Don't Follow Your Passion

The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozberries taste like snozberries. Snozzberries? What the hell of a snozzberry? We are the music makers, and we are the dream of such new laws.

This is the Music Makers podcast where I read things out loud to you and then offer my unqualified opinions on them. Don't follow your passion, follow your effort by Mark Cuban. 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 were 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've 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 slash 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 into your job or company? If you really wanna know where your destiny lies, look at where you apply your time. Time is the most valuable asset you don't own. You may or may not realize it yet, but how you use or don't use your time is going to be the best indication of where your future is going to take you.

Let me make this as clear as possible. 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's a very good chance you'll become passionate or more passionate about it.

4. When you are good 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.

We get this advice all the time. It's become increasingly popular in the past many years to say, follow your passion. Well, do what you're passionate about. Well, are are you passionate about it? And I don't think this is the best advice that we could be giving.

I don't think it's the worst advice, like Mark Cuban says, but I don't think it's the best. Because immediately after you hear follow your passion, the next question is, what am I passionate about? And how do you even define that? If you're passionate about something, does that mean you have to talk about it a lot? Does that mean it has to make you feel a certain way while you're doing that thing?

See, it's tricky because people say follow your passion, but they don't tell you how to figure out what your passions are or what even qualifies as a passion. If I say I'm passionate about writing, but I never write, am I really passionate about writing? Or do I just think I'm passionate about writing? I don't know because I don't know what it means to be passionate about something. So Mark says, forget it.

Throw all the passion stuff out the window and just focus solely on where you place your efforts because that is quantifiable. That's tangible. You can look and see, man, I spend a lot of time doing this one thing. Maybe that means I really like it, and I should I should pursue that more. There's a book in the Bible called James, and in chapter 2 verse 18, it says, but someone will say, quote, you have faith, and I have works, end quote.

Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. And then at the end of the chapter, it says, for as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead. And now stick with me. There's a connection. I promise.

James is saying, faith without works is dead. You say you have faith, but you have no works. So do you really have faith? Your faith should lead to works. Your works should be an expression of your faith.

Now Mark Cuban is saying passion without effort is dead. You say you're passionate about this thing, but you don't ever spend time doing it. You don't put any effort into it. Are you really passionate about it? Probably not.

Your, quote, unquote, passion should lead to effort. Your effort is an indication that you are passionate about that thing. So as a heuristic, as a what should I do with my life, what what am I going to enjoy doing with my life, Look at, where do I spend my time? What do I spend my time doing already? And he walks he walks you through this list.

When you work hard at something, you get good at it. When you get good at it, you enjoy it. When you enjoy it, you'll become passionate about it. When you're good, passionate, and work hard at something, good things are gonna happen. I don't know if I would say I'm passionate about programming, but I think the evidence is there to say I'm passionate about programming.

I program all day at my day job, and then I come home and program into the night for fun. Now if I was to say, I'm passionate about programming, but never wanna do it in my free time, that would be different. Right? There's a band called Bon Iver or Bon Iver, depending on what part of the country you're from. And the guy behind Bon Iver is named Justin Vernon.

And a couple years ago, he won the Grammy for best new artist. He beat out, I think it was Nicki Minaj, Skrillex, the band Perry. He beat out a lot of very talented and very successful people. I'm gonna play just a real small piece of his acceptance speech because I think it is dynamite.

And it's also hard to accept because, you know, I I when I started to to make songs, I did it for the inherent reward of making songs. But, so I'm a little bit uncomfortable up here.

When I started to make songs, I did it for the inherent reward of making songs. That's just lovely. It's kinda nice to think about doing something for the inherent reward of doing that thing. Working hard at something like making music because you enjoy the process. Making music is the inherent reward.

You're not looking to get anything else out of it. But just like Mark Cuban said, when you're good at something, you're passionate, and you work hard to excel, good things happen. He's standing there up on stage winning the Grammy for best new artist, and he said, well, I make I make songs because I really like making songs. You may be already there. Not everyone is unhappy at their job.

But if you're looking for your passion, where you're gonna go next, what it is you're gonna do, look at where you spend your time. What do you spend your time doing? And if you spend all your time trying to waste time or trying to kill time after work, That's something you should reevaluate. You can find the show notes for this episode at musicmakers.fm/9. You can subscribe on Itunes by searching for music makers.

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