Passion, Solved: Is It Really Worth Pursuing?

Nearly 60% of American workers are checked out at their jobs. Meanwhile, every graduation speech in history tells you to follow your passion and you'll never work a day in your life. So which is it? In this episode, Drew and I debate both sides. I argue for passion. He argues for practicality. And what we discover along the way is that the whole question is kind of a false dichotomy. We get into the psychology of harmonious vs. obsessive passion (and why one leads to fulfillment while the other led Kurt Cobain to write "I don't have the passion anymore" in his suicide note). We talk survivorship bias, Maslow's hierarchy, and why financial stress literally impairs your ability to think creatively. I share the story of quitting my investment bank job at 24, living on a friend's futon, and knowing within a month that I was never going back. We look at how Jane Goodall took a secretarial job and stumbled into becoming the world's preeminent primatologist. And we land on a phrase I think is way more useful than "follow your passion": develop your passion... because passion isn't something you find, it's something you grow. Get your free episode guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/passion/ Chapters: Chapters 00:00:00 The Great Debate: Passion vs. Pragmatism in Your Career 00:05:04 Round One: The Case for Passion and J. K. Rowling's Story 00:12:38 The Dark Side of Passion: Kurt Cobain and Obsessive Passion 00:23:53 Round Two: Financial Stability as the Foundation for Passion 00:38:47 The Regret Minimization Argument: Why Time Matters More Than Money 01:02:34 Round Three: Developing Passion Through Adjacent Opportunities 01:24:33 Cal Newport's Career Capital: Getting So Good They Can't Ignore You 01:32:34 Round Four: Passion Is Developed, Not Found 01:41:27 The Aptitude Reality Check: When Passion Meets Natural Ability 01:51:47 Finding the Balance: The Best of Both Worlds Approach ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/cdi1xzha ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/217i5ys5 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson Solved IG: https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/ Twitter: https://x.com/markmanson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iammarkmanson

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  A recent Gallup poll found that nearly 60% of US workers are either disengaged or actively dislike their job. They're checked out mentally, they are completely absent emotionally, they are simply going through the motions. On the contrary, surveys also find that nearly 70% of Americans experience financial stress on a regular basis, and just under 50% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. So today, Drew and I are going to butt heads. We're going to look at the question, when considering your career, should you pursue passion, or should you be practical? Should you do something because you love it? As the cliche goes, if you love what you do, then you'll never work a day in your life.

• 0:45Mark Manson?

  Or should you be practical, get paid, and then use the extra money and free time to go do what you enjoy instead? My name is Mark Manson, I am three-time number one New York Times bestselling author, and don't you forget it, this is my co-host, producer, longtime lead researcher Drew Bernie. And today, on the Solve Podcast, we are going to look at one of the most fundamental questions that people confront in their life, day to day. Should I pursue something for the love of it, or should I be practical? I probably get emailed some variation of this question at least once a week. Yeah, if not more. For a decade now. And it generally comes from young people, too, but even a lot of older folks, people

• 1:28Mark Manson?

  stuck in dead-end jobs, people wondering if they should change their career, a lot of people wondering if it's too late. We're going to get into a lot of different nuances and sides of this question. It's a bit of a complicated question. I think it's, there's a lot of individual variation, there's a lot of context dependence. The science says quite a bit about both of these decisions. There's good reasons to pursue each of these two decisions, there's also good reasons to not pursue each of these two decisions. And Drew and I are each going to take up the flag on one side of the debate. So me, I'm going to argue that you should be passionate, that you should pursue what you love, that you should very much index on emotional satisfaction when determining what you want to dedicate your career and your life to.

• 2:13Mark Manson?

  And Drew is going to take the flip side of the equation. He's going to argue that people should be more practical.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  The voice of reason.

• 2:20Mark Manson?

  The voice of reason. Okay, yes, I will be the emotional head case in this episode. And, you know, last episode, we did a debate and we, the roles were reversed. We argued whether romantic love was overrated or not. I was the stone-hearted, cold bastard who argued that love was very much overrated. And you defended it like a knight defending his virgin bride's chastity.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Okay, well, that makes perfect sense to me.

• 2:52Mark Manson?

  Something you're very used to.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:54Mark Manson?

  I'm sure. So those of you who missed the Love is on Trial episode back in February, the way this works is that Drew and I each take one side of the argument. In this case, I take the proposition, which is that one should follow their passion when deciding their career path. And Drew takes the opposition, which is people should be more practical and reconsider. We go for four rounds total. Each of us presents two arguments and the other one can counter argue each of those arguments. So it opens, it will open up with me. I'll give the first argument. Drew will rebuttal and then Drew will open with his first argument. And then I will give a rebuttal and we will go back and forth like that for four full rounds. And then we will try to, at the end of the episode, we will try to synthesize both of our

• 3:37Mark Manson?

  arguments into one cohesive takeaway for the audience of like, okay, how do we make sense of all of this contradictory information? And what can you actually do and how do you apply that into your day to day life? And then, of course, we'll all agree that I won and we'll move on.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  We'll see.

• 3:57Mark Manson?

  Anything you want to say before we jump into our debate? Before you get absolutely throttled by my airtight arguments?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I mean, obviously, there is a lot of nuance that goes into this and we'll get into that. I think there is just, there's an inherent tension. There's, there's different tensions.

• 4:15Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Around this question. And I think when people think about this, sometimes they're, they aren't aware that there's, of what tension they're trying to kind of reconcile.

• 4:24Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  So I would just say kind of pay attention to that as we go through this.

• 4:27Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:29Mark Manson?

  All right. So in other words, you're wrong. Got it.

• 4:35Mark Manson?

  All right, everybody. The question, should we be passionate or should we be practical? On this episode of Solved, quick reminder, if you love the show, please give us a follow and a like. So many people listen to the show every single month and yet they are not subscribed. They don't follow us. Please, it's the best thing you can do to support us. Without further ado, let's get into it.

• 5:04Mark Manson?

  Round one. We need to get some bikini girl in here with, you know, one of those little... No? Okay. I can do it. All right. We're not gonna say anybody. Clearly, clearly, this is the passionate side of the table, obviously. I'm being pragmatic already. Yeah. All right. The case for passion, I'm going to open up with the story of one very famous J.K. Rowling. J.K. Rowling, a lot of people have heard this story. I'll give a very quick overview version of it. J.K. Rowling was a struggling teacher. She was a single mother. She was incredibly depressed. She was deep in debt.

• 5:48Mark Manson?

  She would write, she started writing this novel that she felt very, very deeply about. It was kind of the only thread that kept her going through this period of her life. She was the survivor of domestic abuse. She had gone through all sorts of hardships. She had moved different countries and she barely had two pounds to rub together. She would go sit at this cafe in Edinburgh and type away on her keyboard, writing this novel about a young wizard named Harry. And all she had money for was literally one cup of coffee each day. She was barely eating because she was so broke. Yet, she showed up and wrote every single day. And the result, of course, is Harry Potter.

• 6:32Mark Manson?

  And what's striking about this story, there's two things I think that stand out. One is, I think there's kind of a, almost a therapeutic case that you could make, which I actually, is beyond the bounds of this argument for this episode, but... I would argue that when everything else in your life is going wrong and is a disaster, if you do have something that you're deeply passionate about, that can be something that can kind of tether you back to reality and keep you going on a day-to-day basis. So I think that's one very important facet of this. The other important facet of this is just the absolute persistence and resilience that comes as a natural byproduct of caring very, very deeply about what you work on.

• 7:15Mark Manson?

  I think you could argue that if she didn't care about the novel that she was writing, there's no way she would have sustained that work ethic through that period. She would have given up at multiple places. She would have probably gone and found something else to do. She probably would have, you know, tried to pay her bills. Instead, she had something that was very deeply moving to her and kept her steady and persistent throughout this entire period. And of course, this turns up in the research itself. Research on motivation finds that people who are intrinsically motivated to do the work that they're doing, they tend to do it for longer periods of time, they tend

• 7:58Mark Manson?

  to work harder, they tend to deal with setbacks better, and they tend to be more successful. So it's, passion is, it's funny, I'm way early in my career, I used to give a talk sometimes, and the title of the talk was "Passion is Practical," which is kind of ironic given this episode. And that was always my argument. As I said, if you find something that you deeply care about, even if it makes less money, you're going to do a better job at it, you're going to work longer at it, you're going to deal with setbacks better, you're going to come up with more solutions, you're going to stick with it much more consistently, and that consistency over time is going to eventually result in more success.

• 8:40Mark Manson?

  The other thing that I'll add to this is that we opened up the top of the show with the fact that 60% of US workers feel disengaged from whatever they're doing. They don't see any meaning in it. They're basically going through the motions. If you look at the, like, the definition of the word "passion," its root actually comes from Latin and means "to suffer." And for much of the first millennia, it was used as interchangeably with the word "suffering." It wasn't until the medieval period that it started to represent something that...

• 9:16Mark Manson?

  Was more like worth suffering for, something noble, something important, meaningful, that the suffering actually had a value to it. And I would personally argue, you know, we did a full episode on purpose. A big component of that episode was that, generally speaking, something that you find meaningful, you have to be willing to give up something for it. There's like some sort of sacrifice that is a component of it. Kind of predicting your counter argument here of like financial stability, the mental health that comes with financial stability. I would argue that some of the stress and hardship that comes from pursuing something you're passionate about is a feature, not a bug.

• 10:01Mark Manson?

  Because it does make it feel more meaningful. It does make it feel highly personal. And it does create that sense of purpose in your life, regardless of what's going on around you. And so despite the stress, despite the anxiety, despite the depression, like J.K. Rowling, there's something deep and important about having a practice in your life like that, that you can stay tethered to. The last thing I'll say about this, about my opening argument, is this is something that I felt very personally as well. So I graduated from university in 2007. I initially thought I was gonna go into finance, haha.

• 10:44Mark Manson?

  Got a job at an investment bank right as the Great Recession was starting. Everything was a shit show. I was getting paid nothing. I was working horrible hours, absolutely miserable. I hated my job. And I'd been kind of doing some of this, some web design work on the side. I'd been doing some dabbling a little bit in affiliate marketing and had just read Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Work Week, had some friends that were really getting into like online marketing and e-commerce. And I- Almost irresponsibly, looking back, just cut the cord and went for it. I was like, you know what? I'm 24, I'm broke. The worst thing that's gonna happen is I'm gonna be 25 and broke if I try this for a year and I fail at it.

