‘Do What You Love’ Is Stupid Advice for Most People

There is a splendid alternative to this conventional thinking.

Tim Denning
The Startup
Published in
6 min readAug 2, 2021

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Photo by Diego Rosa on Unsplash

Even cavemen probably said ‘do what you love’ once upon a time.

It’s an idea that has existed for a long time. Parents tell their younglings after high school “do what you love little Freddy. You’re going to change the world when you do, darling” (ohhh cute!).

I subscribed to this advice too. I tweeted “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Then this tweet below slapped me in this face.

Popular sentiment: “Choose what you love for work, and do it forever.”

Wrong.

Choose what you’re *good at* and is marketable in society, and do it for as long as you need before retiring to do what you *LOVE* — Steve Adcock

Steveo is onto something. How many people really start out working for money and land in the rainbow fantasy land of “I’m doing what I love” on day one? A few perhaps. But not many.

According to research, 70% of people don’t love what they do. No surprise we’re surrounded by angry Karens who take their frustrations out on life by not replying to emails or playing the silence game.

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Tim Denning
The Startup

Aussie Blogger with 1B+ views that made me 7-figures — Get my free email course: https://timdenning.com/1k-mb