Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort

The great philosopher Mark Cuban shares this…

I hear it all the time from people. “I’m passionate about it.” “I’m not going to quit, It’s my passion.” Or I hear it as advice to students and others “Follow your passion.”

What a bunch of BS. “Follow your passion” is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get.

Why? Because 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?

If you really want to know where your destiny lies—look at where you apply your time.

Source: Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort [BLOG] « Positively Positive

Me? I think Cuban’s binary perspective that is BS. I am fond of saying it’s not either/or — it’s both/and. In this case, it’s not passion or effort — it is both harnessed and combined effectively. Go to the source if you’d like to read the rest of his perspective, but it seems to me he comes around when he says “When you are good at something, passionate, and work even harder to excel and be the best at it, good things happen.” imho, passion is the fuel that makes the effort possible; without one you don’t have the other…

Related articles

• Bad advice from Mark Cuban: “Ignore your passion” (positivesharing.com)
• Create The Day – With Passion (createabeautifullife.com)
• Career & Life 2.0: Find Your Purpose and Passion and Experience Peak Performance (timesunion.com)