Today we’re going to continue sharing thoughts from How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, a book that I recently read and loved.
If you missed the first post in this series, check out Money Lessons from Failure, Part 1.
We covered the first three (quite interesting) points in that post.
So now let’s pick it up now where we left off…
4. Passion is BS.
Ok, he didn’t say “BS” (he used the word) but I’m family-friendly here. š
He spends a whole chapter talking about how advice to “follow your passion” is bad.
He shares a story of when he was a loan officer. Adams was told not to loan money to businesses with passionate owners but instead to go for passion-less owners — the grinders who see it as a business and will make decisions based on information/facts and not emotions.
He adds the following as well:
My hypothesis is that passionate people are more likely to take big risks in the pursuit of unlikely goals, and so you would expect to see more failures and more huge successes among the passionate.
It’s easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion.
Passion can be a simple market for talent. We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at, while not enjoying things we suck at.
If you ask a billionaire the secret of his success, he might say it is passion, because that sounds like a sexy answer that is suitably humble. But after a few drinks I think he’ll say his success was a combination of desire, luck, hard work, determination, brains, and appetite for risk.
In money the whole passion thing raises it’s ugly head most in the area of picking a career. People are told to “do what they love” (i.e. follow their passion).
This sort of advice, in part, is responsible for kids borrowing $100k+ for college degrees that produce $20k per year jobs. It just doesn’t work.
The author of Rise: 3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, and Liking Your Life completely agrees that “do what you love” is bad advice, saying the following:
We all get told at some point (if not over and over again), āDo what you love and the money will follow,ā and itās just plain bad advice. The number of people who make a lot of money doing what they love is so insignificantly small that itās an unrealistic and useless thing to model. The most unfortunate thing about this is that it makes people feel like they are failing when they donāt achieve it.
This plays out in two destructive ways:
1. Because they donāt have the same feeling of love for their work that they do for their family or leisure activities, they feel like they are selling out or living life wrong. They waste a lot of time feeling unfulfilled, unhappy, or plagued by the feeling that they should be doing something different.
2. Others, who try to do the things they love full time, find that the effort to make a business of it and a living at it takes away all the enjoyment of it. They end up turning their love into a job they donāt like, one that generally doesnāt pay very well. They end up not loving life after all. And they waste time that they could have spent earning money.
Donāt put this pressure on yourself!
KEY INSIGHT: Consider thinking about your work/life strategy like this:
- Do what you love for free.
- Work for money.
- Change how you do your job to feel less tortured about itāand maybe even feel pretty good about it.
- Spend the money you make on doing the things you love when youāre not at work.
And here’s a great comment from a reader of my former blog:
Yes, you missed something VERY vital. Under #2) Not working to maximize your career, you should have added: “Make sure you pick a career that pays a decent amount of money. DO NOT ‘do what you love’ just because you have a lot of yes-men in your life saying ‘ALL YOU NEED IS PASSION! You can make a living wage at any career!’, because that advice is false, false, FALSE.”
I followed my dreams to become a graphic designer, because I was sure that all I needed to do was be passionate about it, and ‘do what I love’ and the money would follow. I found out the hard way that life doesn’t work this way. Some jobs are over-saturated, and have too many people doing them, and not nearly enough work, not even enough to employ half of the people who need jobs in that field.
This brings up an interesting conversation. Which is the true way to “maximize your career”?:
- Do what you love – The old saying goes, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” And even if it doesn’t, the consolation is that you’ll probably be happier since you are in a profession you enjoy.
- Do what pays – This concept says forget doing what you love — go for the money. Work is work, it’s meant to be hard. Work hard at something you may not enjoy, make a bundle, and get enjoyment from after-work activities.
Personally, I don’t think “do what you love” works in most situations.
Do you know what most people LOVE doing? Nothing. Most would LOVE being paid a ton of money for little work.
In addition, people LOVE what is fun. Examples: going to the movies, playing video games, sitting on the beach, etc. But those are not work options — they are pleasure options. They call it “work” for a reason.
Here are things I LOVE:
- Spending time with my family
- Playing video games
- Traveling to tropical islands
- Watching TV/movies
- Reading
- Relaxing
- Exercising
Unfortunately, these don’t pay much (if anything.) Sure, I could start a “travel services” company, but that’s not the same as “traveling”. In fact, doing the former might kill my love of the latter.
