Cal Newport: 'Follow Your Passion' Is Bad Advice

About this presentation

American culture is obsessed with the idea that we need to “find our passion” in order to be happy and successful. But there’s a problem: “It’s astonishingly bad piece of advice,” says best-selling author Cal Newport. We have no pre-existing passion. Instead, passion is found by first building a rare and valuable talent and using it to take control of your career path. In other words, be so good and work so hard that no one can ignore you.

About Cal Newport

Cal Newport is an author and a professor computer science at Georgetown University. His writing focuses on unconventional advice for life in school and after graduation. His most recent book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, argues that “follow your passion” is bad advice. Newport’s writing and ideas regularly appear in major publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Post, and Inc. Magazine.

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[zubairsiddiqui]

What people don't realize is that passion is an emotion and emotions change all the time. If your passion isn't working out for you, its time to change the passion. No need to water a dead plant. Remember, sometimes success can fuel passion more than passion can fuel success.

[sjegannath]

Passion is like love. Either you could wait your whole life waiting for THE perfect Thing to happen by
or you can take what you have and make it perfect

[RightCenterBack]

I've never heard of Cal Newport, but he's an outstanding speaker. Very old-school.

[brettprice]

You gotta love this guy. He needs to find his passion for ironing though.

[denros]

This man has excellent advice for people who are clueless about their passion.

‘ It’s not how you get started that matters. Maybe what matters is what you do once you get going’

Most ( or all) people are not born with a life purpose. The passion can come when you put in the work. When you upgrade your skills and learn more about a certain thing, it’s possible that you will enjoy it. It’s worth a try.

It’s like going running. In the beginning you don’t want to do it. The first miles most of the times suck. But then your body get’s used to it and you even start enjoying it. The passion has followed the work. It’s the other way around.

[cagataysunal]

He never said following your passion is bad. He said "follow your passion" as an advice is bad. Because no one is born with a passion. Why everyone seems to misunderstand him?

[deadolores]

Your passion is not what you want to do and think you're passionate about, your passion is what you put in everything you have to make it work even if it means spending ten years in another thing you don't like just to systematically get to your passion. That's why it's called "following your passion", it meant working on whatever it takes to get to it.

[EliHarrell]

What I have found in life is that we are most passionate when we are moving through the steepest growth curve during the process of mastery. When we are learning about something at a fast pace and where we have already gained some level of mastery (we feel great about what we have learned and how good we are at something yet we are still learning fast). Once we have mastered something (learning slows) eventually we grow into people who are ready for perhaps another passion that is more challenging. Therefore, find A passion = find something to master but realize you will have many passions during your lifetime (hopefully!).

[joshualipovetsky]

I love the tip about increasing your deep focus sessions by 10 minutes for every 10 successful sessions. Never heard that before. Sounds excellent. Looking forward to future experimentation.

[TheAmaruFamily]

Love Cal, he’s a good role model, outstanding public speaker, and carry great values.

[rognex]

Show me one successful people at the top that doesn't following their passion. In every interview you will find that the successful are doing what they love. And this man is also doing what he likes to do.

[wilsonhello]

For the most part we only look at the passion of successful people

[wilsonfilho]

big fan of him
I'm being extremely helped by his book DEEP WORK

[korahtmalayil]

Cal Newport is a really good speaker. His clarity of thought is resonated in each sentence he speaks.

[private]

I wish I could send this to every career counsellor I had growing up. "Follow your passion" alone will never lead to success. In my experience passion has little to do with work success at all. We earn satisfaction by what we achieve in a competitive world and gain passion to work harder for continued success. It's a warped mantra that should be as discredited as old psychology theories that blamed the majority of personal adult problems on parenting influences.

[MrMainardo]

Brilliant and contrarian exposition about his idea of how we end up loving what we do. The current notion of following your passion presupposes that we have one to begin with. My personal experience corroborates his argument. I started to work in photography over 20 years ago. I literally stumbled into this field. As I go immersed in it I got more and more involved to the point that it became my way of living. The deep work part was evident with the long hours of dedicated years that brought joy and a sense of significance. Before I started this journey I did not know this will become a dominant part of my life. Thanks Cal, by the way next time iron that shirt man, it creates so much visual noise that it takes away from your phenomenal content.

[KarlheinzNiebuhr]

The title should be: "Passion can be developed." That does not imply that "Follow your passion" is bad advice. It is great advice, for instance, many people end up unhappy because they followed the "realistic" career their parents told them to follow instead of their own interest.

Beware of black and white thinking.

[bono]

According to this speech, if I practice writing enough, I can become a world-class novelist. If I play the piano enough, I can eventually make a career out of playing the piano. Can I play in the NBA too? I would've assumed that I couldn't do any of these things without passion. His message seems to imply that we need to stumble into our careers and if we're lucky we'lll grow to love them. I can only assume that most people aren't going to be so lucky.

[umrahpay]

i love his deep work book. very true to current lack of focus among people. However, i disagree with his advice in this video. follow your passion doesn't means you only have one passion through out your life. it keep changing. The best thing is, when you follow your passion, you will always do your best, and in the process you found another thing that you more passionate which you put more effort and work hard. this process keep you feel fulfilling and happy life, even it doesnt look like that by other people.

[qisiangng]

There are a lot of rare and valuable skills and so little time. How does one even choose whether it is worth investing time in Skill X > Skill Y? Might there be where passion comes in?