Why “doing what you love” is Underrated

The most cliché piece of advice that we always hear is probably “do what you love” or "love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life". It does sound very nice and makes sense if you think about it; why not choose to do something you enjoy doing whilst making money?

Whenever successful entrepreneurs talk about doing what you love, we tend to label it as “yeah we know, we get it, now tell us your secret”. However, often enough “doing what you love” truly is the secret. All the inspirational speakers you listened to at conferences didn’t just say it because it sounds nice; or because it is kinda important, or maybe somewhat important. It is (in my humble opinion) the most important thing to realize before starting your business.

' Here is why I think this is so. Have you ever questioned why passion is so important? Assume you have a great idea that you believe has the potential to make you a lot of money. I know that sounds great, but is money enough motivation to keep you going even through the worst of times (even when there's no money)? Fact is, every start-up/business has its ups and downs in the beginning. You will get to a place where you start doubting everything about your business and its future.

You will have those rainy days, where you have to survive making no money at all. And honestly, anyone who doesn’t truly love what they are doing at that stage will drop out. That’s the only rational thing to do if you think about it. If you don’t truly believe you are doing great work (to quote our old pal Steve Jobs, in fact I highly recommend you to see his famous speech below where he talks about passion and drive) you would have to be outright irrational to keep on doing work you hate, not knowing what the future holds.

And that’s why the importance of passion cannot be overstated, take it seriously. I talk from personal experience, having worked on a start-up which I was not passionate about at all; just the promise of money coming in at some point in the future seemed to be enough. But soon enough I realized that I should quit and move on to bigger, better things. I did that, and I do not regret it a single bit. Now I’m working on a start-up in a field that I’m truly passionate about and things could not have been better. You only live once on this earth, so don’t waste your time doing things you don’t love doing.

(this is a revised repost of an article I wrote for another site last year, the original one can be found here)

Any thoughts on what I posted? I'd love to hear, please leave me a comment below.