Working in a job you hate just for the money doesn’t work either. Eight to nine hours each day of having the life sucked out of you starts to wear on you pretty quickly. You won’t be able to enjoy your off-time if you really hate your job.
“Do what you like” is the solution IMO. Find a profession that you like (one where you enjoy most of the job to a reasonable extent) and that also has decent pay. This is the balance between the two (generally accepted) options above, one that has worked for me, and a concept that I think will work for most people.
What’s your take on the issue?
5. Start looking for another job as soon as you get a new one.
Adams tells the story of sitting next to a business man on a plane. The guy was the CEO of a company and as they chatted he offered Scott some career advice:
He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was an ongoing process.
Adams comments on this idea with the following:
This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for a better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job.
I personally like this and wish I had thought of/applied it during my career.
Now some might ask about the loyalty you owe a company, and that used to be something of value. But these days I think most companies have made it clear that they are out for themselves. Employees are the same as machinery, buildings, etc. — as long as they produce, they are kept. But the second they stumble a bit, all company loyalty to the worker is out the window.
I’m not saying I like it this way, but that it’s simply reality.
If I had been looking for a new job at all times, I probably wouldn’t have wasted five years of my career in jobs that were decent enough but not ideal. At least twice I spent two years in a job I knew I needed to leave but had to ramp up the job search to find something — and it took time. In the meantime, I made less than I could have and certainly enjoyed my work-life less.
Anyway, this seems like decent advice, even if it’s only used in moderation (i.e. begin looking for a new job after a year on any given job.)
6. Pay the price.
Here’s a great passage from the book:
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard goes something like this: If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it.
I know a lot of people who wish they were rich and famous or otherwise fabulous. But these are merely wishes. Few of those wishful people have decided to have the things they wish for. It’s a key difference, for once you decide, you take action. Wishing starts in the mind and generally stays there.
Haha! Tell me about it!
The world is full of those who want something handed to them. They want the results that others have achieved but don’t want to put in the work (or often ANY work) to get those results.
I hear from this group quite often, usually when I get some sort of mainstream media coverage (ESI Money readers and not this sort). When it reaches a boiling point I then go on a mini-rant to get it out of my system.
Here are some of the posts inspired by those who want results without paying the price:
- Stop Making Money Excuses
- If You Want What I Have You Have to Do What Iāve Done
- People Want Results But Donāt Want to Change
- Personal Finance is Common Sense
7. Success has a spillover effect.
Adams makes this claim in the book:
Success at anything has a spillover effect on other things. You can take advantage of that effect by becoming good at things that require nothing but practice. Once you have become good at a few unimportant things, such as hobbies or sports, the habit of success stays with you on more important quests. When you’ve tasted success, you want more. And the wanting gives you the sort of energy that is critical to success.
He goes on to say how he was “talented at several trivial games” (Scrabble, pool, tennis, ping-pong) simply because he was willing to invest “insane hours of practice” into each.
He then makes this point:
Thanks to my experience with these exceedingly minor successes, I have a realistic understanding of how many hours it takes to be good at something. That keeps me from bailing out of things too soon. But more important, I know what winning feels like (great!) and it energizes me to seek more if it.
A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming.
A few thoughts on this from me:
- I’m not so sure success in anything qualifies you for success in something else. Some of those things seem so trivial that I can’t see how they really matter. So I’d prefer that the formula be revised to success in something at least semi-valuable leads to further success.
- There’s a value in knowing when to give up. Sometimes things don’t work out (and never will). So as valuable as it can be to stick to something, it’s also valuable to know when to quit. That said, I believe that the bigger problem is people quitting too early versus not quitting when something is doomed.
- I 100% agree that success in something at least semi-important sets you up for the next (bigger) success. In fact, this is the story of my life — all the way back to grade school. As I accomplished one thing, I had more belief in myself to try the next. And when I was successful at that, I went to the next step. These built upon each other over years and decades to become quite significant.
- That is not to say there weren’t setbacks — like the time I tried out for the basketball team in high school. I was tall, but I had limited coordination, was in poor shape, and wasn’t willing to put in the extra effort to get better. I realized I wasn’t going to be a sports star, so I abandoned that hope and started focusing on speech and debate. I did pretty well in both of those and the skills I learned along the way helped my career tremendously.
- In the end, I don’t think it’s the successes themselves that make Adams’ statements true but the belief in oneself that results from the successes. As noted above, they have a way of building upon each other, reinforcing themselves, to drive the person forward.