• 11:29Mark Manson?

  So I was like, let me go try for a year and fail at it. And it was funny because when I started, I had almost no money to my name. I was living on a friend's couch. I was like, doing odd, part-time jobs, you know, working a little bit, working at a bar 10 hours a week, working in audio transcription like 10 or 20 hours a week, and then trying to do this like e-commerce, online marketing thing. And then as an offshoot, started blogging as well. And it was funny because I remember I got not even a month into it. And I remember sitting there on my friend's futon, working and just thinking to myself, I don't think I'm ever going back. I remember in that moment, I realized I would rather be broke and doing this

• 12:13Mark Manson?

  than to be at an office job that I hate and have all the money in the world. Like, I just, I'm, I'm good with this. This subject is, hits close to home for me, in that sense.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Okay. Is that all you got? For that one?

• 12:32Mark Manson?

  That is my opening argument, sir. That is my opening argument.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  All right, okay.

• 12:36Mark Manson?

  What say you, sir?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Well, okay, I'm not gonna actually argue that. I mean, passion is good fuel, don't get me wrong. What you're, what you're making the argument for is that it's, it's a source of motivation, prevents burnout, all of that kind of stuff, right? Like, passion is kind of the fuel that we use to get through difficult moments or when we're not sure of what to do next, we kind of tap that deep well of passion, right? I'm actually not gonna make the monetary, the money stability argument just yet, okay? I actually wanna step back just a minute and look at another famous example of someone who was also very passionate and very successful. And it didn't turn out so great for them, which is Kurt Cobain.

• 13:19Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Now Nirvana is like in my top 10.

• 13:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah, they're great.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Nirvana, okay. Kurt Cobain was notoriously a pain in the ass to work with. Okay. And but a machine. People talked about him like in the rehearsal studio, like he would have these marathon 18 hour sessions sometimes, right? Like just wouldn't quit. A lot of the producers that worked for him, just they said he was very, very difficult to work with and they probably wouldn't do it again if they had the choice, right? When he took his own life, he left a suicide note. And one of the lines he wrote in it was, I don't have the passion anymore. And so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away. That was a famous line. They actually stole it from Neil Young, a Neil Young song, but still.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  The passion part, though. I don't have the passion anymore.

• 14:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  What happens when you fuse your identity so much with your passion? But that's what, like, that's the only logical endpoint for you at that point, right? Um, yes, J K Rowling, she, she like definitely got through a lot of hardship, but more hardship than most people would ever face. She got through that, uh, came out the other side of a jillionaire.

• 14:25Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Two at the same time. Sure. And we'll talk about a little bit about selection bias or the survivorship bias and stuff like that. But really what I want to focus on is like, how much of your identity gets swept up in a passion or how much it can, okay?

• 14:39Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Now, there is a little bit of nuance here too, because psychologists distinguish between harmonious passion and obsessive passion.

• 14:47Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  That obsessive passion is the kind I'm talking about where your identity gets fused with this.

• 14:52Mark Manson?

  Right. So it's kind of, you have nothing else going on in your life. You're just obsessive, can't put it down, can't step away.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Right, right. As you can imagine, a harmonious passion, though, on the other end is you have a good balance with it. You see it as something that you do. It is a passion of yours. You are very emotionally attached to it even too, but you're not like, your identity isn't so wrapped up in it.

• 15:11Mark Manson?

  Got it.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  That any setback to it is just going to send you into a downward, downward spiral like it did with Kurt Cobain.

• 15:16Mark Manson?

  Gotcha.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Okay. It fuels kind of workaholism, like a toxic form of workaholism too. Again, you get so attached to that. This contrast with that whole do what you love and you you'll never work a day in your life.

• 15:29Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Right? Kind of flies in the face of that one. It's like, actually, all I ever do is work. It ends up feeling like that after a while. Right? You there is no work life balance. And we can talk about the nuances of work life balance, too. And I get it if you're going to achieve anything wildly abnormal. Right?

• 15:47Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  That's not something extraordinary. You're probably going to have to have some imbalance in your life. But again, what happens when that passion is threatened in some way? Then your identity is also threatened if you're so fused to it with this obsessive kind of passion that I'm talking about. And also, not only that, it can it it doesn't necessarily protect against burnout. It can actually lead to burnout.

• 16:09Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Right? If you are so obsessed with it, you can't put it down. You can't you can't separate your work life from your home life or any other things that you just need to get done. It all revolves around this one passion that you have. You're so wrapped up in it that everything else gets pushed to the side and your life gets really out of balance.

• 16:28Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Both types of passion, this harmonious passion and the obsessive passion, they do lead to more intrinsic motivation, like you were talking about. People who are intrinsically motivated work more, they put more effort into it, they produce better work, absolutely. Both harmonious and obsessive types of passion do that. But harmonious passion leads to better satisfaction with your work. So work satisfaction or job satisfaction really only comes from from more of a harmonious passion. We'll talk a little bit more about how that's developed later. But obsessive passion actually more likely and more frequently leads to burnout. Yes, you work harder, but you end up feeling worse for it.

• 17:06Mark Manson?

  Right, you're never satisfied.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  You're never satisfied. Never good enough. You can't you just can't put it down.

• 17:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Right? And an ex girlfriend of mine, she was a veterinarian. Okay? She wanted to be a vet since she was three years old. All right. She was when she was three, she told everybody, I want to be a veterinarian. She loved animals. She'd pick up every dog and cat she found, any animal. She just loved it. She couldn't stand to see an animal suffer, knew from when she was three, and she became a veterinarian. That's what she did. She followed her passion since she was a little girl. It's very rare to find that kind of thing, but she did it. By the time she got to she was doing a residency in surgery and in small animal surgery. By the time she got to that, she was actively telling other people who were thinking about being vets not to do it.

• 17:45Mark Manson?

  Wow.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Because I think you gotta be careful like what you're actually calling your passion here too. Okay, a lot of times what we think is our passion isn't necessarily doesn't translate into the real world very well. So for her, it was this, she was actually passionate about animals, taking care of animals. Doing, doing, doing good for animals was basically like her passion. She wanted to do that. Being a vet is not. A lot of it is dealing with difficult owners. A lot of us dealing with the bureaucracy of either a university hospital, which a lot of them are, or some small practice too. Yeah, a lot of bureaucracy. So I think you just have to be very careful about what you're calling your passion and not getting that confused with all the other things that actually go into living out that quote unquote passion.

• 18:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I'll agree. We'll come back to that because I do think there's a lot of truth in that.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Basically though, for this first round, I just, I want to highlight that it was like the harmonious versus obsessive passion. Okay, there's a way to do passion that contributes to job satisfaction and overall life satisfaction too. And there's a way to do it where it consumes you. And that's where I think we have to be a little bit careful. So yeah, J K Rowling, great example of passion. Kurt Cobain, terrible example of passion. So you can't tell me it's just the passion.

• 19:01Mark Manson?

  Yes, fair enough. All right, fair enough. I also, as someone who has burnt himself out on multiple occasions.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, I've seen you do this.

• 19:10Mark Manson?

  Point taken.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yes, right. Okay, so I think, you know, what's really going on here is that you have to balance this. There is a tension here. Like I said, this is what the problem is. A lot of times is that people aren't super aware of the tension that's going on or that they're trying to reconcile anyway. Yes, like I said, extraordinary achievements require some sort of obsessive approach to them. But that also often precedes like a spectacular burnout too.

• 19:39Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  At the same time, just like the Kurt Cobain thing, right? Like the thing that made him incredibly passionate about his work was also the thing that made him ultimately take his own life. So I think what the, the real conflict is, is the balance between.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Like sustaining engagement with your work and compulsive overwork, right? Compulsively doing it versus being like healthily engaged with it. So that's that harmonious versus the obsessive passion there. And this is where it's not a simple choice necessarily between passion and pragmatism, but just like maintaining that healthy relationship between the two. Talked about this before, and I used to think this argument was such a cop out, like finding that balance, right?

• 20:19Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  It's actually really, really hard to find that balance. And that's actually the most difficult way to go about it is finding a healthy balance with something. It's way easy to just go extreme one way or the other. Extreme pragmatism, extreme passion. What's harder is finding that that balance.

• 20:33Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  The other thing too, is just that the tying your self-worth to what you do, to the performance of what you do to, that's just, you're opening yourself out for burnout. And, and like Kurt Cobain said, burning out rather than fading away. Opening yourself up to that. Okay. So the last thing I'll say about this too, is that not, we, we also celebrate this kind of like obsessive type of passion. We, we look at somebody and they're like, oh my God, they're so dedicated. They're so passionate about their work.

• 21:04Mark Manson?

  There's all these stories about like Elon and, you know, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates sleeping under his desk and yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I remember it wasn't just a few years ago where somebody was asking, you know, Elon went to do a talk or something like that. And, and somebody asked him about, you know, oh, you know, I want to do some version of what you do at some point. And he's just like, don't, don't do it. Just like my, my girlfriend was, I said, don't do it. It's, it's not worth it. Go volunteer at an animal shelter, you know, rather than go spend your life being a, spending all these hours and years and money, like training to be a vet or whatever it is. Yes, again, I get it. Passion is a great fuel. It can be a great source of motivation. I don't think it's that sustainable for one. It's not consistent either, the emotions that are attached to your passion. You said that, you know, that, oh, it was this passion that got her through. I'm not so sure that passion's what got J K Rowling through all the time.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  I thought it's probably more of a discipline for her than it was necessarily passion. So I just don't, I don't think you can rely on that as a source of motivation consistently anyway. This obsessive type of passion is masquerading as like healthy productivity or whatever it is. I think that's an issue too, that we have. We celebrate it a little too much.

• 22:15Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  All right.

• 22:16Mark Manson?

