Follow Your Passion Is Terrible Advice. Here's Why...

00:00:00.000 | why is following your passion bad advice? Oh man, wrote a whole book about this. Yeah.

00:00:04.160 | Yeah, we've done a whole video about it as well. Yeah. Well, now it's the big thing. I think a lot

00:00:09.520 | of people talk about it. The latest is I think Scott Galloway has been talking about this in his

00:00:13.360 | new book and Mark Cuban talked about this. So let me just set the context though, like why I was

00:00:18.160 | writing about that was I was finishing up academic work, right? So I had gone to grad school, got my

00:00:23.680 | PhD, was doing a post-doc, which is like the holding pattern before you go on the academic

00:00:30.240 | job market, right? I had this thought, if I was ever going to understand what leads people to

00:00:36.320 | really love their work, this would be the highest leverage point in my life to figure that out.

00:00:39.920 | Because if I go on this academic route that the momentum was going towards, that's it, that's job

00:00:44.320 | for life, right? It's like, okay, I want to make sure I really understand this question of how

00:00:49.120 | people love their work. So that's what motivated the book. So I look in the question, the first

00:00:54.160 | answer that comes up everywhere back then at least was follow your passion, right? So I look into

00:00:58.320 | that, like, okay, so why do we think this is true? The whole thing is nonsense, right? We think this

00:01:03.760 | is some wisdom that Plato wrote about and then Thomas Aquinas then talked about and the founding

00:01:11.520 | fathers and it's this old piece of advice. No, if you go back and look at the etymology, the phrase

00:01:16.640 | follow your passion is from the early 1990s. Oh, wow. Okay. It's like a very new idea, right? This

00:01:22.640 | was not the way we thought about careers. I was the first generation because I went through school

00:01:27.680 | in the 90s, graduated, went to college at like 2000, right? I was the first generation to be

00:01:32.400 | told this. So it's not ancient advice, right? In fact, ancient advice is much more different about

00:01:38.560 | how to actually build a life of meaning or do work of meaning, right? So the advice was new.

00:01:43.360 | So I looked at a little further. Do we have scientific evidence that says, yeah, when you

00:01:47.920 | match a pre-existing inclination with your occupation, you're happier? No, none of that

00:01:53.280 | research exists. What does exist if you study the research literature on job satisfaction

00:01:58.800 | is way more general traits. Like, do I have autonomy? Do I have a sense of mastery in my

00:02:04.160 | work? Am I connected to other people in my work? Do I feel like my work is important? And none of

00:02:08.320 | these have to do with matching your job to a really specific passion. So then I said, okay,

00:02:13.520 | why is everyone giving this advice? And so I started tracking down the backstories of famous

00:02:18.640 | people who had famously said, follow your passion. Nine times out of 10, it's not what they did,

00:02:25.440 | right? They stumbled into whatever they ended up doing and it transformed into a passion.

00:02:30.400 | So all this evidence came together and I said, this is nonsense. Passion is great. You don't

00:02:35.440 | start with it. You're probably not wired for a particular job that happens to exist in the

00:02:40.640 | 21st century knowledge economy. There's probably not a gene that you inherited that said you were

00:02:45.360 | meant to be a brand manager for like an athletic apparel company based out of whatever, right?

00:02:50.400 | So that's not how you end up passionate about your work. You cultivate passion.

00:02:55.280 | And the more I looked into it, the more it became clear. You get good at something as you get better

00:03:00.720 | at something, you get more control over your life and your career, and then you got to take that

00:03:04.240 | control for a spin. And that's when you really begin crafting your working life over time into

00:03:08.800 | something that really resonates, right? So the passion is cultivated. The passion is grown.

00:03:14.080 | You want to end up passionate about your work, but if you're 22 and saying, let me figure out

00:03:19.520 | now what I'm supposed to do. And if I just figure that out and match that to my job, I'll be happy

00:03:24.000 | from here on out. It's a Disney fairy tale. - What about natural inclinations in the sense

00:03:29.120 | that visionary versus operator or systems people versus big idea people, that sort of idea,

00:03:36.880 | where does that fit into this thing around passion? - It matters, right? Because ultimately,

00:03:42.560 | what you're trying to do is if you get good at something, you get control. So you want to say,

00:03:46.560 | what advantages do I already have pushing me towards getting good at something, right?

