I have a problem with MJ DeMarco (Follow your passion gets a beatdown)

[G-Man]

Dude, you are more than welcome to play guitar and eat ramen. No one will stop you.

 

[JAJT]

That detour led to riches but it also robbed you of your time

I grew up as a shy, sheltered introvert. I wanted to play video games professionally. That would have totally been my passion.

Know what I ended up choosing to get into? Sales.

Sales is a terrible, hard, uncomfortable place for a shy introvert to be. I spent my first few years hoping nobody finds out that I was a sham. It was easily the furthest possible profession from what I was passionate about. A pure money and time play. I later learned to love it but that was far after the decision to step into discomfort.

My wife and I bought our house (mortgaged - soon to be paid off in full) at 22/23 years old. Owned our car in cash. Got married. Honeymooned in Hawaii. We ate out whenever we wanted to and traveled all the time and went camping all the time and lived our lives however we wanted to, because we could choose to do whatever we wanted from a huge buffet of options that cash allowed. Best years of our lives in our leisure hours because I chose to make money during my working hours. When we had our fill, we decided to slow down and have two kids (that we planned and tried for). Now it's a new adventure.

All of our friends who did what they were passionate about couldn't believe the things we could afford to do. It's now over 10 years later and TO THIS DAY most of them are still behind where we were back then. One of them is considering buying a house, maybe, in the next few years, if they can find the cash. They'd also like to have kids, one day, maybe if they get that promotion on the horizon. But hey - at least he's doing what he loves, right?

Now I'm taking the time to try the bigger play - entrepreneurship. It means years of hardship to hopefully hit even larger levels of wealth than before. When it works out it will mean even more options than a sales career allowed. More travel, more options, more fun, more life.

I look at life as having two parts to it - working hours and leisure hours. The way I see it, all effort you put towards your working hours is equal. Whether you are flipping burgers or selling 6 figure solutions or playing guitar or building a business - it's income generating hours and effort. Leisure hours are where you get to spend the fruits of your working hours. The more you earn, the more you can play.

Personally I think it's INSANE to try to turn your leisure hours into income hours. You're shooting both feet doing this. You make nothing during your work hours so you can do nothing in your leisure hours. And that's what you strive for on your death bed?

I'd rather work my a$$ off, through any discomfort, while I'm on the clock so that I can play my a$$ off with my family when I'm off the clock.

Work hard.
Play hard.

If you'd rather work light, play light - well, go nuts. I'll send you a post card from Hawaii with a guitar on the front - I hear you're really into that kind of thing.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

What if you were on your deathbed and ..

Suddenly you weren't because ..

You spent your life building wealth and ..

You funded life-extending products that actually worked and ..

You used those products to extend your life indefinitely and ..

You had an infinite amount of time to learn guitar because ..

ugh.

If you're on your deathbed regretting not learning guitar, it's because you believe there's no chance to survive.

Or ..

You don't have the will to fight for your survival so you just gave up.

In either case:

A) Believing you don't stand a chance
B) Not having the will to fight

You lose. Same with business.

If you're nearly dead and believe there's a chance to survive, you wouldn't give a shit about guitar. You would only care about doing what it takes to survive.

It's basic human psychology.

Maslow's Hierarchy level 1 = survival

Survival forms the base of the pyramid. Creativity is at the top.

The drowning man doesn't care about not learning guitar.

He splashes to keep his head above water, even when he doesn't know how to swim.

The man whose foot is trapped beneath a boulder doesn't care about what he didn't create.

He uses a pocket knife to saw off his leg so he can f*cking survive.

In both cases, when survival is secure, the men do not whip out their guitar.

They seek other basic human needs before seeking out family for safety and security.

So even if your theoretical situation were real ..

Guitar would almost certainly be the furthest thing from your mind.

And if there's 0 chance you will live.

Then it doesn't matter anyway.

Because when you're dead, you're dead.

Game over.

(Unless you believe in an afterlife in which case you'll have plenty of time to learn guitar there.)

 

[TheDillon__]

I missed the chapter where MJ advocates aimlessly chasing money for the rest of your life.

His whole approach is exactly what you're looking for. Building a business system that affords you exactly the lifestyle that you're looking for.

It's not that he advocates turning away your passions in hopes of earning more dollars. He simply doesn't subscribe to, nor promote, a "paid to do what you love" philosophy. Rather, he wants you to find a need and build a business so you can get paid WHILE you do what you love.

No need to point fingers. Maybe I'll come play violin and eat tacos with you.

 

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[The-J]

Fastlane is predicated on the idea that time is more valuable than money, and that time is better spent doing things you love. However, using the time to do what you love to make money might not be the most efficient use of your time... or the most efficient way to make money. It also has the side effect of permanently etching an association between work + hobby. For some, that's terrible for morale.

Most people do what they love on their off time. They work a job to pay the bills and support themselves or their family, then do what they love whenever they find off time. Maybe weekday nights or on weekends. This is not efficient, either, because you spend 1/3 to 1/2 of your weekdays at work.