  That's fair. All right. All right.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Round two. Round two. All right. This is where I want to bring up issues of stability, issues of money. This is often framed as like the the passion versus paycheck. Yes. Argument, right? Okay. The first thing I want to point out about the J K Rowling story, or any any story, even the Kurt Cobain story too, around passion, is survivorship bias. Okay. This is a very real, real thing. Most people probably know about this right now, but you know, we get all these stories of people who made it, and then they say, oh, yes, I was very passionate about it. I followed my passion. I did what I love. Right. And I made it. And so you should too. What they don't tell you is that there's probably 10,000, 100,000, millions of people who did the exact same thing and didn't make it. Okay?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  There's a luck component to it, definitely. And just, you know, J K Rowling, Kurt Cobain, those are outliers of outliers, right? I mean, they're generational talents that just don't come around that often anyway. And then on top of that, they probably got incredibly lucky several breaks along the way that they forgot about or didn't even realize were breaks for them. So there's a survivorship bias that's going on here. You know, we have this visibility gap where we only see those top performers, or those people who made it through to the other side. And we didn't see the thousand other people that were around them doing the exact same thing and didn't make it, or even completely failed at whatever they were doing. So there's that, all right?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Not only that, though, too, like, financial stress is a passion killer as well. So if you jump into it, you know, if you want to, if you want to be an artist of some kind, especially in the early days, there's not a whole lot of money in that anyway. Very few people make it. So you have the survivorship bias as well. Very few people make it to the top. And then along the way, you're financially stressed. And we know from research that financial stress leads to cognitive impairments. I mean, it's just, you're not going to be able to devote time to your passion if you're trying to figure out how you're going to pay rent or put food on the table. It's just not, it's just not going to happen. Kind of a Maslow's hierarchy of needs thing going on here, right?

• 24:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Like, if you just throw yourself into poverty to follow your passion, well, you're not going to have a whole lot of time to follow your passion. You're going to be worried about finding shelter, you know, getting something to eat. Just general safety concerns and survival concerns. That's going to take up a lot of mental bandwidth. You're not going to have time to dedicate to your passions at all in that situation, right? I think that financial stability, in many cases, in some form or another, anyway, is actually a prerequisite for creative expression and passion projects even, too. One historical example I thought of, that you've written about a lot, actually, too, is Charles Bukowski. So, the story goes, anyway, the lore goes with Bukowski.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  He was a novelist, a poet. For the longest time, up until he was like in his 50s, I think, he was a nobody. And he worked at post office. He worked all these odd jobs, basically, right?

• 25:26Mark Manson?

  All of his writing was rejected for the first 30, 40 years.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Right, right. He was passionate about writing, don't get me wrong. He was very, very much passionate. And, you know, you wrote a great article, still one of my favorite articles you ever wrote, called "Find What You Love and Let It Kill You."

• 25:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Kind of an argument for passion, but in a very also practical way, like, hey, this is going to suck, right? At the same time, too, what I would argue, the real story is, you know, his agent publisher, John Martin, came along, right? This is when Bukowski was working at the post office, and he was hating it, and was looking for something else to do. John Martin came along, he saw this guy, he saw his talent, and he said, okay, I'm going to give you, I think it was $150 a month, to just write full time, and whatever you produce, I'll publish, and that's going to be our deal, right? Well, at that time, $150 a month covered his rent, it covered his food, it covered his cigarettes, it covered his beer. Like, he was good to go. He actually had some form of financial stability. He wasn't getting rich, I get that.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  But, once he had that, then like, three weeks later, he produced his first novel, Post Office, I think, right?

• 26:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Once he had that financial stability, once he knew that, okay, I can, I can put a roof over my head. I can, I can eat, I can have my cigarettes and beer, I'm fine. Now I'm gonna go off and, and really work on this passion project that he'd been working for for 50 years up to that point. So I think that's actually this, like, there has to be some stability somewhere, okay? The economics of creative work are pretty brutal, for the most part. So if we're talking about passions where you, you are seeking some sort of creative career.

• 26:58Mark Manson?

  Which let's be honest, for most people.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  That's what it is, right?

• 27:00Mark Manson?

  It's some sort of creative endeavor or some sort of like, maybe athletics or probably something that is very rare, difficult to succeed at.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Right, right. So like, for instance, for writers, I think this was in 2024. The, the median annual wage for writers was around $70,000, which you're thinking, oh, that's not bad. The thing is, if you look at the distribution, very few writers make $70,000 a year, okay?

• 27:30Mark Manson?

  Excuse me while I crawl under the table.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's a, a few at the top that really pull that, that up, okay? Most of, most writers don't make a whole lot at all. So most of the great works in literature, if you think about it too, were written by people who had day jobs, right?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  So another, another famous one, J R Tolkien, he did not have a J K Rowling story.

• 27:56Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  He was a professor. He spent a decade writing Lord of the Rings. He had the time and the mental clarity and he wasn't stressed.

• 28:07Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  He kept writing after he even became famous, or he kept, I'm sorry, he kept his professor job even after he became famous. Because that stability afforded him the luxury of being able to work on his passion project.

• 28:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Okay, later on. Another, I'll, I'll give you another example, Mark, me, alright?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  I've talked about this a lot. I love woodworking. I would call it a passion of mine.

• 28:30Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Okay. In my garage right now, which is my woodshop, I can't even park in it because I have so many tools. I have tens of thousands of dollars worth of tools in here. Like woodworking really wasn't even on my radar until I was able to start buying some of these tools and afford it from a stable job that I have with you that you've provided, right? I wouldn't have been able to probably even find this passion had I not had that financial stability.

• 28:54Mark Manson?

  Are you saying you're not passionate about this podcast? Is that what I'm hearing?

• 28:58Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'll argue later that I have the best of both worlds.

• 29:00Mark Manson?

  I, uh, audience, I would like you to know that I am deeply passionate about this podcast and you mean everything to me. Thank you.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  This job only fuels my passion for woodworking. No.

• 29:11Mark Manson?

  You are Drew's side chick. I just want you to know.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. I'm just saying that a lot of times there are, there are financial barriers to get into a passion.

• 29:22Mark Manson?

  I, I think you raise a really interesting and useful point for this discussion, which is, and it's funny because I wrote an article, ironically, I wrote an article in 2015 called Screw Finding Your Passion, which I argued that you don't necessarily need to make your passion the thing that you also make most of your money from.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:40Mark Manson?

  There are ways to, and I'm going to talk about this in a little bit. There are ways to take a job that's adjacent to a passion, like Token did. There are ways to simply use a steady day job that you don't hate to fund a passion. And I do think there's probably kind of two subcategories of, of argument here. One is, uh, do, does your passion need to be your primary profession or the primary way you make money?

• 30:12Mark Manson?

  I'm, I'm much more amenable to that argument that, that is probably not realistic for everybody.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Right, for most people.

• 30:19Mark Manson?

  For most people. I would make the argument that I think anybody in doubt of whether to pursue it or try it, should probably try it, if, if for anything, just to minimize future regrets, which is going to be part of my counter argument here in a minute. But I do think there is a kind of a branched. Argument here or point that you're making, which is a lot of people can scratch this itch by doing it as a side thing.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:44Mark Manson?

  And it could be a side hustle, or it could just be a hobby. And, and I agree with that. Like, I think having a passion in your life is, in my opinion, just kind of non-negotiable. Like, you, everybody should have something in their life that they just, they enjoy simply for the sake of doing it.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 31:01Mark Manson?

  That's 100%.

• 31:05Mark Manson?

  So when you say, like, okay, the financial stability can buy you the space to pursue that, on the one hand, I'm like, yes, that is true. But is that the goal? Like, is that ideal?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:19Mark Manson?

  You know, if you're a, if you're a 22-year-old listening to this who's about to graduate from, from university, and you're wondering, which career path do I take? Is that option A is like, okay, go get a desk job at an insurance company and then, you know, enjoy your passion on the side? Or do you take the shot and go and try to make the passion your thing? I would, I would encourage most young people, and even most older folks who are in a, who it's responsible to do it, to take the shot.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:50Mark Manson?

  And see where it goes. So I will, I will concede the point that you're making, and I agree with it. But I, I would return it to the fundamental argument of like, you know, is this, if you are a young person or, or an older person, like you're at a fork in the road, of like, what career path do I choose?

• 32:11Mark Manson?

  I would argue that that should not be the default choice.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Yes, I, I mostly agree with that.

• 32:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right. If a 22-year-old comes to me and says, what should I do? I'm probably gonna tell him, go for it, man. Like you said earlier, what's the difference between like a broke 22-year-old and a like 25-year-old?

• 32:26Mark Manson?

  Nothing.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Take a few years and try it. If you gotta start over at 25.

• 32:29Mark Manson?

  And honestly, as an employer, if I get a job application from a 25-year-old who did take a shot and tried to do the thing that they care about.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:38Mark Manson?

  And, and failed at it, I will actually probably look at that as more of a positive.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:45Mark Manson?

  A 25-year-old that worked some dead-end job at a desk that they hated.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Definitely. Totally agree with that. Okay. The one, I guess, gray area, like, I, when I was like 22, 23, trying to first figure out what I was gonna do, I didn't have much of a backstop. You know, I've told you before, I didn't, I came from pretty humble means, so I'm like, okay.

• 33:05Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I still had to balance that.

• 33:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Um, I found a way eventually to be like, okay, I'm gonna go after the things I need to go after, but I first had to take care of that. Again, going back to the Maslow's hierarchy and needs type thing, like, I need a roof over my head first.

• 33:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Uh, because otherwise you're gonna be so stressed out about all of that stuff that you're just not gonna be able to find it. I agree, when you're younger.

• 33:24Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  There's a lot more leeway to that. And that's a whole discussion around like, what stage of life you're at and everything we can get into.

• 33:31Mark Manson?

  This is, I didn't plan to get into this.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:34Mark Manson?

  But I do think it's probably worth bringing up.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Um, yeah.

• 33:37Mark Manson?

  Cause I think that's a really important point. Like, you, you grew up, you didn't have that backstop. I always knew I did.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:44Mark Manson?

  Like, when my business got tough, I moved back in with my mom for a year. And like, it wasn't really a problem. Uh, it sucked, don't get me wrong. I didn't really wanna be living with my mom at 25, but I did, and it was okay. And, and I kinda always knew in the back of my mind, hey, worst case scenario, I just go live with mom and dad for a year or two and try to figure things out.

• 34:05Mark Manson?

  So, yeah, if you, if you don't have that luxury or that privilege, it changes the calculus a certain amount. It also changes the calculus if you're coming out of school with like heaps and heaps of debt.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:15Mark Manson?

  Right? That, that changes the calculus as well. Like, 100% concede that the, even having the option to pursue a passion as a career is, to a certain extent, a bit of a luxury.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, I'm more of a modern luxury too, I think.

• 34:30Mark Manson?

  For sure.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  For the longest time. This is the thing to, I, I don't think people quite understand is that we even have this option.

• 34:36Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Uh, to think about this, right? This is, this is a good problem to have.

