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Comment by faitswulff | Hacker News Reader

> we’ve been sold a bill of goods when we’re told to “Follow your passion, “ or “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Fact is, if you do what you love, you’ll probably starve.

I started thinking this somewhere around halfway through college, when my parents were telling me to do what I love and I was trying to figure out what to do for a living - especially when my parents were struggling, themselves. I feel like "do what you love" was a really compelling pipe dream for my parents because they had always done the opposite to get by and improve their circumstances, and it sucked. They wanted better for their kids, but at the same time, it is easily some of the worst advice I've ever received.

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It's give and take. Maybe not "do what you love no matter what" but "try and do something you at least like" is still good advice. If you force yourself to do something you hate just because you think you'll make money not only will you spend your life miserable, but you also likely won't be terribly successful because it's hard not to burn out.

Said differently, making money matters and should be considered, but it should not override all other factors when choosing a career.

Yes there is something like the intersection of three overlapping circles. One is do things you like, the other is do things you are good at doing and the third is do things that will give you income that you will be satisfied with.

Or how about "try to find something you love in what you do, and develop your career in a way that lets you do more of that and less of the other stuff"?

Less punchy, I guess.

You're lucky. I only realized it halfway through grad school. I learned a lot of interesting things in grad school, but I'd skip grad school entirely if I had it to do over again. The debt from all that education was not worth it, not to mention the opportunity costs.

I would ditto that for sure. It can work out well for some but in my case it was a bad call. That was probably the worst decision I've ever made. I went to a good state school for undergrad, but I always wanted to go somewhere more prestigious. Nobody in my family had gone somewhere like that before. I didn't end up impressing anyone.

Never Give Up is also bad advice that gets bandied around a lot due to survivor bias. Sometimes there's a lot of wisdom in giving up on something.

The problem is the absolutes. I have learn that life is not absolutes. It is usually somewhere in the middle. Most of it is heavily dependent on luck.

Do you mean 'life is not absolutes', or that 'in most cases life is not absolutes'?

; )

:-). I was trying to be careful in not using absolutes. Guess I missed this. ;-)

Everything is connected, so if you follow your passion then you will be able to provide expertise on that in a related domain or industry.

You are also better off taking risks and starving as a young person before you have dependents (aging parents and children) rather than suffering a mid-life crisis later on.

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