The independently wealthy can do what they love at any time. $10 million earning 4% interest is $400,000 a year minus taxes. This money works to make more money, so you don't work a job OR run a business. The Fastlane is the efficient path to achieve that monetary goal (whether it's $2.5m, $10m, or $1b). You build a business that has 5 important properties that make it attractive as a model, and you sell it to someone who either (1) makes a career out of taking late stage startups to IPO or (2) represents a large enterprise who would be better off with your business under their control rather than out in the marketplace.

That's the idea, anyway. In practice, it's a long journey. If you don't enjoy it, you might as well pick up that guitar and start strummin'.

tl;dr yes; no

 

[GuestUser450]

You might be reading the words but not the message.

All I can say is you're doing yourself a disservice by reducing concepts to zero-sum/binary thinking.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Sorry I haven't commented yet, but I've been looking for the law that says if you make a fortune early in life, playing your guitar is illegal.

Thread marked NOTABLE.

 

[MUISaiyan]

I had a similar conflict when I first read the book a few years ago.

Being an artist at heart I wanted to paint all day, be a world famous artist and make millions. Art is my passion.

I put the book aside and focused on my passion. No money came in. I ended up going back to work for someone else and hating it.

Picked up the book again and gave it another shot. Now I work for myself and allocate time in the day to create art and focus on my passion. I'm not a millionaire yet but I make enough already to have time to paint when I want or take days off.

Think of it like a ladder.

Building a freedom business is just one rung on the ladder to your dreams.

While it's possible to become successful at your passions first, the odds of that are slim without business knowledge anyways.

Even successful passion business, artist, musician, etc started somewhere else first usually anyways.

I didn't like my odds of either being the next Picasso who lived rich as an artist or dying broke like Van Gogh. Also didn't want to beg galleries to show my work and be at the mercy of the art elite. Instead, I decided to commit as many years now as it takes to build a freedom business that can will give me all the money and freedom I need to never need a gallery or be told what I should paint.

I've learned to love business as much as art. And have grown faster as artist using the business principles I've learned.

Just my 2 cents.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Nice strawman bro, salted with a heaping spoonful of binarism...

 

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[MetalGear]

As much as this person is asking to get flamed, it seems as if he or she is grappling with the issue and genuinely wants to come to a resolution.

Every young person struggles with this conflict. Ultimately the two paradigms do not need to be mutually exclusive, but often times you have to delay gratification to do what you want.

“A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean” - Will Durant

People have commented and have given great points already.

Here are some words of wisdom from Kemmons Wilson founder of the Holiday Inn chain of hotels, relevant wisdom in bold.

1. Work only a half a day; it makes no difference which half-it can be either the first 12 hours or the last 12 hours.
2. Work is the master key that opens the door to all opportunities.
3. Mental attitude plays a far more important role in a person's success or failure than mental capacity.
4. Remember that we all climb the ladder of success one step at a time.
5. There are two ways to get to the top of the oak tree. One way is to sit on a acorn and wait; the other is to climb it.
6. Do not be afraid of taking a chance. Remember that a broken watch is exactly right at least twice every 24 hours,
7. The secret of happiness is not doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.
8. Eliminate from your vocabulary the words, "I don't think I can" and substitute "I know I can".
9. In evaluating a career, put opportunity ahead of security.
10. Remember that success requires half luck and half brains.
11. A person has to take risks to achieve.
12. People who taker pains never to do more than they get paid for, never get paid for anything more than they do.
13. No job is too hard as long as you are smart enough to find someone else to do it for you.
14. Opportunity comes often. It knocks as often as you have an ear trained to heat it, an eye trained to see it, a hand trained to grasp it, and a head trained to use it.
15. You cannot procrastinate-in two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.
16. Sell your wristwatch and buy an alarm clock.
17. A successful person realizes his personal responsibility for self-motivation. He starts himself because he possesses the key to his own ignition switch.
18. Do not worry. You can't change the past, but you sure can ruin the present by worrying aver the future. Remember that half the things we worry about never happen, and the other half are going to happen anyway. So, why worry?
19. It is not how much you have but how much you enjoy that makes happiness.

 

[BlindSide]

First of all I have read the Fastlane Millionaire every year for the past 3 years or so. I love the book. And yes I already order Unscripted I'm still waiting for it in the mail.

I respect MJ DeMarco and his work but since the the first time I read his book I can't get over the fact that he says that money is more important than your passion. That doing what you love will not make you rich.

Imagine you're on your deathbed sweaty, nervous, trying your best to stay awake because you know that as soon as you go to sleep that will be the last time you close your eyes. You're dying on a 24k gold bedframe. But you don't care nor notice all that, you keep going back to that one thing you always wanted to be. A guitarist.

That was your dream and what you enjoyed most. But it wasn't paying the bills or putting food on the table. Nobody was buying your music either because they were been torrented. Yet you still enjoyed yourself and could survive off ramen noodles as long as your guitar was properly tuned.

But the pressure from your family to provide food and shelter made you take a detour on your dream. That detour led to riches but it also robbed you of your time with your precious guitar. Yet everytime you saw your dusty guitar in the coner of your room you told yourself next week I'll have free time to play. But you never did.