• 34:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:42Mark Manson?

  Anything else you wanna say for your? Your argument in round two before.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  One example I didn't throw in there from the writing world again, Ernest Hemingway. Right?

• 34:51Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  So, one of the most famous American writers to live, right? He was a journalist. That was his day job for the longest time. When he wrote many of the most famous works, he was still working as a journalist. And this was a time when journalists, that was not a prestigious job like it is, like it was, would become seen and then, you know, kind of burn out.

• 35:09Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  But you didn't need, a lot of times it was like, maybe you had a high school education to be a journalist or a reporter back then. So, even Hemingway, like he still had to have a job to pay the bills while he wrote some of the most, the greatest American novels there are.

• 35:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  There.

• 35:26Mark Manson?

  Okay. Totally fair. I hear you loud and clear.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:30Mark Manson?

  The survivorship bias is a very real thing.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  It's very real.

• 35:33Mark Manson?

  I would throw that back at you, though, a little bit, in that the, this idea that you have a safe, comfortable job that buys you the comfort to be able to pursue a passion on the side is potentially a little bit of survivorship bias as well. Again, I don't think, a lot of people don't have that flexibility in their work. They don't have the time, they're juggling full-time job, family obligations, you know, they gotta take their kids to school, they've got health issues, all sorts of stuff. So, I don't think it's as simple as you make the case. And again, you know, I would come back to that data point that, you know, almost 60%

• 36:18Mark Manson?

  of the US workforce is currently disengaged and uninterested in what they do on a day-to-day basis.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:25Mark Manson?

  Right? And I would imagine a very large percentage of those people do have dreams, they do have ambitions, they do have passions that they care about, and they, they probably struggle with the, the weather to pursue them, how much to pursue them, do they pursue them on the side, do they go all in? So, it is like, I do think it is a complicated question. The other thing that I'll challenge a little bit, even though we did talk about the financial backstop and the need for financial stability to kind of launch yourself into a passion.

• 36:58Mark Manson?

  I would argue that that is probably personality dependent. I think for every, every story you can find of somebody who kind of had that financial backstop or that cushion to work off of, you can find counter examples. Ironically, Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain's bandmate Nirvana, tapped to try out to be drummer of Nirvana. He was, I believe he was squatting in an abandoned warehouse in Amsterdam with like 20 other musicians. Like literally sleeping with a leaky roof and like nothing to his name more than a sleeping bag and a couple of t-shirts. And if you listen to interviews with him, he was totally fine with, like he was perfectly happy.

• 37:42Mark Manson?

  Borderline homeless, didn't give a shit. He just wanted to play drums. So there, I think there are some people that are a little bit more built for it.

• 37:52Mark Manson?

  And built to handle the chaotic nature of that lifestyle who are totally fine. Just, all right, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be a starving artist for the rest of my life. And I'm okay with that.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 38:05Mark Manson?

  You know, I went to music school with some guys that were definitely.

• 38:09Mark Manson?

  I would say that it's, it's that type of personality too. It's like, it's more like they just can't not do it.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 38:15Mark Manson?

  Right, like when I.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  I was gonna bring this up too.

• 38:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like when I think about some of the, some of the guys I went to music school with, who, who continued down that path, like for them, it was just a complete given of like, I'm never, I'm almost guaranteed to never make more than like a middle-class income. But I don't care.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  But I can't not do this.

• 38:33Mark Manson?

  Yes, this is, this is the only thing I like. This is the only thing I want to do. It's the only thing I, I'm good at. I spend my time doing.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:40Mark Manson?

  The only thing I care about.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Mark Andreessen of, Andreessen Horowitz, the famous venture capital firm out in Silicon Valley. He said, you know, when, when they are evaluating whether to fund a business or not, they look at the founder, like who the founder is is very important. And he said, you can almost, he's like, he's got it down to, he can tell within just a few minutes. Is this person somebody who just, they can't do anything but this?

• 39:04Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Like, they can't not do it, what you're talking about.

• 39:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  I totally agree that there is a personality type out there that's like that. And if that's you, that's great. I think the vast majority of people are not like that. They don't know what their passion is necessarily.

• 39:15Mark Manson?

  True.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  And that's where they get confused with a lot of these things.

• 39:18Mark Manson?

  Agreed.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:19Mark Manson?

  And there, so yeah, most people are somewhere in the middle and it's confusing. So picking up where you just left that off. I'll give you another example of somebody who seemed to not really give a fuck, which is Thoreau. You know, went out, lived at Walden Pond, gave up all of his possessions, lived on the land. Yeah, look, I think he was a bit of a poser too.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  I love Thoreau, don't get me wrong, I'm not shitting on Thoreau, but the story has got a lot of legend around it.

• 39:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  But, but go on, sorry, sorry.

• 39:50Mark Manson?

  Topic for another podcast, but yes, let's just say I am not the most sympathetic to Thoreau either, but he did make a very good point. And the huge point in Walden is that he believed that most people lived what he called, quote, "a half-lived life," which is that they spend most of their life doing the things that they should do for social approval and security and they, meanwhile, they either ignore or just are in complete denial about the things that they actually want from their lives. And I think one of the reasons Walden is so inspiring to so many people is that it kind of wakes that up in them.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:23Mark Manson?

  Of like, oh my God, there are these things that I want my life to be, that I've never allowed myself to consider that my life could have these things or could be built around these things. Similarly, the, there was a post that went mega, mega, mega viral, maybe 15 years ago. It was called "The Five Most Common Regrets of the Dying." And it was written by a ward nurse who basically spent all of her days taking care of people who were terminal patients and who were about to, who were about to die or on the cusp of death. And so she wrote the piece of the five most common regrets that she heard her patients talk about.

• 41:04Mark Manson?

  And the number one regret is, "I wish I had lived for myself and not tried to make everybody else happy." That's the number one thing that comes up. The second one, which I think this could potentially support both of our arguments, is I wish I didn't work so much. I wish I didn't spend so much time at the office. And then number three was, I wish I listened to my own feelings more, and I wish I gave myself more credit. Like the love question, this is a question that, for the vast majority of the population, it's not a simple yes or no. There's probably a small sliver of the population that it is just an obvious yes, pursue your passion. There's probably also a segment of the population

• 41:45Mark Manson?

  that it's a very obvious, just be practical. You know, I do think, the same way some people are built only to do the thing they're passionate about and can't really do anything else, I get the sense that there's a significant percentage of people in the world who are totally fine just doing a random job for a paycheck and have no problem with it, and are perfectly happy to like pursue their interests on the side. I think the majority of people fall somewhere in the middle. Yeah. And there's a whole spectrum there of people who are like, I wish I had a little bit more time for my passions, but you know, I don't really need to uproot my whole life, to people who are like, very tempted to uproot their whole life, but are maybe a little bit scared, very concerned about the financial practicalities, they're concerned what people

• 42:29Mark Manson?

  are gonna think, whether it's, you know, they're gonna fuck their career, all this other stuff. So for me, I just, I look at, I think it's those people, that large swath of people on that side of the spectrum, that are probably showing up in these deathbed regrets. Those are the same people that are being addressed by Thoreau, and that are the ones that pick up Walden in high school and are super inspired by it. There are a lot of people in that side of the spectrum that it, this is a very, very important and legitimate topic and decision and conversation. I would argue that it is probably more valuable to minimize the chance of regret.

• 43:13Mark Manson?

  Then to maximize stability, security, Okay. You know, subjective wellbeing and whatnot. I think the same way you argue that passion can become a cage, can become obsessive, can become something that people are fixated on and to the detriment of other parts of their life. I think financial security can be its own form of cage that people can become overly fixated on. Yes. And it can control other parts of their life. You know, I think it's, I do think there's a very real question of like, if you told people, hey, you could make 10 or 20% less money, but you could enjoy your job 20% more. I think a lot of people would take that trade. Yeah. I think there's a lot of nuance around the financial stability question.

• 43:59Mark Manson?

  You know, it is another tension in this question of like, how, how much are you willing to trade off? And, and how much of that trade off is likely to happen by pursuing the thing that you're passionate about? I mean, one, one thing that we've kind of danced around a little is that some pursuits have more brutal trade offs than others. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna bring this up too. Yeah, because I work in a profession that is a brutal trade off, right? It's like for every author that hits it big, there's a thousand authors that starve and don't sell any books. For every podcaster that blows up, there's thousands of podcasters that never get downloaded by anybody. I keep tabs with a lot of the, the people that I went to music school with.

• 44:44Mark Manson?

  And just through my work, I've been fortunate enough to meet a lot of professional musicians, a lot of guys in bands that I love. And I talk to them and I hear about the music industry. And every time I, I talk to people in the music industry, about the music industry, my first thought is like, oh my God, thank God I quit music. Like it is so much harsher than other creative fields. And I think from what I've heard too, is that acting is even Harsher than that, like in music, there's probably a few thousand people that make a really good living and then millions and millions and millions who don't. I think you get to acting and you're probably into

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Few hundred, yeah.

• 45:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah, a few hundreds and maybe a thousand at most. And then there's, and then there's millions that make nothing.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:27Mark Manson?

  Right, so there's, there's different power law curves. You know, at least with writing, you can start a Substack and maybe make a couple thousand bucks a year or something like there's a lot of intermediary paths that you can pursue, so.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  So what would you tell somebody then going into one of those like, you know, 0.1% fields, I guess we can call them, but music or acting or visual arts of some kind. I mean, I'm not going to describe, I wouldn't say, "Don't do it."

• 45:55Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  That's not the argument I'm making.

• 45:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  But I think at a certain point, you probably do have to get practical, right? Like if you're not getting really bright lights at some point.

• 46:04Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  You should, yeah, that's probably time to move on.

• 46:08Mark Manson?

  I, so there's two ways I approach this. I've gotten asked this question quite a, quite a few times.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:13Mark Manson?

  There's two ways I approach it. One is to bring Elon back up.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:18Mark Manson?

  I think he made a fantastic point about entrepreneurship. So he was at a talk, this is a long time ago, he was at a talk and he was doing a Q and A and somebody stood up and asked Elon, he said, "What, what words of encouragement or support would you give to aspiring founders and entrepreneurs?" And Elon said, "I wouldn't give any because if you need encouragement, you shouldn't be an entrepreneur."

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:42Mark Manson?

