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Comment by truth_ | Hacker News Reader

I hate the self-help industry with passion. But I liked Cal Newport's book So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love [0] exactly for this reason.

He debunked the "passion hypothesis" and gave practical advices along with the stories of several successful people from real life.

He is vehemently against "follow your passion" advice. He said in his book that if Steve Jobs focused on what he was passionate about, he would be a Zen monk in some monastery, and not a tech billionaire.

I picked up his book because he is a CS PhD and Asst. Professor, and not another 'buy-my-book-because-I-am-successful-in-selling-this-book' guy.

This is a short book and I highly recommend it.

[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-ca...

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“…if Steve Jobs focused on what he was passionate about, he would be a Zen monk in some monastery…” - sounds like bunk to me - you won’t be surprised to hear I didn’t know the guy personally, but everything I’ve read about him and heard him say in interviews etc. suggests he was deeply passionate about both design and technology? Zen might have informed aspects of his aesthetic sensibilities (is that really Zen though?) and maybe his spiritual life, who knows, but I wouldn’t have thought becoming a monk was exactly his ‘thing’? I also have an instinctive loathing of the self-help industry (and ‘personal brand’-ers even more) and I agree that you need skills and hard work to back up your passions and dreams - when you get a chance, or create one, you need to be able to capitalise on it (a mistake I definitely made in my life when self-promotion outclassed capacity to deliver), but why not have a ‘dream’ and allow yourself to think differently some of the time? Especially if you can visualise some sort of tangible path to achieving your goals and break them into doable steps… Much good in the world has been created by people with a bit of imagination, a dream if you like, of how the world might be made better (and arguably much ill also)… People are blessed with the capacity to experiment - to try things out and do something different if they fail... I’d like to see a world were people were more able to do that and survive to fight another day - without worrying about being deported, or made homeless, or getting into debt, or needing food aid, or even not being able to afford a family… Maybe there’s some sort of balance to be aimed at that lies between long term dreams and goals and short term pragmatic compromise, between experimentation and practicality… Life might be better with some art alongside the accountancy you know?/pure theoretical and sometimes unproductive scientific research alongside hard-nosed capitalisation andy marketing makes both stronger and gives both the ability to continue to flourish in the long term?

Yes, Jobs was deeply passionate about technology and design. But the interviews and talks that you mention are from later stages of his life. I read his biography and watched multiple biopics. What you say is true. But what I am talking about, and the author talked about is about his teenage and post-teen years. During and before the time he started his very first "tech venture" with cream-soda drinking Woz.

And I agree that people should dream. But they should base it on certain things, for example-

0. Nature of the field. If you are 10,000th best Engineer in the world or the 20,000th best Math teacher, you will have 0 problems financially.

1. Past success and ability in your dream field

etc.

The Japanese concept of Ikigai also comes to mind in this context.

I love the dreamers and see myself as same, and I want people to be aware of these knowledges before taking the leap and becoming and remaining a dreamer.

I’d not heard of ‘Ikigai’ - what a lovely concept to have one word for - thanks for that! …for anyone else similarly ignorant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai

I would second the recommendation, and also add one of the main arguments, which is that most people get satisfaction from being excellent at something, and what that is specifically might not matter as much as we think. So as long as you find a job that involves a valuable task with a long course of progressively improved proficiency, that can often become a source of passion as strong as our initial guess.

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