And yes I know money can buy you some good guitar lessons, your own record label, and even a recording studio. But unless you're Fastlane it won't give you time. So you either choose to strive to be rich or to follow your passion. Comfort in life or regret while dying.

Both passion and riches are essential for your life so is it possible to combine them both? Or are we forever force to decide for either or?

You become passionate about something when you become good at it. MJ doesn't want you to throw away passion, just don't fall for making it the focus of your income. Instead, focus on how you can provide value to people.

The reason you will be satisfied if you were to achieve the "riches" (in my opinion, some may be different) is because it shows that you provided value to people on a massive scale.

You can still do things your passionate about..

 

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[Yoda]

Both passion and riches are essential for your life so is it possible to combine them both?

The funny thing is, the more riches you have, the better quality time you can spend within your passion.

Try flipping that around.

I'll wait.

 

[Harti]

Imagine you're on your deathbed sweaty, nervous, trying your best to stay awake because you know that as soon as you go to sleep that will be the last time you close your eyes. You're dying on a 24k gold bedframe. But you don't care nor notice all that, you keep going back to that one thing you always wanted to be. A guitarist.

Would you like to know how you can achieve the happiness you connect with "being a guitarist" or "being rich" right now?

There is a critical error in the underlying assumption of your story, which is that something on the outside like achieving a dream will bring you happiness. If this error exists in your mind, you'll always follow the next thing and pursuing your passion won't give you what you're searching for.

Or in other words: Once you are a guitarist, you'll suddenly be on your deathbed thinking about your hidden passion for cooking or playing with kittens. The point is that the mind ALWAYS feels like it has missed out on life and regret starts coming in once the possibility of death becomes relevant.

But what is the nature of this regret? Why do we always feel like we don't have or are enough? Why do we always want more or different things than those that are present?

The mistake lies in the concept that the mind is right. We unconsciously assume that the mind knows what we want because we identify with it. We think we are the mind.

"I want to be a guitarist" is not the truth. Your mind wants to be a guitarist because it thinks that this is a solution to all its problems. But this is not you.

Just say "hello" in your mind a few times. You can hear that, right? If you can hear it, you can't be it. As simple as that.

The truth is, the mind can never be satisfied. It's not designed this way, it's a survival mechanism.

If it was satisfied, it would be quiet, and if we're brutally honest with ourselves, we don't really want that because it's unfamiliar and evokes fear. Fear of nothingness, fear of death. If there's nothing in the outside world that can satisfy our thirst for happiness, we think that we would be hopeless and empty. But that's not reality.

So if nothing that the mind says can ever make us happy, what then?

Here's the second underlying assumption: "When in our basic state, we are unhappy. We need to do something to achieve happiness."

What if I told you that being happy is our natural state? And that we don't need to take off and fly, but just let go of what's dragging us down? That would render the initial assumption, that we need to follow our passion for achieving happiness, irrelevant.

How to be happy right now

Step 1: Become aware of what makes you unhappy currently. Sit still, breathe, and feel your body. Ignore your mind and concentrate on what's happening in your body. If you're not happy now, then you will feel tension in your body - it can't be differently.

Step 2: Focus on that tension and just be with it, without attempting to change it or modify it in any way, shape or form. Your only goal is to be with what's making your body uncomfortable.

Step 3: Once you've been with that tension, consciously decide (not try!) that you let go of this tension and want to be back to your natural state of happiness more than you want to cling to that tension.

You feel noticeably lighter when you let go of something. Repeat this for everything that bothers you and after a few months (or years) you'll be in a state of constant peace and joy. Then you can enjoy every moment, whatever happens, and don't have to lie on your deathbed thinking "what if".

Best,
Harti

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

... just like commerciable electric cars used to be nothing but a fantasy.
... just like going to the Moon used to be a mere fantasy.
... just like reusable space vehicles used to be nothing but a fantasy.

Ah yes, another isolated conclusion that looks at the end, but not at the beginning.

And why do we have these wonderful fantasies now?

Let me guess: Because Elon Musk was PASSIONATE about credit cards, payment processing and drawing up city guides?

Ha Ha, but no.

Elon Musk made his fortune in things that had zero passion ascribed to it.

However, now, billionaires can follow passion and inventive craziness when money is not an issue and they have unlimited resources. Who wouldn't!?

Heck, even I follow passion now (writing) because I can afford to -- and because now I can give ZERO f*cks. I have that in common now with billionaires.

But they/we never start that way.

Had they started with passion, they would not be billionaires and you certainly wouldn't be hero-worshiping their soundbites which I'm sure they took all but 2.5 seconds to think of. In other words, Elon Musk can do the electric car/space thing NOW because it's entangled in his meaning and purpose, and yea, he probably has passion about it.

It's easy to pursue passionate endeavors when money, paying bills, and putting dinner on the table is removed from the equation.

But like all billionaires, passion is not what launched him there. Mark Cuban was NOT passionate about reselling software and integrating systems-- but that launched him onto a path where he could pursue a passion, an NBA franchise .

Pursuit of passions, and global transformative visions come later -- and that's when they unknowingly corrupt the minds of young men with this turd pile known as "follow your passion."