  I would say that like, I kind of feel the same way about creatives for the most part. Like if you are, if you are really going to try to be an actor, like, and you're asking people for words of support and encouragement, I don't think you're going to make it. Same thing as a professional musician, same thing as an author, like, I, I get it, it's hard and sometimes you want like emotional support, you want your friends, but it's like. You know, reaching out to a stranger and saying like, what can you tell me that's gonna keep me going? It's like, well, if you need somebody to keep you going, you're

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Especially a stranger?

• 47:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's like, I'm sorry, but like, that's, that's not it. Like, this isn't it. It's probably not gonna happen. The, the second thing I, I tell people, cause again, there's a lot of intermediary. You could build a sub stack that makes you a, that could become a nice side hustle. Or maybe your attempt to become a professional DJ, like, you actually end up working in a studio as an engineer and you make a good living that way and you like, help produce other, other artists. And there's all sorts of like, little side paths and stuff that you can end up on. What I, what I usually tell people is I say, like, let's say, a kind of a prototypical person who will approach me with this question is, they're usually like, late twenties, early thirties.

• 48:01Mark Manson?

  And they're like, I've been giving this a, a good-hearted go for X years, 10 years, five years, eight years, whatever. It's still not working. I'm getting really frustrated and burnt out.

• 48:14Mark Manson?

  How do I know when it's right to give up? And I always tell them, I'm like, give yourself a deadline. Because it does, that does two things for you. One is, it give, first of all, it gives yourself clarity, right? It's like, alright, I've got till my 30th birthday to make a living doing this or doing something related to it. You know, it's no longer hanging over your head as this unanswered question of like, oh my God, what am I doing with my life? The other thing it does is that, once you have a deadline, now you have, now you know, alright, I gotta, I gotta throw everything at the wall in the next two years, right?

• 48:54Mark Manson?

  It's like, this is, this is the date and I'm not gonna leave any stone unturned. And again, it comes back to regret minimization, right? It's just like, You try every fucking thing between now and then, just to make sure that you leave yourself no regrets. So that when you're on the other side of that deadline, you're like, you know what? I tried the music thing. I did everything I could. I did this, I did that, I did the other thing. I networked, I produced, I did a single, I went on tour. Like, none of it stuck, none of it worked. I gave it my best. I can die happy.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:32Mark Manson?

  Right?

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:33Mark Manson?

  I don't regret anything. Now I know.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:37Mark Manson?

  And I felt that way with music school. Like, when I dropped out, I was like, I know I've given everything I can. And I know that's not enough. So I'm actually okay leaving. I think if I hadn't given everything, if I hadn't put, like, really stretched the limit of, or like, pushed up against the limit of my ability, I don't think I would have had that peace, or as much peace with it. I still, I struggled with it for a while, but it was, the decision to drop out was, it was pretty clean cut.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, okay. One thing you said earlier too, I just want to come back to just real quick. You said having like an adjacent job or something like that. And, you know, if you're a writer, you go into some sort of writing job that's, at least pays the bills. And then you do your passion writing on the side, all that. I'm not so sure about that one either, okay? Steven Pressfield talks about this a little bit, he calls them shadow careers, right? Where, you know, a writer gets into like a technical writing job that they don't necessarily really like the writing, but it's a writing job, it's like, hey, I'm doing what I love. And it's like, well, no, you're not. And actually what you're doing is you're just kind of sapping energy from that passion. So I think if you are going to take that route though, I think if you do want some sort of like, stable. Life of some kind and still be able to pursue that?

• 50:57Speaker 01

  I think there's also an argument to be made. Maybe that works for you. Again, that's very personality dependent. But maybe taking a job that's in a completely unrelated field. You know, like there's a lot of like cab drivers, you know, who might be writers or whatever, you know, driving DoorDash or whatever it is. I think there's maybe something to be said for that, too.

• 51:15Mark Manson?

  I think there's some more nuance here. Keep in mind, too, I'm very much on this side of the spectrum. Like, I was happy to just burn the boats and go all in.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Right, right. That's very much your personality.

• 51:25Mark Manson?

  Yes, and that's not typical, but and it worked out for me, but that's also not typical. I am personally, though, biased towards what also what Steven Pressfield calls turning pro, which is that you block out a certain period, you know, maybe you save up some money.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:39Mark Manson?

  You block out a certain period, you're like, okay, 2027, I'm going to turn pro at the thing I want to be pro at. And then you actually treat it like a job before it's a job, right? So you have, you have working hours, you have rehearsals, you book your time, you start pricing everything, you like set aside a desk in the side of your house, you create a calendar for yourself, you create an email and a website for yourself. Like, you basically act as though you're already a professional, even though you're not a professional, for two reasons. One is gets you to actually act and behave in the way that's going to get you hired for stuff. And then two is that you're actually going to see what it's like to be a pro, because this is another thing that comes up a lot, especially in creative fields,

• 52:24Mark Manson?

  is that the people who, you know, the person who dreams of being an author is, it's because they just really liked their creative writing assignments at school. And it's like, they hate the rest of school, but they don't hate this one part. So they confuse that as a passion or something they can do sustainably for the rest of their life. And it's like, actually, no, that's not actually not your passion, or that's not something that you're deeply passionate about. If you try to turn pro and you actually force yourself to sit down at a desk and write for at least four or six hours a day, what you'll soon discover is like, oh, I actually don't like being a pro at this. I like this as a hobby. And that happens a lot, too. I think that was very much true with me with music, which is that I loved being the talented

• 53:08Mark Manson?

  guitar guy at parties in high school. I liked being able to play in a rock band and play covers at my friends' parties. And I liked the attention it got me. Once I got to music school and I actually had to turn pro, it fucking sucked. Because being a pro musician means you're alone in a room practicing all day, every day. And it was miserable. So it's going pro, as Steven calls it, I think is advantageous just because it forces the question. And then again, it's about leaving no regrets on the table, right? It's like that, even though that is sad and disappointing, that turns out you don't love the thing you

• 53:49Mark Manson?

  thought you loved, now you know. For the rest of your life, you're like, oh, no, I tried. I tried the author thing. I tried writing a novel. Didn't work out. Didn't love it. And you can move on and be at peace with it. The last thing, the last point I'm gonna make in this rebuttal.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  That was aggressive.

• 54:07Mark Manson?

  I was like, you're not getting away that easily, mister. I do have one more point, and I'm excited. I'm wagging my finger because it's a good one. I think the reason I keep focusing on the regret minimization is because you can recover from financial ruin. You can be, like, you can lose your money, and you can make it back later. If you lose time, you can't go get that back.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, true.

• 54:37Mark Manson?

  Right? So if you're a 40, 50-year-old who always wanted to be an actor and never went for it, like, you can't get that back. Whereas if you go broke at 25,

• 54:50Mark Manson?

  You can, you can find ways to make the money back later.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I, I will say too, I mean, I'm not sure that still requires passion though necessarily. Like, you know, I, I left a stable graduate program, you know, to come work with you. I don't know. I mean, I was, I guess I was passionate about writing. That's really what I wanted to do was something in the writing field and I'd loved self-development, self-help stuff was big time. I liked all that. I don't know if I would say, I liked research. Yeah. I mean, I guess there was passion elements to it, but I wouldn't like, I don't know. I, I just find myself, I don't know if I have a lot of passions necessarily or just a lot of interests, I guess I would say.

• 55:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  And so that decision definitely minimized regret for me. I'm not sure if it was really steeped in passion though. So I think there's some subtlety around that too. So that's the only thing I'll say about that.

• 55:40Mark Manson?

  My observation, since we're talking about you.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:43Mark Manson?

  My observation is that you're very passionate about parts of the job, not

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:47Mark Manson?

  all of the job.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  That would, yeah.

• 55:48Mark Manson?

  Which is true for me as well.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. Yeah. I think I've probably told you before that like, I like, I don't know, 60, 70% of my job and the other 30% is what you pay me for. So, yeah, yeah. And I'm, I'm totally cool with that too. Cause I've had it the other way where it's like, I like 10% of this job and that's it.

• 56:03Mark Manson?

  Well, for what it's worth, I feel the same way.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 56:07Mark Manson?

  And I made my own job.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  And you, yeah, yeah. You, you made your bed there, didn't you?

• 56:11Mark Manson?

  But I just, I do think some of that's inevitable.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:14Mark Manson?

  But.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  And yeah, and I'm totally cool with that. I guess, and that's a personality thing too.

• 56:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Like I can put up with, I can put up with that in, in exchange for what I get.

• 56:22Mark Manson?

  No, but I mean, I, I'm, I'm being serious. Like I'm making the point, like even, you know, it's like, coming back to Kurt Cobain, like he fucking hated dealing with the record labels. He hated touring. He hated promotional stuff. He hated going on MTV. Like he, there was so many, like part of what burnt him out, he's actually, actually a very interesting case study here because he was obsessively passionate about the music and about making the music, writing the, writing, recording, performing the music. It was everything else that came when he got famous that he fucking hated. It drove him, it drove him to suicide. Like he, he hated it so much. Uh, so it is, it is another one of those.

• 57:08Mark Manson?

  Be careful what you wish for type things like, you know, turn pro before you turn pro because then that's actually going to show you, do you like doing this? Right. Do you actually enjoy the job or do you enjoy the fantasy of the job?

• 57:23Mark Manson?

