Say you have been offered a job, a very promising one and there is good money in it. But this job is not something you love doing. It is not what you would call ‘your passion.’ Let us also assume that currently, you are doing something you are passionate about, but it might not be affording you enough money to pay the bills. What do you do? Do you follow your passion, continue playing cat and mouse with the landlord or do you take the damn well paying job? Someone shared an article on twitter that simply said: don’t follow your passion, follow your effort. The article has in it very excellent points, convincing ones. But when you read through the comments section, everything is ruffled and each one of your legs takes a stand. So, where do you go? Passion…or effort? Check out the several arguments raised in the article and some of the comments:

The article by Mark Cuban, an American business magnate and investor:

Everyone is passionate about something. Usually more than one thing.  We are born with it. There are always going to be things we love to do. That we dream about doing. That we really really want to do with our lives. Those passions aren’t worth a nickel.

Think about all the things you have been passionate about in your life. Think about all those passions that you considered making a career out of or building a company around.  How many were/are there? Why did you bounce from one to another?  Why were you not able to make a career or business out of any of those passions? Or if you have been able to have some success, what was the key to the success? Was it the passion or the effort you put in to your job or company?

And in short:

1. When you work hard at something you become good at it.

2. When you become good at doing something, you will enjoy it more.

3. When you enjoy doing something, there is a very good chance you will become passionate or more passionate about it

4. When you are good at something, passionate and work even harder to excel and be the best at it, good things happen.

Don’t follow your passions, follow your effort. It will lead you to your passions and to success, however you define it.

But then, there are the comments- the ones that do not agree with this. We will choose three and let you weigh them.

- I think you need to be passionate about what you do if you want to be successful as an entrepreneur. Not everyone is able to be an entrepreneur. Their are always ups and downs and a lot of failures on the way. Without passion, it’s very hard to get through the downs or to pick yourself up after a failed venture. To say passion comes after success may be true, but you really do need that passion to reach success.- Richard Kligman

 

-I can’t say I totally agree with this. I spent a significant amount of my adult life working hard and becoming proficient in things I hated doing because society said I needed to do these things to become successful. I was on a very secure road, but how happy was I? Eventually, I threw all that away to take some time to look at myself in the mirror. Now my quality of life has improved so drastically that even the people who questioned me let me know I made the right decision. Find your own way because when you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life.
1. Take an honest look at yourself and sift through the things you enjoy, or may enjoy, and narrow them down.
2. When you enjoy what you’re doing you’ll worker harder.
3. When you work hard at something you care about, you’ll get good at it.
4. When you’re good at something that encompasses your joy and effort, good things happen.

The idea that you’re suppose to know exactly what you’re going to do with your life at 18 years old is bullshit. There’s nothing wrong with bouncing around the things you love until you find one that becomes a viable career option for you.

 

-   Your advice is why the workforce is disengaged. We will spend 85,000 hour at work in our life time. The current model suggests that we go to school, get good grades, learn a skill, and get paid for that skill. This model is flawed, leaving people ineffective, frustrated and miserable. How many of your college buddies are doing what they learned in college? Your bullet points are flawed frontwards and backwards. You will be successful when you are mix passion, talent, skill, and self determination. The more time you put into your skill is really the delineating line, most people don’t put in the 10,000 hours to be at the top of their field, the ones that put in their 10,000 hours inside of their passion, talent and self determination are the outliers.

 

Well…