00:03:50.880 | So if you've already been training for something, well, let's keep that in mind because I've already

00:03:55.360 | done a lot of work for this. If you feel like you have an inclination towards a certain type of

00:03:59.440 | thing, you're very technical. Okay, it's probably going to be easier for you to get really good at

00:04:03.520 | something in a technical field, right? Maybe you have some sort of family connection to whatever.

00:04:09.680 | Hey, let's not ignore that, right? I mean, whatever is going to get me quicker towards being good at

00:04:15.040 | something that's valuable is what I want to care about. So what I often say, it's about lowering

00:04:20.160 | the threshold, right? So follow your passion. The threshold is find your one true passion.

00:04:24.960 | And if you miss, you're screwed, right? I'm lowering the threshold to, there's a lot of

00:04:30.240 | things you could probably cultivate into a really passionate professional life. There's a lot of

00:04:35.600 | things, not everything for sure, right? But there's probably a lot of things. The hard part's not

00:04:39.840 | finding one of those things. It's what you do once you choose it. It's the work you do for the next

00:04:43.760 | 10 years. So, you know, I'm not throwing a dart at a job listing board and saying, I guess that's

00:04:48.640 | what I'm going to do. But I'm also not super fretting that if I don't make this choice exactly

00:04:53.840 | right, I'm going to be in trouble. If it's like, this seems interesting to me, I have an inclination

00:04:58.160 | for this. It looks like there would be a lot of flexibility and opportunities if I got good at

00:05:02.880 | this. Be like, that's good enough. That's good enough. Now let's do the hard work of actually

00:05:07.600 | cultivating passion here. Nice. Okay. So, yeah. So the first book of yours I read was So Good They

00:05:13.760 | Can't Ignore You and very much vibed with the message. And then the next book of yours I read

00:05:17.600 | was Deep Work, where it seems like so many people that that word has really seeped into the world.

00:05:25.680 | And do you have a sense of how many people know that you originated that word versus it's just

00:05:31.840 | part of English vocabulary now? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, that was my goal for sure,

00:05:36.720 | is I wanted that piece of vocabulary to spread. Because my thought was more important than any

00:05:41.680 | particular piece of advice was just people separating deep work from non-deep work.

00:05:45.280 | And once you recognize deep work is very important, then people can kind of figure out,

00:05:49.920 | oh, I'm not doing a lot about this. How do I do more of this? What's happening in my job? I mean,

00:05:53.760 | I give advice in that book, obviously, but the variety of what people are actually doing is much

00:05:57.680 | greater than that. So that was my goal. I don't know how many people associate it with me. It

00:06:02.240 | shows up in weird places. There's a menu somewhere in Microsoft Outlook where it's not a deep work

00:06:09.600 | option, but there's a little explanation for like a focus mode option. And it says to support deep

00:06:15.040 | work. So it's kind of floating around in there. I don't know if I haven't got my royalty check on

00:06:19.440 | that yet. I do hear people say it. People often attribute it to me. I mean, here's the thing about

00:06:24.400 | that book. It came out quiet, right? Like I published that book, super disappointed. It just,

00:06:32.160 | it didn't have a lot of buzz around it when it came out. They had lowered my advance for that book

00:06:38.000 | versus so good. They can't ignore you because like, no, it's so good. They can know you didn't

00:06:40.560 | do great at the time. Uh, and so they had lowered the advance. The book came out. I was, I was

00:06:46.000 | thinking because I, I didn't understand publishing back then. Right. So what I knew was, I was like,

00:06:50.400 | this is a killer idea. So why is this not being promoted everywhere and spread everywhere? And,

00:06:57.040 | you know, my agent sat me down and was like, that's not how it works. It's what did your

00:07:00.640 | last book do? Like, that's, what's going to matter in your last book. Didn't it

00:07:05.120 | take off right away? So like, they're not going to put as much into this. And because I was really

00:07:08.720 | upset. I had a friend who his family went to pick it up from a bookstore and they're not even