  We've covered a lot of ground already, so some of this is going to be retreading a little bit of the nuance that we already got into. But I want to return to taking a job adjacent to the thing that you're passionate about, because I do think there is a lot of value in that. Again, it depends, it's personal and everything. But I think for a lot of people, one of the things that I think is very true among a lot of people is when you feel deprived of the thing you care about, you think that you need to go all in and you need to completely rebuild your entire life around the thing that you're passionate about. When actually, like, if you just get a little bit of a taste of it here and there, a lot of, I think for a lot of people, that's enough. Okay. And again, like, not to rely too much on anecdote,

• 58:08Mark Manson?

  but like, a number of my friends in music school, they have ended up in jobs adjacent to music. Like, they're not onstage performing at large festivals, but they're working in a recording studio, or they're a sound engineer at a media company, or they're like a music director at like a large organization or at a church or something like that. So it is, it is, they have ended up in places adjacent to where they wanted to end up, but it is not exactly where they wanted to end up. And the reason I bring this up is because passion is actually a very fluid thing. I think we tend to erroneously think of passion, kind of the same way a lot of people think of soulmates. Like, you have this one fixed passion out in the world,

• 58:53Mark Manson?

  and I have to find it, and I have to live it, and if I don't, then my life is ruined. And that's just a very Disney way of approaching passion in one's life. I very much agree with that, yes. It is, passion is complex. It evolves, it changes, it shifts, it changes shape, it changes intensity. It is, and it is something that as you go through your work life, it can, it is something that you can almost... Mold around what is available to you. So as an argument for pursuing that adjacent position, I actually have a really great example

• 59:34Mark Manson?

  of this is that Jane Goodall originally took a secretarial job around animal researchers, not because she wanted to be the world's preeminent primatologist, not because she like particularly cared about monkeys, she just really liked exotic African animals. She thought they were really cool and really interesting, and so she took a secretarial job adjacent to that. It was through her exposure in that job to all the different things that researchers were doing that she became incredibly interested in what was going on around her. And then the real breakthrough is when she started observing chimpanzees frequently and started noticing that chimpanzees, very similar to humans, seem to have their own

• 1:00:17Mark Manson?

  personalities and character traits and, you know, different proclivities and whatnot. She would eventually go on and become, become the world's preeminent primatologist, a legend in her field. But that was never the plan at the outset. It was she just put herself in the vicinity of something she thought was pretty cool and was very interesting and she enjoyed thinking about. In many cases, you were referring to earlier, like people who don't know what they're passionate about, I think that is probably the practical solution for most people is what do you think is cool? What do you think is interesting? What do you like to spend your time thinking about? Awesome. Like find a job that gives you more opportunities to think about that thing or be around that

• 1:01:01Mark Manson?

  thing than most other jobs. As a result, you create surface area for yourself to grow and develop a passion for something rather than necessarily like coming to it with this like preformed passion, which I honestly think is probably pretty rare. Like I think examples like your ex-girlfriend, she's the exception. A hundred percent. Like, most people don't wake up and know that they want to be something when they're three years old. And pursue that for the rest of our life. Most people, it's things come and go, right? Like your obsession when you're a teenager is different than your obsession in your twenties. And then you develop a slightly different obsession in your thirties and then you get really into something else.

• 1:01:44Mark Manson?

  Like throughout my career, I've watched my passion shift and change quite a bit. You know, early on, it was very much writing, like my ideal career, you know, 10, 12 years ago, when you started, was I just want, I just want to write all day and I just want all this other stuff to work without me having to think about it. And for many years, you and Philip basically ran the online business and I just wrote. And that was how my life was. As I've gotten older and the, and the, my career has changed and shifted. I found myself kind of thrust, you know, with the, with doing video content and social media being more important and

• 1:02:26Mark Manson?

  launching this podcast, you know, I've, I've found myself in the middle of like this little media company. And I've had to spend a lot more of my time and energy focused on business. And what I've discovered is that I actually really like the business side of this career. And it's super interesting to me. And in many ways, like, and I still love writing, but it's, it's not as, it's not my one and only, right? It's not my soulmate that I like, I have to only do that for the rest of my life. So it is, I've definitely felt my passion within my own career shift and evolve over time. And I think that's probably true for, for, for most people. And so I think it's just

• 1:03:06Mark Manson?

  the reasonable way to approach passion isn't to just ditch everything and go all in on your acting aspirations. It's probably put yourself adjacent to it, put yourself in the vicinity of it.

• 1:03:20Mark Manson?

  And then let it kind of grow and emerge as a side effect. There's so many more examples of this. I mean, I won't bore the listeners too much, but like Trent Reznor started as an engineer in a recording studio and he played in a 80s band on the side.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I remember you showed me these videos.

• 1:03:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  I remember this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:40Mark Manson?

  And he worked these long hours in the recording studio and he was always the last to leave. And so it was, he decided some of those nights, like it was him by himself in the recording studio. He's like, well, why don't I just throw a tape on the, on the machine and record some of my own songs and see what happens. And that eventually became his first album. Like it didn't, it wasn't like this like predestined thing that he decided when he was 10 and every, every choice he made throughout his life led to it. It was just kind of like, he was really good in a recording studio.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Mark Manson?

  And as a side effect of that, it made him, it made it quite easy for him to record his first album.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. Are you arguing still for passion or pragmatism here? That sounded like one big be pragmatic argument.

• 1:04:24Mark Manson?

  Be passionate pragmatically.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:04:26Mark Manson?

  It's.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Let me point something out, I guess. The Jane Goodall story. It's a, you're absolutely right. She got into something. She found her passion through that. She was in a kind of adjacent, she was on the periphery of the field anyway. And then, oh, I like this thing. She was also, she got a Leaky Foundation grant. That provided her with some stability to be able to kind of play around in this area and figure out what she liked. Trent Reznor was a sound engineer, worked as a sound engineer while he did this. I'm hearing an argument for pragmatism first is what I'm hearing.

• 1:05:00Mark Manson?

  My argument here is that passion is something that can evolve and develop after you've taken that first step.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:08Mark Manson?

  You don't have to wait for the passion to take that first step. You can take the first step in the direction that you think it's very, very likely the passion is. And then the passion will evolve and develop from there.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  So take that first step. And take a pragmatic approach to finding out what area,

• 1:05:30Mark Manson?

  What?

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  The specifics of the passion.

• 1:05:32Mark Manson?

  The reason I bring this up to something like almost 50% of our waking hours as an adult is spent doing our job. And it's not a difficult argument to say that liking what you do for work is a very, very big value add for your life, right? So there is like a very serious sense of fulfillment and satisfaction, like a huge part of your subjective wellbeing probably comes from how satisfied you are with your job and your career.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:59Mark Manson?

  My point is, is, you know, we've been kind of dancing around this argument of like, you know, passion is too risky. You have to kind of throw things by the wayside. You gotta be willing to like live and be broke. You know, financial stability is important. It's, my point is, is that you can pursue passion in a piecemeal type of way. You don't necessarily have to throw caution to the wind. Like it's that lifelong fulfillment. And you can accept like the same way, a lifelong marriage to somebody, not every year is a great year. You go through high times and low times and it kind of, the marriage shifts and changes

• 1:06:42Mark Manson?

  and evolves over time. I think the same is true with one's passion. And my only point, my argument here is that as long as you are doing something that you feel strongly about and that you care about, you will always find a way to evolve and kind of do that dance with it. Whereas if you're doing something that you hate, or don't like, or don't care about, and you're in a position, like let's say Jane Goodall didn't give a shit about monkeys and was just like, just give me my paycheck, boss. And then, and then the, the foundation grant comes in, or like an opening comes in for like a new research position or whatever. She's not going to jump at that. She's not going to put her hand up and say, well, wait, can I try that? Like, she's

• 1:07:26Mark Manson?

  probably just gonna be like, whatever, you know, it's, there's a

• 1:07:32Mark Manson?

  There's a certain amount of adaptability that comes with caring about the thing that you're working on that is going to serve you well over the long run. That is going to make you, make the career more sustainable, help you develop skills over a longer time horizon, and basically be better at and enjoy more what you do.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. I don't disagree, and I'm not saying like, passion is just irrelevant in any way, shape or form. I think it is very important, and you should use it, and you should fuel your motivation with it, all of that. I'm just not so sure that, you know, what you're talking about is like this long-term fulfillment, a long-term satisfaction with your, with your work specifically is what we're talking about. Oh, it doesn't have to be, you acknowledge that too. I'm just not so sure that passion is what actually fuels that in particular. And I don't think it necessarily fuels whether or not you enjoy your job. It can, that can be a source of fulfillment in your work.

• 1:08:30Mark Manson?

  I would argue it's probably the most sustainable way to enjoy your job.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Yeah, okay, I could see that argument. I just think that this still though, in the exploration of that passion, just like with Jane Goodall or Trent Reznor, they still were doing that from a very stable base. They found a way to enter into it from a very stable base.

• 1:08:55Mark Manson?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  And then they could go in and they could play around with it.

• 1:08:57Mark Manson?

  Yes, and that is-

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  So, what I'm saying is, like, if they just let, like, followed their passion-

• 1:09:04Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Quote-unquote, they knew they were passionate about this field. They had an idea, okay?

• 1:09:09Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Which, a lot of people don't, for one, okay? So you do have to do some experimentation around that. My, my argument is, play around in, in a field or an area where you can have some stability, and that allows, that stability is what gives you freedom-

• 1:09:25Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  -to explore that passion. That's kind of my, I think, my, my argument here.

• 1:09:30Mark Manson?

  Okay, it sounds like, it sounds like we're in a, you say potato, I say potato-

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  We are converging at the same point, I think, yes.

• 1:09:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah, because it's, it's, I agree with that, I just characterize it differently, right? So it's like, I imagine, I don't know this for sure, but I imagine Trent Reznor's thought process when becoming a sound engineer at a studio was not, "Oh, this will give me a steady paycheck so I can see what comes next." It was probably like- I love music, I love technology. This is the best opportunity I've come across so far that allows me to leverage those things and work on them. Like, I don't think he felt any lack of passion around being a sound engineer in a studio. It's not what he became most well-known for, but it is still very much a huge part of what he does as a career today. Jane Goodall, same thing.

• 1:10:18Mark Manson?

  I think there's, you know, she knew she found animals really interesting and she liked being, or she liked thinking about them, talking about them, being around them, right? So it's like she put herself in the vicinity of something that she thought was exciting and interesting. I don't think it was necess-- I mean, there's probably a million secretarial jobs she could have taken, but she chose that one because that was the one she was, that was adjacent to something that she was really interested in. So like, I hear you, and I guess you, one way to characterize this is that I am conceding that like, yes, you don't need to go the full fuck it, live in an abandoned warehouse.

• 1:10:57Mark Manson?

  Like Dave Grohl, path to passion, you can, you can find a foothold that's a little bit more practical, like being a sound engineer or, you know, getting a job in an office. That is adjacent or in the vicinity of the thing that you are actually deeply passionate or interested in as a way to like, as an entry point or as a way to give yourself surface area to like grow into that, that area of interest.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Mark Manson?

  So it is, it is part emerging of our points, but I would say that the initial motivation and drive is very much on the passion side of the spectrum. It's not like, they're not doing it because like, oh, well, I just needed a paycheck.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Yes, okay, I get that.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Maybe we'll get into this a little bit later too, but like this gets into like kind of how does passion develop as well?

• 1:11:53Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Right? Maybe we'll save that here for for next round, but I go back to this point that I made though, that if you are in an unstable situation, it is just very hard to like be fueled by passion, I think for most people. There's exceptions, I get that, but they're the exceptions, not the rule.

