Should I follow money or passion?

Efri · 1 min read

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It's a false choice and it's a bad question, because it assumes you know which is which right now.

Money buys you the runway to find out what you actually want. Passion with no money runs out and takes the passion with it. I've watched people fall out of love with something they genuinely cared about, purely because they couldn't afford to do it.

So the practical order is usually: earn enough that you have options, then use the options.

But two things are true underneath it.

Passion is usually a result, not a starting point. People become passionate about things they get good at. Waiting to feel passionate before you commit is backwards. Get good at something and see if it turns.

Money without any interest in the work has a ceiling. Not a moral one, a practical one. You won't put in the extra years that make someone excellent at something they find boring, so you'll cap out below people who do.

The version I'd actually aim at: something you find genuinely interesting, that people will pay properly for. That exists more often than people think. It's just further from the obvious options.