MEANING AND PURPOSE (buttressed by passion via the feedback loop) is the only real driver of transformative change.

I can guarantee you, I'm more interested in your success than any billionaire. But nonetheless, I wish you luck on the passion thing -- as of now you're 28 which the last I checked, is no longer a child or a student. It is full adulthood. And yet, here you are still waiting tables and going to school most likely taught by a professor who probably hasn't started a damn thing in their life. As the old saying goes, if you want to keep on getting what you're getting, keep on doing what you're doing.

Good luck, I've tried to help and said my peace.

As I said, the real world is a far better teacher than I can ever claim to be.

I'm out.

 

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[Supa]

You know who could learn to and play the guitar all day long, if he wanted to?
@MJ DeMarco

 

[amp0193]

I had a similar conflict when I first read the book a few years ago.

Being an artist at heart I wanted to paint all day, be a world famous artist and make millions. Art is my passion.

I put the book aside and focused on my passion. No money came in. I ended up going back to work for someone else and hating it.

Picked up the book again and gave it another shot. Now I work for myself and allocate time in the day to create art and focus on my passion. I'm not a millionaire yet but I make enough already to have time to paint when I want or take days off.

Read some of @AgainstAllOdds earlier posts. He tried to make painting work for a while, now he's in china importing stuff in to the U.S.

A friend of mine double-majored in theoretical physics and music composition. Over 3 years in his garage, he developed an improvement to a fuel injection system on a certain kind of diesel engine. He sold the tech for 7 figs. Now he can do what he really wants to do... which is play piano and write music.

 

[ZF Lee]

Passion only works if the passion SOLVES someone's problem.
Playing the guitar CAN be a Fastlane. I found some websites which sold soundtracks in bulk when I was trying to make a promo video.
I took some of their freebies and they were good. I'll try to pay next time for more serious videos.
Not to mention music classes and books. When I used to prepare for music theory exams, we bought a hell lot, and mark my words, you could start a business with the money spent!
Music learning is A BIG BUSINESS. Look at the official ABRSM and Trinity Guildhall exam syndicates. Freaking businesses.
Same goes for any art like dancing and animation.

The passion that MJ disagrees with is SELFISH PASSION. The kind of passion that has you lock yourself away from the world to enjoy your own stuff rather than share it with the world. The negative passion that is just a lovey-dovey dreamland of fantastical perfection, that gets shattered if you suddenly lost your interest.

I like piano. It can be considered a passion. I took lessons for it. But it died. Why? I couldn't read notes. My teacher was abhorrent. I gave up. Up until school, when they announced they wanted to make a brass band. I joined because I saw a need. And that need gave me the push to revitalize my musical ability because I didn't want to see the band go to crap.

The Fastlane style of passion works because it gives purpose for the passion to help others. It's never about you. It's about the masses who need the idea, which needs YOU as the executor and the giver of the breath of life.

Why do you need the masses of people to like your passion and even pay money for it in the Fastlane sense, should you chose to monetise it? Because they give INPUT in the form of feedback, ideas, disagreements. And that enriches the activity itself as you have more things to use to create new things.

To keep passion alive, you need to put it out to people, and that is via the Fastlane Law of Effection. It's not easy, but MJ realised that. The general perception is that passion is for fun, just a hobby. No! Passion is to be weaponised as a goal to achieve, to motivate you, or as a tool to push the masses to you to get their money in the form of sales!

As for your dusty guitar, I symphathize. I haven't played my trumpet in a year.....
But I remind myself that my passion is to be mastered by ME and not I be mastered as the slave to my passion. I can choose which is my passion and which is not.

Don't live for your guitar. If you do desire passion for your guitar, do find people who need help with it and Fastlane it. Create some guitar string that doesn't break easily or some special technique that cuts the music learning curve! Remember jazz? It was created out to compensate the lack of musical education of Negro musicians, and countless millionaires have been created out of both the development and distribution of the music. You can either be the musician or the distributor ( remember Sex Pistols by Richard Branson). Or the teacher.

Don't worry about abandoning your passions. If you want passion to be at your side. Take it, and weaponise it, because your opponents lack that! They will never understand how their customers love the art and cherish it, and as a result will never deliver as well as you.

Always, provide value through your passion, to masses, and you can have millions. Don't be so hard on MJ. He loves writing. He expressed once that he wanted to be a scriptwriter. On some old thread, he actually wanted to create some post apocalyptic story (@MJ DeMarco , do you still have it?). But then the success of TMF and TFLF got him busy. He had to push these passions momentarily. Therefore, the anti-passion route was his route. It was painful. He mentioned how he took three years to write the book, detailed in TMF . Procrastination, doubt, desert of desertion....he faced them. That's what weaponizing passion for the masses will invoke. It's not easy. But he had to be merciless, for the sake of millions who needed a way out of mediocrity.

He weaponized his passion of writing in the TMF we know and love. Look at his posts....sharp, witty, chokefull of critical thinking and wisdom. Full of passion. But he was no slave to his passion. He was the master of his passion.