• 1:12:10Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Instability, like if you're starting from a point of instability, it's just hard. It's like, long term, that is going to weigh on you more than, oh, I followed my passion. The financial stress, the stress of knowing whether or not you're going to make it, all of that weighs on you, can bring you down just as much as a soul sucking stable job, I think.

• 1:12:33Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  At some point, at least.

• 1:12:35Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  And so I think you do have to, I think for most people, exploring passions, exploring, whatever you want to call it. Again, we go back to the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You need to have some of like some stable base from which to explore and from which you can self actualize even to as Maslow would put it.

• 1:12:55Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  That comes later, but you have to have all these other things taken care of first for most people. Not all of them. It's never going to be perfect. I get that. You have to take some risks and you have to put yourself out there. That's fine. I'm just saying that for the most people, they're going to do best when they have a stable foundation from which they can explore. That's my point.

• 1:13:15Mark Manson?

  Isn't that the same point you made earlier, though?

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  It is, but I bring it up again because because if you're talking about long term fulfillment.

• 1:13:22Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Right? You're talking about, yes, like you probably will look back and you're like, ah, I made some mistakes. I had some failures, this and that. And you look back on those as kind of badge of honor if you made it through, right? But I mean, if you don't, like where, where the, what does it mean if you get to the end of your life and you tried your passion, but like everything failed, you lived in miserable poverty, nothing came to fruition. There's plenty of stories like that, right? What then? You know, I mean, I just don't think passion is what should guide these decisions from the outset. I think you can find passion later. I just think you need to do it from like somewhat of a staple base. It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that most people are going to need some form

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  of stability in order to even find their passion and discover it. Again, I go back to my example of like the woodworking. I probably wouldn't have found that passion had I not had the resources to buy a bunch of expensive tools, right?

• 1:14:20Mark Manson?

  Well, now, now I feel like you and I are speaking to two different audiences because I feel like I'm speaking to the audience of people who have something that they're really passionate about and really interested in, but either don't have the courage or the the knowledge or don't have the starting point to like actually give it a shot or see or like know what is a realistic way to pursue it. I feel like you're speaking more to the people who don't maybe don't have a clear passion, but they also don't really love what they're doing now, but they don't really know what the alternative is. And so I think, I think your point is valid to those people, right? Like if you are somebody who has no idea what you want to do, you have no

• 1:15:05Mark Manson?

  idea what you like, then yeah, you should probably pay your bills first and like then start worrying about this stuff a little bit more. Whereas like I'm speaking more to the people who they do have something that they deeply love and they do have something that like they really think about what if I found a job in that or what if I tried that, what if I really went all in on it? How far could I go? Could I make it work? Could I figure something out?

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Okay, that I can, I can get on board with that. Yeah, I'd guess that it's more common that people just don't even know what their passions are necessarily, or, or they don't have a clear passion where it's, it's very, it's very clear on what they should be doing about it. Gets into another kind of point too, that I think a lot of people use passion kind of as a stand in for clarity. You know what I mean? Like, like that's what they're really looking for is clarity on what to do. And if like passion gives them that emotional clarity, basically. And again, I just don't think that that's a sustainable, long-term strategy.

• 1:16:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I feel like most people do know what they're passionate about, but I think a lot of people, a large percentage of people who know what they're passionate about, I think they have a comfortable relationship with what their passion. So for instance, like one of my best friends back home, he's extremely passionate about dancing and he's great at it. And he even has like a little bit of a side hustle teaching it. But he seems to have a great relationship with it. Like he has a day job and then he like does all these like dance competitions and stuff on weekends and travels around the country to do them and books his vacations around them. But he seems to have a very healthy relationship with it. It's not, he doesn't seem to have any aspirations of like trying to be a full-time dancer for the rest of his life. He's like, no, I've got this really

• 1:16:48Mark Manson?

  cool gig and I get to go to these cool events and I've got a bunch of friends, like a nice community. So I agree with you that I think a lot of people have a healthy, like they've found a healthy slot in their life to like put their passion into. And I think there's a lot of people that their passion is just purely a hobby, much like you and woodworking. But I do think there is a category of person that hates their job, has something that they're very passionate about, has something that they maybe gave up, maybe regret not trying harder, maybe not, maybe wish they pursued a little bit more seriously. And like this, this becomes an extremely salient question.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. So, okay, what would you say then to someone, let's say they're going to university or they're in grad school or something like that for, I don't know, it could be any field, but what they're really passionate about is say they're baking. They love pastries and breads and all of this. And so they decide to drop out and go start a bakery. Okay. And then two or three years later, they're just like completely stressed out because they're running this business.

• 1:17:55Mark Manson?

  This is a false dichotomy. This is a bit of a straw man because it's like you don't have to drop out of school to start experimenting with baking, like professionally, right? Like it is as simple as.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  That's my point, too.

• 1:18:09Mark Manson?

  Yes. And it's, but I mean, this, I mean, I'm glad you bring this up because I think a lot of people struggle with this question because of this false dichotomy, right? Like if you're a grad student who's Work like working really hard in school and you love baking, you're really passionate about it. There is a way to experiment with both of those things simultaneously. Like you can take part of your weekend, bake like a motherfucker, bring it to your classes, give it to a bunch of your classmates, ask them, you know, maybe sell it for five bucks per pastry or whatever, see if people will pay you, see if it's good enough that people are like, hell yeah, give me another one. Like, that's an easy way to test out, that way you test out A, if there's market demand and then

• 1:18:49Mark Manson?

  B, you test out, do you actually like spending your entire Saturday doing this for people, seeing their response, getting feedback, trying to improve it. So it is, there's so many ways to like test the waters with this stuff. And I do think the, the all or nothing mentality around this does more damage.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  That I would definitely agree with.

• 1:19:10Mark Manson?

  It harms, it definitely makes this decision harder for people.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Right, I agree, there's a bit of a false dichotomy. There's not, it's not just passionate or pragmatism. Again, like I said, though, finding that balance is like the hard part.

• 1:19:21Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  But I, yeah, I don't know, maybe this is a good time too to bring up some Cal Newport and talk about Cal.

• 1:19:26Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  One of it, one of my favorite books that he wrote anyways, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

• 1:19:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  And it really does address this question in a lot of different ways.

• 1:19:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Now, Cal definitely comes out of, he's, you know, he's a computer programmer, he's a very systematic thinker, a computer programmer and writer, right?

• 1:19:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Writes books on productivity and all of that kind of stuff. Uh, but his day job is a computer programmer at Georgetown. He went to MIT, he's a very smart guy, very accomplished, probably followed his passion in some way or another, but he's very much a practical guy at the same time.

• 1:19:56Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  He talks about, in that book, he talks about building career capital. And I think this is probably most applicable for a lot of people, that, those two groups you were talking about. The, the kind of people who got into something, maybe you've got a decent job, it pays pretty well, you're good at it too, and it's not like soul sucking necessarily, but you're like, ah, there's gotta be something more.

• 1:20:16Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Right? A lot of times what he argues too, especially like in the software development field or anybody who's in kind of a, one of those types of jobs, a white collar job, they like their job enough, they get enough satisfaction out of it, but they're always kind of like, ah, there's probably something over here.

• 1:20:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  An example he gives, like somebody who's like maybe a I don't know, they're they're a database engineer or something like that, but what they really want to do is like front end web development or something like that. It's related, but they want to change.

• 1:20:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  He argues, no, don't do that. You've built up all these years.

• 1:20:46Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  In your life of this, this, what he calls career capital. And he says, get so good at that, they can't ignore you. That's where the, the, the title comes from.

• 1:20:54Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  And then what you do is you leverage those skills that you have, have now, these high value, value added skills that you have. And you leverage that into a lifestyle that is fulfilling for you.

• 1:21:06Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  So if you're talking about long-term fulfillment, just in general, again, I just, I'm just not sure if passion has to factor so heavily into the equation. What he argues for, and I understand this is probably a certain type of person. What he argues for is using that career capital you have. Then you say, you know, you've worked at this job, you've, you've worked at it, you went to a university, you worked really hard in university. Got this job, you're working really hard at it, you, you keep learning, you get better at it. Until you're so good that like, you're almost indispensable to the company. Now you can go to the company and be like, hey, I want to work my own schedule, I want a flexible schedule, or I only want to work six months out of the year. And I'll give you those six months, but then the other six months out of the year, I'm going to go, you know, hiking in New Zealand or whatever.

• 1:21:46Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  That I think is a pretty practical way to live a very fulfilling life. And have long-term fulfillment in your work and maybe even explore your passions. In those times where you get to, you know, you get to leverage some time off or something like that. You get to negotiate some leverage, leverage time off.

• 1:22:01Mark Manson?

  If you ever try to work six months a year, I will drive to Colorado and fucking kill you.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  There goes my idea.

• 1:22:09Mark Manson?

  Don't you get any ideas, Drew Bernie.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  It was funny. I started thinking lately, I was like, his idea though, is like, you're talking, again, we're talking about long-term fulfillment right now.

• 1:22:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  His idea is actually for long-term fulfillment, maybe what you really need to do is think about, think more in short term. What do you want your days to look like?

• 1:22:27Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Right? And if you can get so good at your job that you get a lot of leverage over your, your schedule. You can kind of craft your life this way, um, as long, but you have to have that nice, stable base, right? That I'm talking about, from which to negotiate from.

• 1:22:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I'm not, I'm not going to ask for six months off.

• 1:22:46Mark Manson?

  Okay, so all the, all the backend developers who come back after their six month sabbatical and discover Claude Code took their jobs.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  He wrote that book in 2012, alright? Alright, he didn't see that one coming.

• 1:22:59Mark Manson?

  I, okay, I, we're, we're, now we've bled into round four here.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:23:04Mark Manson?

  We're, we've

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  Let's get into it.

• 1:23:05Mark Manson?

  We've, we've kind of bled into your round four argument. I, I have, I have a rebuttal to that and then

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:23:12Mark Manson?

  I'm actually gonna bring up another one of Cal's points in that book.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, he, yeah, he could definitely go either way, I'm sure.

• 1:23:21Mark Manson?

  No, no, no, no. I think there's some very interesting nuance and distinctions that should be made here. Because what you said is not wrong.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Mark Manson?

  I, I don't think, I think in that narrow context, right? You're a backend developer, you're really good, you want to get in the frontend development.