00:07:13.280 | carrying it on publication week. Right. I was like, I'm kind of down with this. And then quietly in

00:07:18.400 | the background at some point, they're like, you know, this is kind of selling, never on a best

00:07:22.560 | seller list has never been on a bestseller list. Like this is just kind of selling. Oh, it's still

00:07:26.800 | kind of selling. Oh, then more people were talking about it. And then more people were inviting me

00:07:30.640 | to come on their podcast. And it was just this really interesting slow burn where there was no

00:07:35.440 | one point where I realized like, oh, this book is doing really well. But I look back now, that

00:07:40.000 | thing's closing in on like 2 million copies. Oh, nice. Yeah. It's just, it's been out there without

00:07:44.000 | ever having been on a bestseller list. Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine the people who have read the book

00:07:48.720 | are like a zillion X lower than the people who use the word and know what the word means.

00:07:52.880 | That's probably true. That's probably true. Yeah. You know, the most interesting person I heard

00:07:57.600 | use it was on the Tim Ferriss podcast years ago, Jamie Foxx. I'm sure he has no idea who I am,

00:08:05.600 | or that I wrote it, but I was like, okay, my work here is done. So, um, being able to cultivate time

00:08:10.720 | for deep focus work. This is something I struggle with. You and I are vaguely in similar sort of

00:08:16.160 | careers, sort of, you've got the academic thing going. I sort of have the business thing, I guess,

00:08:19.680 | on the side, which keeps occupied some percentage of our time. Really, I guess one thing I often

00:08:24.880 | think is, oh man, I wish I had more time in my life for deep work. Yeah. Um, any, any tips for

00:08:29.280 | what you know about me and this, this career that we're both in? Yeah. Or maybe a slower

00:08:33.760 | definition of productivity. See what I did there? I'm connecting it. I'm connecting it back to my

00:08:37.920 | work. I mean, I think to me, and this is the research that kind of went into the slow productivity,

00:08:42.400 | uh, overload is the, the, the key villain here. Right. So like every active project that you're

00:08:47.920 | working on is going to necessarily bring with it overhead, right? Like we have to talk about it.

00:08:53.200 | We have to have meetings about it. We have to have emails about it, which isn't bad. Like

00:08:55.840 | projects require collaboration. I'm more and more realizing the problem then is when we aggregate

00:09:00.720 | too many of those projects because all that overhead adds up. Right. So if there's six

00:09:05.600 | different active projects going on, it's really, really difficult to find time for deep work

00:09:10.400 | because that's six projects worth of administrative overhead that all just overlap now. Right. And

00:09:15.440 | it's all, all competing for the same time. So I've really never found a better general solution

00:09:21.680 | than reducing the number of things that I'm working on, which I'm like you. I mean, I,

00:09:26.640 | I have so many interesting ideas and opportunities. And so I don't know if you do this,

00:09:30.080 | I go cyclical, right? So I'll, I'll, I'll have a bunch of ideas and I'll start doing things.

00:09:34.560 | And then I get really overloaded. Like, this is not good. I can't do deep work anymore. And then

00:09:37.920 | I really scale back and then I get bored and then I start like adding things back. And so my last

00:09:43.200 | overload was pandemic. Right. So like pandemic hits, I start to get kind of in a entrepreneurial

00:09:50.640 | hustle mode because look, I'm a professor and a writer. Right. In those early months of the

00:09:56.160 | pandemic, it was, are the universities going to shut down? Like, I mean, they were, we have to

00:10:01.120 | freeze parts of your pay. It's because the money wasn't coming in. And then at the same time,

00:10:05.680 | there's all these rumors that the publishing industry was going to start clawing back

00:10:09.440 | advances and like slashing and that, you know, Barnes and Noble was going to go out of business

00:10:15.040 | and all this type of stuff. And so I went into a mode of, I got to get more irons in the fire.

00:10:19.120 | I got a whatever. And then you fast forward a year and a half. And I'm like, Oh no,

00:10:22.640 | like I have too much. I can't the overhead. So that's the killer. The projects are awesome.

