passionate about the security class, the education was amazing. The final day of the assignment was almost arriving. I decided to stay up and code for 25 hours straight -- well I didn't decide it, it just sort of happened. I couldn't even do simple arithmetic at the end of the day. I felt like shit, almost became ill, but I learned a lot and had a ton of fun. Still is this a healthy way to live? Passion is dangerous.
3. I used to play a lot of video games. Those are also the days that I only knew guys and was only social with fellow gamers. I knew nothing else. I wouldn't play much sports, I would slug through school and I'd always go back to the computer to play more games. I loved it, I was passionate, but the problem is I gave up so much. Passion is dangerous, really.
The thing is: when I feel passionate for an indeterminate amount of time. I really do not give a single f--- about the rest of the world, including the rest of my life. It is like drugs. Passion may be differently experience by people. I've learned that the way I experience passion is akin to addiction and it tends to deregulate my life and smash me of balance. So I try to steer clear from it when I recognize the addictive feeling part that comes with it.
An implicit 2nd perspective / idea that is in here that passion does not have to last a life time. In a lot of cases it lasts for a couple of weeks.
I do prefer a more balanced motivation that feels like "ah this is a marathon and I'm going to run it one step at a time."
If you're interested, the topic of hyperfocus comes up very often on the ADHD subreddit.
You don't need GOALS.
You need SYSTEMS THAT IMPROVE YOUR ODDS OF SUCCESS OVER TIME.
I actually think this is 100% correct. Goals are nice but you need a system to achieve them.
No. You were arrogant already. Be passionate and humble and your chances of success will improve.
Book - https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/14555091...
Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIMu1PGbG-0
Edit: Grammar / formatting
The word "passion" applied to personal or professional pursuits is loaded, I'd rather use specific tests, for ex I'm "not passionate" enough about programming since I'm not staying any more at 4am writing code for fun, but I'm "passionate" in the sense that in a lazy afternoon I may be reading somebody's blog about programming or fooling around with a new framework/language.
I would much prefer if my passion was to sell things.
I recently made a video on how Kirby Superstar redefined other kirby games. To do that, I had to play some Kirby (video games), analyze it (a bit of critical thinking), write a script (writing), and put together a video (movies).
Of course, doing this isn't as fun as playing a video game or watching a movie, it still takes hard work, but it's a nice blend of things I like and things that other people like. It's going to take a lot of hard work to get even a part-time job out of it, but I'm committed to making a video every single week.
The worse thing that could happen is to discover - like I did - that your passions are in inverse relation with work. I loose positive feelings about programming and start to stress out pretty much immediately when a project starts to feel like an obligation, which makes me 10x less productive at work than on my hobby projects.
Poor framing: I do IT support. Better framing: I help people do awesome stuff with their computers.
Why do I want my kids to make that same choice? Only for financial reasons.
Only.
It'd be great if I could work on programming and engineering projects of my own choosing, on things that I think are really interesting. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work that way.
If your kids are smart enough to engineering but aren't drawn to it, and just want to make money, they should pursue medicine or business or finance instead. If you don't care about engineering work, don't go into this field; there's other fields for people who have no passion for their work, and finance is a really big one in the US. You'll make more money, you won't work in a workplace that's a sausagefest, you'll have a much easier and more fun time in college, and you'll get to live in much better cities when you're working.
It has been a great ride for those that lived it. But when the bubble pops people are going to handle pitchforks against anything resembling "financial" on its name. Already happened in the 1930s and a little in 2008.
Then ride the bubble until it pops and look for something else after that. Sometimes you really need to live in the moment.
There is no easy street, everything is hard, nothing gets easier, you get better at it. There is no arriving and feeling on top of everything if you are always growing. To always be growing you need to make sure the stuff that needs to get done, gets done so you can focus on direction.
In that way, I see it less as passion, and seeing it as no other way to go but forward.
I liked this: "follow your contribution"
The difference is usually when it comes how others perceive you. People are more liberal at labeling others with success based on various metrics that align with their standards and understanding of success.
They don't do so with happiness.
When I hear people talk about passion I always view that as a starting point. I dont take it to mean all you need is passion.