8. Pause before you trust experts.
He says:
Dealing with experts is always tricky. Are they honest? Are they competent? How often are they right? My observation and best guess is that experts are right about 98 percent of the time on the easy stuff but only 50 percent of the time on anything that is unusually complicated, mysterious, or even new.
If your gut feeling (intuition) disagrees with the experts, take that seriously.
I think you know my view on “experts”.
In fact I have a whole category on this site called “Not Experts” dedicated to highlighting those who claim to be experts but aren’t really.
A few that I’ve covered so far:
I could probably write a blog on this subject alone if I wanted. Is “ExpertsNotExperts.com” taken? LOL!
In the end, I don’t mind using experts/professionals, but I do think you need to know enough so you’re not 100% reliant on their views without some perspective.
For instance, I use a CPA but I also pay attention to tax law so I can offer suggestions and have an intelligent conversation with her. On more than one occasion I have identified something she did incorrectly, so things do work out better when it’s a team effort.
Conclusion
Adams wraps up the book with the following:
The model for success I described here looks roughly like this: Focus on your diet first and get that right so you have enough energy to want to exercise. Exercise will further improve your energy, and that in turn will make you more productive, more creative, more positive, more socially desirable, and more able to handle life’s little bumps.
Once you optimize your personal energy, all you need for success is luck. You can’t directly control luck, but you can move from strategies with bad odds to strategies with good odds. For example, learning multiple skills makes your odds of success dramatically higher than learning one skill. And if you stay in the game long enough, luck has a better chance of finding you.
Much of this is a summary of issues we’ve already addressed. I will say that I love the common sense approach in this book that is nicely summarized in these few sentences.
As I said at the beginning of part 1 — there’s lots more great stuff in this book! I covered maybe a third of it. So if you’re looking for an entertaining and educational book to take to the beach this summer, you should highly consider this one.
Xrayvsn says
There are so many useful tidbits that you highlighted in this post, a lot of them that go against conventional thinking.
The topic of not doing what you love for money but do something you like instead makes perfect sense. Passion can only get you so far and like the graphic designer comment, some fields will have no real marketplace for what you are passionate about.
I used to think that it was better to stay in one company and advance, showing loyalty. But it is true that companies these days (including medical practices) show no loyalty back so why bother. My girlfriend is of the belief that she typically doesn’t see herself stuck in a company more than a couple years before she wants to move to something bigger and better, often at another company.
MMiguel says
My wife said it best at the dinner table last night: “To be tremendously successful, find a vocation that you enjoy working hard at, that pays you well.”
It’s simple, but if you dissect it, you’ll see that it makes complete sense. Outsized success at anything worthwhile usually requires an extended period of extreme effort and very hard work before you can enjoy the fruits of your labor. Most people do not have the determination or discipline to work hard at things they do not enjoy. Unfortunately, as Adams points out, many of the things that people enjoy do not necessarily offer a very good return on effort (i.e.pay well).
The key is focusing on those vocational activities that you enjoy, that also offer a great financial return. Then, the working hard part comes more easily, which ultimately leads to the financial success and the ability to enjoy all those less financially rewarding activities.
She and I have lived this and seen this play out many times over.
Razorback 14 says
Good stuff here ā- looking at the power of failure ā
āFor example, learning multiple skills makes your odds of success dramatically higher than learning one skill. And if you stay in the game long enough, luck has a better chance of finding you.ā
Preparing well, working hard/smart and staying in the game long enough for LUCK to find you āāand I totally agree with the advice from the CEO āā always be looking for that next job (move) and build loyalty that points toward your family and your lasting legacy !
Sport of Money says
Follow your passion is only one part of it. But in order to make money, you need to acquire the skill set to monetize that passion. People don’t like talking about that second part. “Follow your passion” plays to your feeling and greater sense of being. “Monetize that passion” might come across cold. But in the real world, you need to do both if you want to make money from your passion.
Writing great content for a personal finance blog to help educate the masses for a better financial life might be my passion. But I will never make a cent from the blog if I don’t learn how to monetize it. Your skill set on knowing how to monetize and extract the greatest value will dictate how much money you can make (two blogs can cover the same topics and have the same size of audience/page views but one ends up making $5,000 per month while the other makes $20,000 per month – the difference in money is the result of the difference in the skill set of monetizing the asset).
