"Follow your passion" is terrible advice

Millennials were lied to by well-meaning people who deeply misunderstand reality

We’ve all heard it, at least if you’re a millennial: ‘follow your passion and everything will follow.’ It’s the kind of advice that fits in formulaic graduation speeches and self-help books, but it’s honestly terrible guidance. If you’re still trying to do this you’ve been lied to, and are likely living a much harder existence than required. Building a satisfying life around passion alone is not just improbable, it’s impractical.

Trust fund kids can live this way, but you cannot. It’s another a variety of ‘luxury beliefs’ advice. I’ve paid rent of a friend to keep him from being homeless while going through tough times. He’s easily one of the most talented musicians I’ve met, more creative than anyone you’ll hear on the radio, but there’s simply not a large enough market for his work, and the economics of streaming are terrible. It’s just a reality.

Blindly pursuing your passion classically means some kind of artistic expression, but making a living from art is a near-impossible gamble. The market is always governed by self-interest. And the market’s interest is rarely in untested, idiosyncratic artists. Even the entertainment and art industries are driven less by artistic value than profit. They’re not looking for creators who challenge the status quo, they’re looking for guaranteed revenue (there was a very brief period of time Frank Zappa describes where this was different). The culture industry deceives the world with promises of artistic success, selling a dream of fame and fulfillment that almost no one achieves. The “make money online” bros do essentially the same thing.

The notion that anyone can ‘make it’ if they’re passionate and ‘grind enough’ ignores a more brutal truth. While a few rare talents might find themselves on an unlikely path to fame and wealth, most struggle endlessly to scrape by. Modernity decided we do not need more artists than we can pay, instead we need people who can fit into roles that are already monetizable and those who control a P&L will allocate to. This isn’t cynicism, it’s realism. Of course, I would personally argue the artistic work is more important, timeless and we should incentivize more of it than people jockeying spreadsheets all day. Does the world really need more people doing that in the age of AI? But I don’t make the rules. We’re living in a world that values things like tech innovation, financial analysis, marketing strategy, entertainers far more than personal passion projects done for the love of their craft. It’s just the way it is.

If one’s goal is genuine freedom: to engage in passion projects without constantly worrying about survival, a wiser approach is to find work the market values and you can find some enjoyment in, not simply what you wish to do all day. This is actually not difficult for creative people, because if you are genuinely creative you are more than capable of finding work in a field (and being great at it) that isn’t trying to extract blood from a rock. These skills are transferable. It might even be fun.

This provides financial stability and the freedom to explore a passion without becoming beholden to an audience or reliant on external validation. The people who are capable of doing this are honestly more free than any artist backed by a large corporation who must service the market with specific demands.

Reality requires compromise, or at the very least having a plan (you easily can have a day job and then a passion project you work on instead of Netflix, there’s plenty of time to do several things, we’re not insects). So don’t follow your passion, instead build a life that provides the stability to pursue passions freely.