I will be direct and honest. He literally saved my life. Saved it! Saved me from buying crap get rich courses. Saved me from chasing the glitter. I was about to try real estate in a bad timing and funding position before TMF! If he just kept to himself for his writing passions, I'll be F*cked. So would you and many others on this forum!

If a country never produced soldiers to fight for its survival, the country will never last long. The next generation will have no place to call home.

Will you be the master of your passion? Will you say to your guitar, 'I know you are dusty and unused, but you are my tool. As my tool, I will make sure you give great value to others.'?

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Would you like to know how you can achieve the happiness you connect with "being a guitarist" or "being rich" right now?

There is a critical error in the underlying assumption of your story, which is that something on the outside like achieving a dream will bring you happiness. If this error exists in your mind, you'll always follow the next thing and pursuing your passion won't give you what you're searching for.

Or in other words: Once you are a guitarist, you'll suddenly be on your deathbed thinking about your hidden passion for cooking or playing with kittens. The point is that the mind ALWAYS feels like it has missed out on life and regret starts coming in once the possibility of death becomes relevant.

But what is the nature of this regret? Why do we always feel like we don't have or are enough? Why do we always want more or different things than those that are present?

The mistake lies in the concept that the mind is right. We unconsciously assume that the mind knows what we want because we identify with it. We think we are the mind.

"I want to be a guitarist" is not the truth. Your mind wants to be a guitarist because it thinks that this is a solution to all its problems. But this is not you.

Just say "hello" in your mind a few times. You can hear that, right? If you can hear it, you can't be it. As simple as that.

The truth is, the mind can never be satisfied. It's not designed this way, it's a survival mechanism.

If it was satisfied, it would be quiet, and if we're brutally honest with ourselves, we don't really want that because it's unfamiliar and evokes fear. Fear of nothingness, fear of death. If there's nothing in the outside world that can satisfy our thirst for happiness, we think that we would be hopeless and empty. But that's not reality.

So if nothing that the mind says can ever make us happy, what then?

Here's the second underlying assumption: "When in our basic state, we are unhappy. We need to do something to achieve happiness."

What if I told you that being happy is our natural state? And that we don't need to take off and fly, but just let go of what's dragging us down? That would render the initial assumption, that we need to follow our passion for achieving happiness, irrelevant.

How to be happy right now

Step 1: Become aware of what makes you unhappy currently. Sit still, breathe, and feel your body. Ignore your mind and concentrate on what's happening in your body. If you're not happy now, then you will feel tension in your body - it can't be differently.

Step 2: Focus on that tension and just be with it, without attempting to change it or modify it in any way, shape or form. Your only goal is to be with what's making your body uncomfortable.

Step 3: Once you've been with that tension, consciously decide (not try!) that you let go of this tension and want to be back to your natural state of happiness more than you want to cling to that tension.

You feel noticeably lighter when you let go of something. Repeat this for everything that bothers you and after a few months (or years) you'll be in a state of constant peace and joy. Then you can enjoy every moment, whatever happens, and don't have to lie on your deathbed thinking "what if".

Best,
Harti

Read some of @AgainstAllOdds earlier posts. He tried to make painting work for a while, now he's in china importing stuff in to the U.S.

A friend of mine double-majored in theoretical physics and music composition. Over 3 years in his garage, he developed an improvement to a fuel injection system on a certain kind of diesel engine. He sold the tech for 7 figs. Now he can do what he really wants to do... which is play piano and write music.

I had a similar conflict when I first read the book a few years ago.

Being an artist at heart I wanted to paint all day, be a world famous artist and make millions. Art is my passion.

I put the book aside and focused on my passion. No money came in. I ended up going back to work for someone else and hating it.

Picked up the book again and gave it another shot. Now I work for myself and allocate time in the day to create art and focus on my passion. I'm not a millionaire yet but I make enough already to have time to paint when I want or take days off.

Think of it like a ladder.

Building a freedom business is just one rung on the ladder to your dreams.

While it's possible to become successful at your passions first, the odds of that are slim without business knowledge anyways.

Even successful passion business, artist, musician, etc started somewhere else first usually anyways.

I didn't like my odds of either being the next Picasso who lived rich as an artist or dying broke like Van Gogh. Also didn't want to beg galleries to show my work and be at the mercy of the art elite. Instead, I decided to commit as many years now as it takes to build a freedom business that can will give me all the money and freedom I need to never need a gallery or be told what I should paint.

I've learned to love business as much as art. And have grown faster as artist using the business principles I've learned.

Just my 2 cents.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

These posts turned this thread from NOTABLE to GOLD.

 

[thehighlander]

Yes it's possible to combine them both but maybe it's not probable. Great if you can pull it off. Maybe you're passionate about guitar but you're not good enough or you are the good in a genre that won't pay the bills.

Do something you have an aptitude for. The better you get the more you will like it.

Don't do something you hate but it's OK if sometimes there may be parts of a job you hate.

It's not good to be on your deathbed thinking about how rough your life was because you stuck to your passion project! Find a balance so that you take care of yourself and also get to do what you love as time and resources permit.

