What's wrong with following your passion?

There is a kind of fashionable advice on careers that says to find work you are passionate about. The argument behind it is that your passion will fuel your hard work, and the hard work will bring success. And usually there is an example given, of this or that person who never finished school or labored under some other handicap, and who nonetheless succeeded because of single-minded dedication fueled by passion. 

This argument is wrong in two ways, not just one. One well-understood flaw is that it is an example of survivorship bias. (See especially this section of the article, as well as this cartoon.) 

But the second error is that it assumes passions are immutable. On the one hand, if you find yourself becoming successful at something you are likely to start feeling passionate about it. But also, if you regularly fail at something you are likely to lose your passion. Think of a young boy who loves role-playing as a superhero. He hears the advice about following your passion, and so he makes it his life's goal to achieve fame and fortune in a career where he can role-play as a superhero. Of course such careers exist — there are actors who star in superhero movies, after all — but they are few and far between. So the numerical odds are stacked way against him, and the overwhelming probability is that he will fail.

What then? Will he be as passionate about playing superheroes at 45 as he was at 10? Probably not. His tastes will likely have changed over time, and his repeated failures to make even a bare living this way will likely have dampened his ardor. But if he then complains to the propagandist who sold him on the "Follow your passion" dogma years ago, how is that fellow going to reply? "Don't complain to me, Sonny. Just look at yourself: you're no longer passionate about superhero role-playing, and so of course your flabby commitment is dragging down your performance. Of course you failed. It's your own fault for losing that passion you had when you were younger, because if you had only kept the flame alive you would surely have succeeded one day."

In other words, "follow your passion to achieve success" really means "your failure is your own fault." 

But sometimes it ain't.

See also a similar point made by Scott Galloway on Twitter, here. 

This clip is excerpted from a much longer speech which you can find here: