The Counterintuitive Career Move: You Don't Love It Because You're Good — You're Good Because You Love It (Wait, Reverse That)
Passion vs. strength — how do you choose? More often than not, we don't get good at things because we love them; we love them because we got good at them. Drawing from a career built entirely on passion, this piece lays out three real costs of choosing what you love, and a clear framework for anyone stuck on the fence.
If you don't know how to choose, choose what you're good at.
"Passion vs. Strength" is the most common dilemma in career choice. The passion camp says love is what carries you long enough to become skilled. The Strength camp says start with what you can already do — accumulate resources first, then go after what you love, and you'll have a much better shot at success. I'm someone who chose entirely based on passion, and the journey has been pretty rough (wry smile). So my advice is this: unless you really know what you're doing, pick your Strength first.
What does each camp actually argue?
- The passion argument: only love lets you keep going, and only by keeping going do you get good enough to call it a craft.
- The strength argument: doing what you're good at makes success more reachable. Build up experience, network, skills, and resources first — then chasing what you love becomes much more viable.
My experience: I'm someone who chose career direction entirely based on what I loved, and it's been pretty brutal (wry smile) XD.
My advice: if you don't know how to choose, pick "strength."
WHY? Because:
Why is choosing strength the lower-risk move?
For this discussion, we're only looking at success in personal career development.
I chose career direction entirely on passion, and the road hasn't been smooth:
- Loved games, became an engineer, eventually found writing code boring
- Loved entrepreneurship, switched lanes into product management, went to grad school
- Fell in love with teaching during grad school, became an instructional designer at a startup after graduating
- Burned out at the startup, retreated to academia as a project manager, started writing
- The research project ended; got invited to a startup as COO, too busy to keep writing
- Burned out at that startup, returned to academia as a PM, kept writing, started teaching part-time at a university (at least the teaching is back, XD)
I have to say it — if you're going to choose career direction "entirely on passion," you need a resilient mind and a lot of psychological safety in reserve.
From my own experience: I can't strictly call it "failure," but I clearly haven't "succeeded yet" either.
The real question is: after this many setbacks, can you still keep doing only what you love?
Here's why I tell people to choose strength:
Why is choosing passion a long uphill battle? Three costs people often miss
I'll say it again: if you don't have a particular love for anything, I'd tell you without hesitation to choose "strength" (recommendation #2!).
Why? Because choosing passion is high-risk.
In theory, "love sustains you until you become skilled" works. In practice, you'll run into at least three challenges:
1. Your passion "must pay the price"
Yes — you have to be able to pay the price.
Your passion has to "endure" long enough to turn into strength. That cost is not negotiable.
Most people hesitate between passion and strength precisely because of cost and the odds of success.
Treating passion as recreation and strength as work is a relatively low-risk choice.
Often, only the people who actually decide and execute get to find out whether the decision was right.
We can't be sure passion will deliver better results than strength. The only thing we can be sure of is the cost.
What's the cost? Money, time, relationships, mental energy, health — anything, really.
If you're hesitating because of the cost, maybe you don't love it as much as you think.
2. Passion is "a very abstract concept"
I read this line somewhere I can't recall now:
We don't get good at things because we love them; we love them because we got good at them. The sense of accomplishment that comes from being good at something is what makes us love doing it.
It's hard to evaluate "love" accurately, which is why using passion to make decisions is high-risk behavior.
Not impossible — there are still plenty of people who picked what they loved and succeeded big. But I'd argue those are "the few."
When you're thinking, assuming you're "one of the few" is dangerous. When everyone else seems drunk, usually it's just you.
Strength, by contrast, is concrete. When you're truly good at something, there are usually "very objective" ways to measure it.
If you're good at drawing, coding, writing, or teaching, it usually shows in your output or performance.
Whether you love something — only you know. But how do you know it's true love and not just a passing impulse?
And then there's a third point.
3. Passion is "easily shaped by outside forces"
In an age of information overload, what you love is constantly being influenced by external factors.
Raymond put it especially well:
There's a universal premise: each of us has roughly the same amount of time,
but with technological and informational tools advancing, we have more and more resources and methods to "amplify expertise."
As the saying goes (I forget which sage said it XD): it's the best of times, and it's the worst of times.
But this also creates a phenomenon: more information = more time spent filtering information.
In the 1970s, philosopher Ivan Illich proposed Counter-Productivity — the idea that once productivity tools scale beyond a certain point, they start consuming the very time they were supposed to save:
- Smartphones let us take more photos, then we spend more time deleting photos
- Slide software gets us spending more time prettifying slides
- Email keeps us busy deleting spam
The people I meet are all smart. They don't lack methods or knowledge — they have too many choices.
Their problem is: not knowing which path to take, or how to choose.
Same as passion vs. strength — not knowing how to choose is what actually trips them up.
I love it all, but I don't know which I love "the most," and it feels like I can only pick one?
I can do it all, I want to do it all, but I don't know how to start?
That's why, in "the general case," I think choosing strength leads to better outcomes than choosing passion.
Not because "strength" is genuinely better — purely because "passion" carries too much risk.
So if you still want to choose passion, where do you start?
Most of my friends pick "passion." Including me.
In practice, we rarely sit down and dig into what we actually love — we just "go do it."
Honestly, I'm not in love with writing. What I love is thinking, and writing lets me think.
Writing is just a vehicle. I can also think through teaching, building course material, speaking, judging competitions.
Passion takes time to refine. You have to go deep into yourself and find what you actually love — not the surface version.
That's why even after switching jobs many times, I haven't spent less time thinking — I've spent more.
It's also why I prefer playing computer games or board games over watching anime and shows: they require thinking.
A lot of people get stuck between passion and strength because the cost passion demands is enough to make them stop loving it.
It's like when a hobby becomes your job — suddenly you've lost interest in the hobby.
Real love demands a price.
Imagining you can pick passion without paying much and life will just be happy is unrealistic.
Among people who chose passion, I often meet ones who realized they didn't actually love it, switched directions, and eventually found what they truly loved.
Passion has to survive the grind of time, and turning it into something real takes more time and persistence.
If you genuinely don't love it anymore and want to switch — switch immediately!
Final wrap-up: passion or strength, how do you choose?
If you're lucky and you happen to have both — no choice needed. END.
If you want both, "I want it all" — please stick with passion long enough to become skilled!
If you're truly torn on how to choose, pick "strength." You'll have less to worry about.
Like I said earlier — if there's no special reason, I'd tell you without hesitation to pick "strength."
If you're my client, I'll help you find the right "passion or strength" for you.
You might be wondering: is there really no way to chart a path through "choosing passion"?
"Finding it" was never about thinking — it's about practicing, thinking, exploring, and ruling out other options as you go, until you arrive at a conclusion.
"Finding it" is on you. Other people can only offer reference points.
After all, you're a unique person, and the answer that fits you best is one only you can find.
FAQ
Q: Should I pick passion or strength first? A: If you're not sure you can pay the price (time, money, health, relationships), pick strength first. Once strength builds up resources, use those resources to explore passion — risk drops a lot.
Q: I'll get bored doing what I'm skilled at long enough. Should I keep going? A: Boredom is a side effect of strength, not a signal. Before you actually pivot, ask yourself: am I bored of the work, or of the position? Switching role or industry usually beats jumping straight to "passion" on risk.
Q: I already chose passion and the journey's been brutal. Should I turn back now? A: First, check if the cost is still within what you can bear. If yes, hold on a bit longer — passion takes time to refine. If the cost has hit your health, relationships, or finances, stop and rest, then look back at why your path went the way it did.
Q: How do I know if it's "real love" or just "a passing impulse"? A: Ask yourself if you're willing to pay the price. If you're willing to spend time, money, and energy on it — that's real love. "Just thinking about it makes me happy" isn't necessarily enough to base a career decision on.