

Why ‘Be Passionate’ is Awesome Advice - onethumb
http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2010/11/10/why-be-passionate-is-awesome-advice/

======
bradhe
I posted this yesterday on the Inc thread but it got lost in a sea of comments
so I'm reposting it here (with modifications for context):

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.

# End paste

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.

~~~
ahizzle
Out of curiousity, have you tried doing something on your own that you were
not passionate about? I know that my efforts when my heart wasn't totally "in
to it" felt really... crappy. Despite all of my best efforts and intentions.

Passion is the fuel that you burn when attempting a startup. If you run out of
passion, you run out of gas... and it's hard to get far when you've got no
gas.

Dig?