00:10:29.280 | It's the overhead that comes with the projects that adds up. So you either reduce the number

00:10:32.720 | of projects or you find a way with the projects you have, you have to be really careful about

00:10:39.040 | controlling that admin overhead. This is when we talk about it. This is the processes for like

00:10:44.640 | where the information goes. Like you have to liberate those projects from just send me a

00:10:51.360 | message when you need something. Let's just have a ad hoc back and forth communication to figure

00:10:55.440 | things out. So you either have to get super structured or you have to simplify. Yeah.

00:10:58.880 | Yeah. There was a time I think last year before your book had come out, you had done a casual

00:11:05.520 | episode on Tim Ferriss. I mean, to the degree that any episode on Tim Ferriss is casual, but it's

00:11:10.160 | like the book hadn't quite come out and you were like exploring the idea of slow productivity.

00:11:14.400 | Yeah. And you mentioned this overhead thing and it sort of clicked something in me where I realized

00:11:20.960 | kind of like in physics, you know, like parallel versus series circuits. It's like you assume a

00:11:25.520 | parallel circuit is actually better because like, Oh, if I have these three things, then doing them

00:11:28.800 | all three at the same time, the whole like consistency thing, you know, I thought that

00:11:32.880 | the best way to write a book is work on it a little bit each day. And if you work on the book

00:11:37.120 | a little bit each day and work on your YouTube videos a little bit each day and work on the

00:11:39.840 | business a little bit each day, surely everything gets done. Yeah. No, it doesn't. Like basically

00:11:45.200 | zero gets done. And instead of what I found super helpful was doing things in series rather than

00:11:49.600 | parallel. Yep. This week I'm just going to intensely focus on just the book and then I'm

00:11:53.360 | going to forget about it. And the next week is going to, I'm going to batch from some YouTube

00:11:55.680 | videos. And then next week I'm going to work on the product and then go back to the book.

00:11:58.640 | Yeah. And even that, it was sort of felt annoying because I, what I really wanted to do was

00:12:05.840 | I'm just going to not make YouTube videos until I finished this book. But then the business would

00:12:09.520 | have died. And so it's like, I've been trying over time to figure out what is the absolute

00:12:13.920 | minimum? Well, what's the, what, what is the minimum number of the maximum number of projects

00:12:18.240 | that I have to have going at any one time and how do I just limit it to those things? So once I do

00:12:22.880 | one thing, then I move on. Yeah. Well, actually that's, that's a really good strategy. I was

00:12:26.480 | actually just talking about something like this at the event I was at before this, because I was

00:12:30.320 | talking to actually a corporate crowd who had a lot of work. They tend to have a lot of work put

00:12:35.360 | on their plate. They couldn't say no to. So it's an interesting case. So what do we do about that?

00:12:39.440 | And what I was advising they do is I said, okay, so you have this list of things you have to do,

00:12:43.280 | write them down. Now let's put at the head of the list, a small section that we call active. It's

00:12:50.000 | like, okay, these are the things I'm actively working on right now. Everything else let's

00:12:53.200 | sort and call that waiting. And what you're going to tell everyone and what you're going to do

00:12:58.400 | is only work on the active things. Right. And that means like that's what you're sending emails about

00:13:02.640 | having meetings about. If it's not on the active list, you're not, you're not dealing with it.

00:13:06.160 | And as you finish an active thing, you can pull something else from the waiting list to have

00:13:09.920 | something new. So you only have one to three active things. Right. And I said, look, this

00:13:14.160 | works really well because you're only generating admin overhead from a small number of things. So

00:13:18.080 | you've agreed to all these things, but you've, you've neutralized the admin overhead. Also be

00:13:22.000 | super transparent about this. I told him, put it in a Google doc and show everybody, here's your

00:13:26.480 | thing. It's position seven. And like, as soon as it gets pulled in the active, I will let you know.

00:13:31.760 | I'm like, I'm all in on this right now. Like call me. This is what I'm doing this week. Like,

00:13:35.360 | let's get into it. Like, let's get this done. Like people know you have your act together.

00:13:39.200 | And so then they asked like, well, what about, we have really big projects sometimes. Like it's

00:13:43.520 | going to take a whole year. And the answer was, yeah, you have to break it into these smaller

00:13:46.560 | things and use these smaller chunks with the same method. I think that's what you were doing.

