Why ‘Be Passionate’ is Awesome Advice

I think passion is generally stupid for a couple reasons. First off, we use it as a defense mechanism. "If I am passionate, I won't care about failure because I'll be doing what I love!" Not only will you have a hard time pivoting or calling it quites all together but this mentality already sets you up for failure on a bunch of other levels.

Secondly, how many people have been passionate about their projects that ended up failing? We tell ourselves to be passionate because Zuck was passionate about Facebook or the Groupon guys were passionate about their project, if we're passionate about ours WE CAN'T FAIL!

We don't need passion to succeed, we need brains to succeed. Think critically about what you're doing and you'll be way better off then loving your dumb idea into the ground.

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Based on the authors article, I get that he was in the "I'm passionate and I don't really care about success" category. Well, if that's what you want then go ahead -- you were lucky and kind of successful (by some standards), not everyone gets that. But most people actually DO want success, so you shouldn't let your silly passion get in the way.