STOP Following Your Passion | Beyond The Grind #031

Stop Following Your Passion — And Do This Instead

“Follow your passion” is some of the most common career advice you’ll ever hear. It’s plastered on motivational posters and preached by successful people. But what if it’s actually bad advice? What if, for most people, passion isn’t the starting point for a successful career, but the result of it?

In a recent episode of Beyond The Grind, we explored this very idea. The problem with the “follow your passion” mantra is that it assumes you’ll find a way to make money from it. As an article from CNBC that we discussed on the show puts it, “passion is a luxury of the rich. It’s usually the output of being great at something, not the input.” This really resonated with us, because it highlights a critical truth many people overlook.

For most of us, a more practical approach is to focus on developing valuable skills in areas where the market has real demand. When you become competent at something that people will pay for, the passion often follows. You start to enjoy the work because you’re good at it, you see the results, and you feel the security that comes with being valuable.

The Problem with Billionaire Advice

One of the biggest issues we tackled is how people consume advice, especially from those who are wildly successful. As Tosin pointed out, when you’re taking advice from someone, you have to consider their context. A billionaire telling you to ignore your tax bill is giving advice based on their ability to leverage massive assets for financing — a situation that doesn’t apply to the average person trying to get a mortgage.

“People give advice based on what worked for them,” Korede noted. “And that advice might not necessarily be unique or helpful to you.”

Successful people often package their stories in a way that glosses over the role of timing, luck, and resources you might not have access to. They might have raised money when it was cheap or bought a house when prices were a fraction of what they are today. Their strategy, applied in your current reality, might not produce the same results. That’s why it’s crucial to screen advice, even from qualified experts, and see how it fits your specific situation.

Build a Foundation, Then Add the Details

So, if you can’t blindly follow advice, what should you do? Focus on building a solid foundation. Tosin argues for leaning towards “structural advice” — the foundational principles of decision-making in your field.

This means doing your own homework. As Allen wisely put it, “advice should not be used as research.” Before you ask for guidance, you should have already done the reading and have a basic understanding of the landscape. Your research builds the frame of the puzzle; advice from others simply helps you fill in the pieces. Ask specific, pinpoint questions to inform your research rather than asking broad questions like, “How do I succeed?”

This doesn’t mean passion has no place. Passion is great! It can be the fuel that keeps you going. But as we discussed, it needs to have utility. If your passion for jump-roping doesn’t have a market of people willing to pay to watch you, it’s a hobby, not a career. It becomes a source of stress, not freedom. The goal is to align your efforts with what the market values, build competence, and find that the passion and fulfillment often grow from there.

At the end of the day, you have to be the one to sift through the noise. Take the pieces that apply to you, discard what doesn’t, and sometimes, recognize that the best advice is the advice you choose to ignore, especially when it limits your ambition based on someone else's past.

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