00:13:51.200 | Right. And it's not, you're right. It's not great in the sense that it's not what your mind wants

00:13:55.200 | to do because it's not really the right way is what you said probably. And by right way, I mean,

00:14:00.560 | the human brain as evolved, right. It's probably, I'm obsessed about this book till it's done.

00:14:06.160 | I'm obsessed with making these YouTube videos until like the season is over or whatever. Like,

00:14:10.320 | that's probably the right way to do it. But taking a chunk, one chunk at a time and just doing that

00:14:15.440 | chunk, that's sort of like the best compromise because at the very least during that week,

00:14:20.320 | you're not in the impossible micro situation of having to jump back and forth between 10 things.

00:14:24.960 | And because it's just impossible. Yeah. The macro switching is still frustrating,

00:14:29.600 | but at least the work gets done. But yes, that's a little, I mean, I feel the same way. I mean,

00:14:33.520 | all I want to do when I write is just write. And I can get away with about three months of that.

00:14:38.560 | I take the summers. So like I can do about three months of just writing and nothing else,

00:14:43.440 | but I need more than three months to finish a book. So like, I'm happy for three months of

00:14:47.920 | my book writing. Yeah. How are you thinking of that in relation to your podcast now? And

00:14:52.640 | I guess the, the, the YouTube channel, which seems to be blowing up.

00:14:55.440 | Yeah. So the podcast gets a half day a week. That was the, that was the, the,

00:14:59.280 | the agreement I made with myself when I finally started a podcast in 2020 was it gets a half day

00:15:03.840 | a week. So to develop it, it's going to be slow. It's like slow productivity. It's going to be

00:15:09.040 | slow because I have to figure out what I'm doing, you know, get good at what I'm doing first before

00:15:13.360 | I can do something else. And if I want to, if I want to add more, it has to fit within a half a

00:15:17.760 | week. Right. So for me, that meant it starts simpler. And then I finally could make enough

00:15:23.600 | money from advertisements to have a producer and now the producer can take these things off my

00:15:28.320 | plate. So now I can spend more time on that. And then finally we're like, okay, we can,

00:15:31.760 | we want to do video, but it's got to fit within a half day a week. Okay. How are we going to do

00:15:34.560 | this? Well, we're going to have to set up this video rig and here's the people who are going

00:15:38.880 | to work on it. And here's the pipeline. And I don't ever want to see a video editing piece

00:15:43.680 | of software or anything ever. Right. We have this pipeline figured out. And it's, we, we can't do

00:15:49.120 | X, Y, or Z for video, which would be better for the YouTube channel, because that would

00:15:52.880 | take too much time. So what we can do is take the video straight from the podcast and put it

00:15:57.760 | out there. And then over time we're like, you know, YouTube doesn't really love that.

00:16:00.560 | It's like, okay, we were able to bring on someone now who can work on the video produced by the

00:16:06.160 | podcast and figure out how to like, where did start and what thumbnail to put on. But all of

00:16:10.400 | it was slow because the podcast couldn't get more than a half day a week. So I treat the podcast

00:16:15.520 | more like a service obligation as opposed to a one-time project I'm trying to do. And I treat

00:16:21.600 | those two things differently because I'm always going to be doing the podcast. So now I have to

00:16:25.520 | really contain it and understand it and control its footprint so that it cannot expand beyond that

00:16:30.240 | footprint. But like a book chapter is different. It's like, I got to get this done. It's best that

00:16:34.320 | I just focus on this as hard as I can until it's finished. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I've landed on a

00:16:39.040 | similar conclusion with my YouTube channel in that it gets one day a week. Yeah. So fascinating. Yeah.

00:16:44.160 | So most Wednesdays, except today where it's tomorrow. So tomorrow is filming day all day

00:16:50.080 | where Tintin, our producer will come in in the morning at 9am with a coffee and we'll chat shit

00:16:56.240 | for about an hour and then we'll film a video and the video will be prepped there. And then he will,

00:17:00.800 | he will have rocked up with some title and thumbnail ideas. We may have some research

00:17:04.240 | that a researcher has done, but broadly I'll sit down with a title that's given to me. I'm like,

00:17:08.080 | okay, how would I teach this topic? Yeah. And then I draw some stuff on a whiteboard or whatever.