JayCeezy says
ESI, your comment, “Iām not so sure success in anything qualifies you for success in something else” is something that Adams absolutely agrees with. He writes elsewhere about “the man who knew one thing” and how that really doesn’t work out. We see it all around us, the celebrity actor telling us about the environment, the politician telling us about the economy, the Nobel Prize winners telling us about the environment, the economy, and politics, etc.
Anyway, I do see that you understand his point, that it takes diligence and focused practice to obtain excellence in a skill, and that “system” can be applied in other areas to achieve a “goal.”
One more thing about the ‘conclusion’ that I really applied to my own life (wishing I had done this decades sooner) concerns diet, exercise, productivity. This really comes down to motivation, which is impacted by mood. If you are cranky and unfocused, try eating a piece of cheese or fruit; your blood sugar will increase and that may be what you need to start the productivity cycle. Also, music. Adams doesn’t listen to music, because it impacts his mood. Sometimes it is entertaining, fun and useful (while driving, working out, movie/tv soundtracks, etc.) but often it is a distraction and triggers unproductive feelings and memories. Something to consider.
Thanks again for this great 2-part review of a fantastic book, it is one of my all-time favorites.
MI-119 says
With wisdom, research, an openness to learning from our elders, and our past experiences, financial mistakes should certainly become further and fewer, as well as less impactful over time. Otherwise one is doing something wrong and needs introspection.
Don’t trust anyone. Confirm fiduciary efforts and even assist – with your own researched insights to augment your success. But also do not give up good opportunities in excessive distrust without studying an opinion in more depth.
Paying the price is key. Without sacrificial effort and unwavering perseverance, it won’t work. If one is flighty you give up the spillover effect as well.
Arrgo says
Many great truths said about these topics. Working hard at anything usually pays off or increases your luck. Even something as simple as wanting your car to look nice. Well you have to actually go out and wash and vacuum it more often to have that instead of being lazy. I agree with the spillover of success. When I was taking these IT certification tests (Microsoft, Cisco etc), I studied hard for 4 – 6 months.The tests were hard and when I passed it was a great feeling. I remember wanting to start on the next one the same day. I’ve found momentum is a power thing. I agree with not 100% trusting the “experts”. Not that im better or smarter than them, but I’ve caught mistakes or oversights many times over the years. This applies to doctors, dentists, lawyers, auto mechanics etc. One will tell you one thing, then another says something else. It also ends up costing you more money with unnecessary procedures and repairs. I make it a point to research and be involved as much as possible. Dont be afraid to question things and say no. Learn to do things yourself when possible. Its not as hard as you think. Paying the expert’s premium for what they are actually doing sometimes is seriously inflated and ridiculous.
117 says
I’m in partial agreement with many of these items.
Passion is so intertwined with success and making money. I can’t see that any other way. Blind passion is bad, but I can’t be successful if I’m not at least somewhat passionate. Like isn’t strong enough.
Start looking for a job right away… well you always got to be prepared but job hopping is not in my eyes ideal. Corporations may seem to only care about the bottom line but mentors and good people are still critical for me (wish I had more honestly). Good people will protect you and help you in the long run- regardless of the corporation.
Winning has spill over effect- yes- absolutely! Yes. Yes. Yes.
Experts… sometimes my cynical (protective) behavior is too strong- so I agree. What is the term? Trust but verify? Maybe that’s why I’ve left 2 financial planners in my time… and can’t stand hiring people to work on my house?
Maybe I’ll get the book..
Mr. Hobo Millionaire says
This is a REALLY great post. Really great advice.
On #4 KEY INSIGHT list — the only thing I would add to list at the end is “Save enough money to stop working at some point and focus on your passion (even if it’s working your passion)”. You don’t have to give up it being a career, just make enough money that it doesn’t matter.
On #8 — I would add “Be leary of experts that will make money from their advice to you (ie. selling you something). CPAs are an odd lot. I, too, have found I have to point things out every now and then. That’s NOT to say that my CPAs have not helped me — they have — but they’ve also missed some important issues.
If acquire wealth, NO ONE is going to look after it like you. It’s critical to educate yourself on a wide range of topics. Critical.
Mi-77 says
Just finished reading this book, wow! Tons of great insights! Since Iām already doing a lot of things he talked about in the book but I also learned a lot of new stuff. My favorite is happiness is achieved with good health, exercise and flexible schedule. I couldnāt have agreed more. Simplification and looking to built a system on everything is a great suggestion too. I will also the o carb diet he mentioned in this book, I already picked up all the food he suggested in his healthy food list. Thanks for recommending this book, I really appreciate it!