I've lately been thinking there's some value in sucking it up in a pursuit that is profitable solely to create a solid financial future. Basically save up enough to become financially independent. Live within your means and do what you like. That's much better than slaving to afford stuff that won't really make you happy.

 

[Longinus]

That was your dream and what you enjoyed most. But it wasn't paying the bills or putting food on the table. Nobody was buying your music either because they were been torrented. Yet you still enjoyed yourself and could survive off ramen noodles as long as your guitar was properly tuned.

That's probably why 99.9% of all musicians, while trying to follow their dream, are bitter, frustrated and absolutely not enjoying themselves.

In case you still don't get it: playing songs on a tuned guitar won't solve problems for many people. Curing cancer will.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Read some of @AgainstAllOdds earlier posts. He tried to make painting work for a while, now he's in china importing stuff in to the U.S.

And one thing few artists understand is that your capability of making great art increases as you have more money.

For example, now I can hire an entire studio in China to paint my works. Or start creating sculptures and installing them wherever I please.

It's the same with music.

As you get money, you can purchase better production, better singing lessons, etc.

And if that's not the route you want to take, then at the very least you can purchase more time, and then use that time to create great works.

 

[Argue]

Yet you can't even get the title right?

Yeah, that's disturbing imo.

You missed the whole point of the book.

You achieve the Fastlane during your youth, not your late 70s.

Your whole rant about dying on your deathbed is illogical.

Like @MJ DeMarco says, "Folks, you don't want millions to accompany your cane, you want it to accompany your youth"

You make time an asset, not a liability. The reason you go Fastlane is to have FREEDOM!

• Freedom to play the guitar.
• Freedom to be with your children.
• Freedom from trading 5 days for 2 days!

#ThinkBeforePosting

 

[mike24601]

Simply put: If your business is taking away so much of your time that you have to neglect your hobbies, your family, or your health, it isn't fastlane. What you have in that situation is a job, and there are many of them out there that pay you a fastlane lifestyle but the one immutable tradeoff is you must give up most of your time. You trade the 12 or so hours a day you spend at the law firm or in an office somewhere, and then if you're lucky you get to take your motorboat out on the weekends, which is also a trade in time. We who strive to reach the fastlane refuse to accept that we need to sacrifice the best parts of our life in the pursuit of wealth. Rather, we have to commit to working our tails off for a few years to create a system that frees us from ever having to work again.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Every book is an opinion , guys.

There is more than one valid way to live a successful life - and not everyone is going to have one.

Absolutely.

In the end there is no right / wrong answer.

However I always try to deconstruct everything down to mathematics and put it into the perspective of game theory -- math is the fundamental law of the universe. From my research, what approach has the better odds of succeeding? Following your passion? Or following where there's demand? IMO, it's the latter.

It's kinda like debating MLM -- I won't say you can't succeed or make money at it -- many do -- my problem lies in the mathematics, or the odds of success.

If tasked with winning a game and 1 path gives you 1% odds of winning and the other 11%, which path do you want to pursue? Both paths can win -- it is just one gives you better chances.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

What you're saying is a non sequitur.

What I'm saying is that the vast majority (if not all) of the world's self-made billionnaires became super rich by following their passions and connecting them to profitable business projects which met previously-unmet (or poorly met) human needs (although in Tesla's case, there was absolutely NO need for electric cars - gas- and diesel-powered ones were doing just fine and most people thought, and still think, that electric cars are just an expensive boondoogle).

The vast majority of these self-made men openly say so (a few do not), and contrary to what some people have said on this thread, those billionnaires have NO interest in misleading people, bc they are far, far more successful than anyone listening to them will ever be.

And they're not just Bezos and Buffett, they're also Jobs (RIP), Gates, Musk, VP, Zuckerberg, Paphitis, etc. etc. etc.

Being passionate about what one is doing IS necessary for a very important reason, already evoked by Steve Jobs : building and running a business is very hard, so much so that most people will quit when the times are hard. Only the truly passionate (indeed, obsessed) ones will stay and keep fighting no matter what happens - because for them, it's not just about money or meeting "the market's needs", it's about something much more important - their deepest passion and what they believe to be their purpose in life.

A truly correct analogy in this case would be to compare a businessman lacking passion for his business to a soldier who lacks the motivation to fight. He might have up-to-date precise information about the enemy and the weapons to defeat him, but if he lacks the willingness to fight, he will not fight. Period. As Napoleon has said, the moral factor is even more important than physical factors.

As for your analogy to someone being booed off stage and then rejected by the local church, etc., Mark Cuban is instructive here. Cuban says (as does Trump) that one should NEVER give up, no matter how often one is rejected, because you don't have to be right all of the time, only once in your life.

There's actually a somewhat similar, real-life story about a female Canadian singer. As a girl, she sang in the church choir and then her family send her recordings to some agents, hoping that their daughter would get a chance to perform before one of them. No response. So they called one of those agents and DEMANDED a hearing. She performed well, and now she's one of the world's most famous singers. I'm talking, of course, about Celine Dion.