00:17:13.600 | And then I hit record and I talk. Yeah. Then we go out for lunch and we'll come back and we do

00:17:16.880 | another video and we get two videos done in a day and it's a really fun day. It's fairly chill. Yeah.

00:17:20.560 | And the YouTube channel is like still growing with the, with that method. This is the opposite

00:17:26.160 | of Mr. Beast. Oh yeah. Yeah. He's like, I'm going to spend the next month building some crazy thing.

00:17:31.520 | I, by the way, I love the same day prep. I do the same thing. Right. I think there's a lot

00:17:34.880 | of energy in it. Yeah. It's like, like I vaguely have an idea of like, here's a topic we're going

00:17:39.040 | to do, but yeah, come in. I go to my studio and it's like, let's prep. It takes like 90 minutes.

00:17:43.520 | You know, my, my producer pulls the questions and stuff like that. And, but yeah, I love the energy

00:17:47.680 | of let's figure out what we're going to say. Ooh, this is good. Press play. Like let's,

00:17:52.880 | let's like write it with it. Okay. But I'm assuming it took you, I mean, you, you've probably

00:17:57.840 | evolved this whole process over time, right? Like someone, if they were new to making YouTube

00:18:02.320 | videos, couldn't jump straight into this process. I'm assuming you figured out what's the pipeline,

00:18:07.120 | like who needs to edit, what, what type of things work, what prep matters, what prep has been a

00:18:10.880 | waste of time. It's that like evolution. I'm assuming we've run the entire gamut all the way

00:18:15.280 | from me spending five days, seven days a week working on YouTube videos and word for word

00:18:19.280 | writing scripts, bullet points. What's the difference. What was the difference for your

00:18:22.560 | channel between seven days a week and bullet point scripts and the one day a week, two videos a week

00:18:27.760 | you're doing now? Um, basically none. This is, this is kind of, this is kind of the key point.

00:18:32.800 | Yeah. This is kind of the key point is, uh, yeah. Activity does it by default, alchemizing the

00:18:38.400 | results. Right. This is the thing. Like I get this question a lot in our, in our YouTuber academy

00:18:42.400 | where people are like, okay, you know, at least saying make one video a week, but what if I spend

00:18:47.520 | more time making higher quality videos? Isn't that better? And I'm like, yes, in theory, yes,

00:18:54.560 | that's true. If more time actually leads to a better quality video, which is just like, you

00:18:59.520 | know, our highest performing, uh, one of our highest performing videos of all time. We put

00:19:02.960 | out about a month ago and I had a conversation at a friend's birthday party with a dude who was

00:19:08.800 | asking me some questions about how to get rich. Yeah. The following day I thought, Hmm, let me

00:19:13.120 | talk about this on camera. I hit record, no prep. Boom. We've got a million views in like a week.

00:19:16.480 | Yeah. And it's like, what? Yeah. Zero prep and videos that we painstakingly prepared for six

00:19:21.680 | months with a whole producer and a whole research team have gotten a fraction of the views. Yeah.

00:19:25.600 | There's just like no rhyme or reason to yeah. Activity and outcome. Well, it's what I like

00:19:29.280 | about, I don't know if it's your YouTube Academy or maybe some of the videos you did about like

00:19:33.200 | how to be a professional or just be a YouTuber. What I liked, I was watching that. What I like

00:19:37.920 | is how much of it is, um, yeah, you have to train how to be like how to be on camera. You got to get

00:19:43.440 | just practice. It's, you know, it's not the, like here you're going to come up with like the magic

00:19:49.120 | idea and then you're guaranteed to succeed. It's like, no, it takes time. It's you gotta, you gotta

00:19:53.520 | keep doing things, but things that take time that you have to keep doing are not conducive with

00:19:57.840 | overload. Hey, if you like this video, I think you'll really like this one as well. Check it out.

Follow Your Passion Is Terrible Advice. Here's Why... | Cal Newport

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