Jack Ma (the founder of Alibaba) was rejected many times by the Chinese police, by department stores, and 10 times by Harvard (yes, ten times!). Myself, I've been rejected by the vast majority of the French universities I've applied to. But I've been admitted to a few others, and voila, in September, I'm going to France to study

Your story, as told in your own book, MJ, is even more instructive : by your own admission, all of your early (Chicago-era) business ventures failed or made miserable profits. Yet, you kept trying, and eventually, you succeeded. And I don't believe for a second that you acted solely to meet some business need, irrespective of your passions. It's clear from all your writings that you have an enormous passion for cars and for running businesses.

Anyone trying to succeed in any venture in life will fail/be rejected many times before finally succeeding. It's the passionate, motivated person who will eventually succeed. Others will quit. It's as simple as that.

Wow. If you want to talk about logic, you've provided a wall of text that includes multiple survivor biases (survivor spotlighting) the narrative fallacy (podium popping) and string of non-sequiturs.

A truly correct analogy in this case would be to compare a businessman lacking passion for his business to a soldier who lacks the motivation to fight. He might have up-to-date precise information about the enemy and the weapons to defeat him, but if he lacks the willingness to fight, he will not fight. Period. As Napoleon has said, the moral factor is even more important than physical factors.

So starting a business and fighting for your life on a battlefield is a logical equivalency? Ha Ha. You're reaching my friend.

She performed well,

Ya mean, her feedback loop was kicked on and she was told she was good? Probably also done by her parents as well because they spotted a talent?

Yet, you kept trying, and eventually, you succeeded.

But passion was no where to be found. It was purpose.

MEANING AND PURPOSE motivated me.
MEANING AND PURPOSE got me to grind.
MEANING AND PURPOSE helped me overcome failure.

The passion ONLY came later when I started to succeed and see the positive results of my effort.

Winning inspires passion.
Success inspires passion.
Improvement inspires passion.
Overcoming a problem inspires passion.
Learning something new inspires passion.
Achieving a goal inspires passion.
Conquering a fear inspires passion.

You don't follow passion, passion follows you.

Anyone trying to succeed in any venture in life will fail/be rejected many times before finally succeeding. It's the passionate, motivated person who will eventually succeed. Others will quit. It's as simple as that.

Sounds simple, even logical, but it is wrong.

It's the person with the strongest MEANING and PURPOSE who will win.

MEANING AND PURPOSE are things that are more intangible -- like freedom. Like walking into a car dealer and paying cash for whatever I want. Like freeing my family from poverty. Like wanting to live debt free. Like waking up at any time. Like going anywhere, anytime, and at any cost. Like never having to work another day in my life. That motivated me -- not passion.

As for your idealistic fairy tale, you're talking about following passion on a microeconomic level -- oh, I love cars! Start a car dealer! I'm passionate about painting! Sell my art!

Being passionate about freedom and independence is different than being passionate about a specific activity or industry.

By contrast, I was an excellent History student and graduated with top grades... and useless degrees that didn't help me at all find a job. Once I graduated, it was very hard to find ANY job, even the most meagerly paid one. So I had to work as a telemarketer, a door-to-door salesman (and later as a store employee) for telecomm providers, and concurrently as a waiter.

LOL.

Guess the idealistic wonderland of "follow your passion" wasn't strong enough to keep ya following your passion eh?

Or strong enough to create a market need?

Or strong enough to create a job out of thin air?

But here's the thing -- had you won a Nobel Peace Prize in some type of historical endeavor because you felt a meaning and purpose behind your work, I'm sure that passion would suddenly appear as soon as your work became recognized. Such is the story for every billionaire on the planet who now stands at a podium and cherry picks the fart "follow your passion."

You're not even 20.

But if you think you've found the secret to world domination in a classroom and on a blog (despite your real world experience written above) have at it. Follow your passion while studying in France, especially if someone is subsidizing that fantasy.

The thing about the real world not lived in a classroom, it makes our life lessons awfully expensive.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Did anyone on the passion side get closer to your dream while debating in this thread??

Figure out what you want from life. Do something that gets you there. Or don't.

Now if you'll excuse me ..

I'll be in my private studio banging on my expensive midi keyboard (I suck at), bought with my love of music boring copywriting money because ..



I can.



Also .. no ramen allowed. That shit stinks!

P.S.

Copywriting isn't my passion in case anyone didn't catch that.

#toosmoothe

 

[Carol Jones]

Change "follow your passion" to "follow the value" and "do what you love" to "do what works".

Good morning @masterneme from Oz,

I'm new to this thread. Having read all the posts, I have to agree with yours.

I've been running my own businesses since 1983, and have avoided turning my hobbies into money-making ventures.

Because. The one and only time I did that, I wound up hating the hobby. And the business. Just like you said.

But. We're all different. And some people do make successful businesses out of what they love. Jamie Oliver.

Others make successful businesses out of what they see is a need in the marketplace.

Helene Godin. Seth Godin's wife. A lawyer for 22 years. Spent the week in Manhattan. And weekends - maybe - with her family outside of New York. She threw in the towel when she realised her sons put a photo of her on the mantle of their fireplace so they could remember what she looked like.

She's not a cook. But twiddling her thumbs, wondering what to do next, she discovered that people with food allergies had no place to buy baked goods in her hometown of Hastings-On-Hudson, New York.

She opened By The Way Bakery, a gluten-free, dairy-free bake shop.

Is she passionate about baking?

Not at all. She paid for the best bakers. The best recipes.

But she is passionate about her bakery being the best bakery you've ever set foot inside of.

A business without passion won't ever be the best.

But you don't need to be passionate about the idea. Or concept.

You just need to know that it will work. That what you're doing is adding value to the lives of other people.

Once that's in place, your inner drive will ensure that you become passionate about making it the best business. Ever.

And you stop at nothing to satisfy your customers/clients.

That's what is called the passionate mindset. ~Carol❤

 

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[AFMKelvin]

First of all I have read the Fastlane Millionaire every year for the past 3 years or so. I love the book. And yes I already order Unscripted I'm still waiting for it in the mail.

I respect MJ DeMarco and his work but since the the first time I read his book I can't get over the fact that he says that money is more important than your passion. That doing what you love will not make you rich.

Imagine you're on your deathbed sweaty, nervous, trying your best to stay awake because you know that as soon as you go to sleep that will be the last time you close your eyes. You're dying on a 24k gold bedframe. But you don't care nor notice all that, you keep going back to that one thing you always wanted to be. A guitarist.

That was your dream and what you enjoyed most. But it wasn't paying the bills or putting food on the table. Nobody was buying your music either because they were been torrented. Yet you still enjoyed yourself and could survive off ramen noodles as long as your guitar was properly tuned.

But the pressure from your family to provide food and shelter made you take a detour on your dream. That detour led to riches but it also robbed you of your time with your precious guitar. Yet everytime you saw your dusty guitar in the coner of your room you told yourself next week I'll have free time to play. But you never did.

And yes I know money can buy you some good guitar lessons, your own record label, and even a recording studio. But unless you're Fastlane it won't give you time. So you either choose to strive to be rich or to follow your passion. Comfort in life or regret while dying.

Both passion and riches are essential for your life so is it possible to combine them both? Or are we forever force to decide for either or?

 

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[arfadugus]

Isn't the whole point of the fast lane to buy vast amounts of free time to do whatever the F*ck you want to do? You obviously didn't read the book. That, or you are making excuses because you do not believe in yourself. Inb4 working 40 hours a week for the rest of your life gives you tons of free time to learn the guitar. Once I'm rich I'm gonna play Mario Kart 8 deluxe on the Nintendo Switch every night with my family. And still have time to play guitar, become a scientist, become a pilot, go skydiving, get my black belt in Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu, babysit my grandkids, shoot guns and get some tactical training, explore the world, buy my girlfriend a hefty diamond, buy a bar of gold, feed starving kids, buy my black Audi R8 Spyder GT, get good at boxing, fight in an mma fight, write a book, invent something that changes the world, meet the dragon queen from Game of Thrones, give Marky mark a high five, play some starcraft 3, buy a tesla, buy my mom a house, get singing lessons, get dancing lessons, learn Muai Thai Kickboxing, become special forces if war breaks out, buy supplies and a bunker for the apocalypse, help people become rich so that they can give back to the world, train a dog, hang out with a monkey, change some lives, go on the Joe Rogan Podcast, buy a modest house, relax whenever I want to. Give my kid time with his mother and father and the rest of our family, Snowboard, and a bunch of other shit. Sounds like a life of regret....

 

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[masterneme]

I think the problem comes from not understanding what passion is and from some of you confusing concepts.

Passion is just emotional energy that motivates you to act in an engaging way.

When gurus say "follow your passion" they mean follow those activities you really like (hobbies, interests) AKA "do what you love". BUT in order to become passionate for those things you had to try them FIRST. And after doing them over and over again passion (as emotional energy) and passion (as hobby) became the same thing.

You need passion (motivational emotions) to do things but it doesn't need to come from your hobbies. Billionaires are passionate but the source of that energy doesn't come from what they love, it comes from the feedback loop of getting results, it comes from loving "the process".

And you know what? It happened the same way with your "passions".

Psychologically speaking, before you tried your hobby you were pretty much neutral about it. We have this mechanism to learn new things that makes us underestimate the complexity of a new activity so we have the confidence to try it. When we do it we realize that it's harder than it looks and we suck at it, but if we somehow like it our brain rewards us with dopamine and other stuff so we become "addicted" and do it more.

It's the competence what makes us passionate, it's doing first what makes you feel later.

The difference between b/millionaires and those who fail is that the former find a competence that fills a need/solve problems/provides value.

It's the difference between being selfish and selfless.

I add myself to the list of failing because of following my passion, I seriously encourage you not to do it, it will make you hate you passion and it will kill your success.

P.S.: Gurus and pop culture are selling you an idealized world in tune with the feels-good mentality that populates today's world. They want you engaged in meaningless acts that makes you passionately miserable and make them rich and happy. Get real, WTFU and break the SCRIPT.

Change "follow your passion" to "follow the value" and "do what you love" to "do what works".