• 1:23:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah, his advice is probably correct.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:23:39Mark Manson?

  It's

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Well, and I think that can be applied to a lot of different, to a lot of people.

• 1:23:43Mark Manson?

  So that's where I disagree. Like, I think it's very, I think that advice is very context-specific. And I'll give you, I'll give you a couple of reasons why.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:23:50Mark Manson?

  Because it's, first of all, that is a person who is, has developed career capital in one area and wants to pivot into a very adjacent area, so a very similar skill set. What do you tell a person who's become very good as a backend developer and is like, "I fucking hate computer programming."

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Mark Manson?

  "I hate programming, I hate code."

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Even if they're good at it.

• 1:24:13Mark Manson?

  "I hate software."

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:14Mark Manson?

  "What do I do?"

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:15Mark Manson?

  Right? Like, that's not

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:24:17Mark Manson?

  You tell them to get so good they can't ignore you? Like, no, you don't tell them that. It's, it doesn't apply. And the other thing, the other caveat here is like, that is great advice for extremely talented people. But it is, not everybody is extremely talented, not everybody can be so good that they can't be ignored.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:24:35Mark Manson?

  You know, programming is incredibly competitive field. There's plenty of fields that like, you can be very good at, but it's very unlikely you're gonna get to a place that you're so good. That you can take six months off and your boss is gonna be like, awesome, sounds good.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  That's fair.

• 1:24:51Mark Manson?

  It's like, you have to be fucking world class.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:55Mark Manson?

  To do that.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  And Cal's audience is full of like the computer programmer types and the graphic designers or whatever, people who are working those white collar, high paying jobs.

• 1:25:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and I joked about Claude Code, but like, back when that book was written, there was a massive shortage of programmers.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:25:12Mark Manson?

  Right, so it's like, if you were a A+, programmer, you probably could go to your boss and be like, you know what?

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was the height of white collar work.

• 1:25:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's like, you know what, I think I'm gonna go to New Zealand for a few months, why don't you, uh, we'll pick this back up when I come back, like, today? If you tried to do that today?

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:30Mark Manson?

  Like, good luck, dude, AI is happy to take over your work.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Well, in unrelated news, we can cancel that meeting for after this.

• 1:25:39Mark Manson?

  Okay. That really important thing you wanted to talk to me about is so long, no longer necessary.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Let's get into round four.

• 1:25:53Mark Manson?

  Round four, alright.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  And round four, what we're talking about here is, is what causes passion, actually.

• 1:25:59Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  This is what I'm gonna bring up, anyway.

• 1:26:01Mark Manson?

  Awesome.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  And we've been flirting around this.

• 1:26:04Mark Manson?

  Jesus Christ causes my passion.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Yes, the big JC. My argument really here is, is that passion isn't found, you don't, and you've even already seen this.

• 1:26:16Mark Manson?

  I agree with this.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  It's not found, it is developed.

• 1:26:18Mark Manson?

  It's developed, yes.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Okay, and, back to my old argument, you develop that from a place of, you develop that best from a place of stability, for most people. You got your random loose cannons, like you, I get it, uh, most people are not like that, though, most of us have to develop a passion in some way, and I think all passions are actually developed, but, um, you know, take, here's an example, Angela Duckworth.

• 1:26:40Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Famous in psychology, she came up with the idea for grit, the concept of grit, right? Her dad had a very fixed mindset around what people are good at, like, you're either good at something or you're not.

• 1:26:51Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  That's it, and so he was always telling her, hey, Angela, you're no genius, you know, so you're gonna have to work really hard at something, and this and that. Well, she did, she didn't go to grad school until she was in her 30s.

• 1:27:01Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  And then she found out, oh my god, I'm incredibly passionate about psychology, and not only that, but all these, around motivation, and resilience, and all these things that go into what she eventually formulated as grit.

• 1:27:13Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  That took a very long time for her to develop. And I think that's just, that's how it goes for almost all of us. I, I, I could, I wasn't, I did not know what I was passionate about, even when I got out of college. I was just like, I know I'm interested in a lot of different things, which is part of it.

• 1:27:29Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  But that's only part of it. You have to get out and experiment a lot. And I know you agree with that, um, uh, for the most part.

• 1:27:35Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  In, in psychology, they talk about kind of the fixed versus, um, uh, developed passion.

• 1:27:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  It's kind of found versus developed, right? And, uh, Pete, they've, they've shown like, so Carol Dweck was in on this, uh, study as well. Also a famous psychologist, uh, where they ran these studies that people who believe that passions are innate. They have this fixed idea of it, uh, and they're just like waiting to be discovered. They're out there somewhere. They just need to find it. They're more likely to expect kind of this effortless motivation, um, and abandon new interests. Once they be, they lose interest in them.

• 1:28:11Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  Whereas people with a more like, oh, passions are developed are much more likely to stick with it.

• 1:28:16Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  And find that passion and, and grow their passion.

• 1:28:19Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  In those activities. Okay. Cal also argues that competence is actually what is the basis for passion.

• 1:28:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  Okay. So getting really good at something, uh, you like it more if you're better at it.

• 1:28:32Mark Manson?

  See, this is what I think is the genius of that book.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:35Mark Manson?

  Is that in self-determination theory, like there's a, a theory around of motivation. Like there's, there's a lot of studies and, and data around people who pursue excellence. Become intrinsically motivated around that, right? And, and you could argue that like a lot of what we experience is passion is an intrinsic motivation. It's just a desire to do a thing for the sake of doing the thing. And so I think the genius of Cal's argument is that by trying to be so good that they ignore you, by reorienting your focus away from money and away from.

• 1:29:08Mark Manson?

  Passion, quote unquote, and just towards being excellent, just being extremely good at this one thing, the passion emerges as a side effect, which I agree with that. That's like, to me, that is, I think, not to derail you too much, but like, I think passion develops in a number of different ways, but I think the pursuit of excellence is absolutely one of them.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yes, it is. There's, but they've also shown like, there's a process to this as well. Okay. So, for instance, there's some research done, there's these four phases of passion development, okay. One of them is a triggered situational interest. So you just come across something that interests you. And if you repeatedly run into that, you engage with it more, you become more interested with it. And you have that maintained situational interest too. Okay. So you are, you actively seek it out at that point. You might not be passionate, but you're just curious still about it. Emerging individual interest is when you begin to engage on your own, just independently, you ask questions,

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  you enjoy the learning process for the sake of itself. And then that develops into more well-developed passion over time. Okay. Angela Duckworth also had something kind of achievement, and long-term achievement is achieved through kind of an initial interest, through practicing it, finding purpose in it, and then hope, what she calls hope, which is just perseverance and resilience through all that. But it's developed. The point is, is that all of those, these models that they come with, it is developed. So I would say, yeah, go ahead, pay attention to your interests, what sparks you. That was the same thing with me. It was like, I think I needed to build a shelf or something like that in my house. I don't remember what it was. I was like, oh my God, I love this. I love these tools. And like, oh, I gotta go buy some tools. And I had the money to buy tools already at that point. And then it developed into like, oh my God, I love this. Where it stopped

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  for me, where I like, I didn't take that to... Like I didn't start a business or YouTube channel or anything around that because what I found and I'll go back to what I said earlier is that be careful what you're defining as your passion here.

• 1:31:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  I just like to make things. That's what I like to do. If I'm running a business around that, I don't like, I don't want to deal with a bunch of pain in the ass clients who want something ugly, want me to build something ugly.

• 1:31:21Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like, that's not what I'm passionate about at all. I'm not passionate about like diving into YouTube dashboards around this is what I do for my day job and I like it for that good enough, but like, I don't want to, I just don't want to turn, it's a completely different activity is what I'm saying.

• 1:31:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  It's not what actually what it's around. So this is what I'm saying is be careful about what you're defining as your passion.

• 1:31:42Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  Right? And just know, again, it's, it's developed. It's something you develop. It is not something you find. It's not something that's out there. So you don't have one passion that just fits you perfectly. You've said this before too, like, how can you be passionate about whatever it is, playing the electric guitar or whatever it is, before the electric guitar was even invented. Nobody knew they were, you know, bound to be an electric guitarist or anything like that, right? Like, it's just not a thing to have one single singular passion in your life.

• 1:32:10Mark Manson?

  I a hundred percent agree. I will concede two points or agree with you on two points and then I'm going to throw in a big but.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:32:17Mark Manson?

  Afterwards, a hundred percent agree. Passion is developed for the most part. Like it is, it's not something you're born with. It's not something you find. It's not something you just wake up one day and you're like, oh, this is what I do for the next, it is something that is, is incubated, it is explored, it is grown and it grows and evolves with you. You, your relationship with it changes over time. So a hundred percent agree there. The other thing that I will concede slash agree with is that I, again, the, this, this assumption that whatever you're passionate about needs to be your job, I think is, is something people need to be very, very careful about. And you alluded to it there, but I'll expand on it a little bit, which is that a lot of

• 1:33:01Mark Manson?

  things that people are passionate about, as soon as it becomes a profession, the experience changes completely.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Mark Manson?

  Right? So it is.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  The baker example.

• 1:33:09Mark Manson?

  Baker example is, is a perfect example. Like if you take, somebody starting a bakery, my guess is less than 10 or 20% of their time is spent actually baking things.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:20Mark Manson?

  It is probably.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I have fat.

• 1:33:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's 80, 90% of their time is probably. Acquiring customers, handling overhead, dealing with banks, dealing with finances, hiring people, employees, training them. It's a completely different experience, even like being an author, right? Like even before I started all the YouTube and podcast stuff, less than half of my time was spent writing. There's, I mean, there's publisher meetings, agent meetings, there's rights contracts to go over, there's lawyers to meet with, there's public appearances, there's speaking gigs, there's like dealing with, you know, all the taxes that come from 60, selling your book in 60 different territories.

• 1:34:02Mark Manson?

  There's like so many things that you never think about that is being an author. Yeah. Right? So it is, the experience of doing something professionally is often completely different than what it is doing it as a hobby or a passion project. And so just people need to be very, very aware of that difference because a lot of people get blindsided and a lot of people, I see this a lot as well, is that there, I mean, there's a lot of famous stories of people, the Cobains of the world, that as soon as they become famous or as soon as it takes off and it becomes a very lucrative profession, they're like, oh, wait, I don't like this. This is not what I thought I signed up for. So 100% on board there. Okay. Here's my big but. I agree with you.

• 1:34:46Mark Manson?

  You have to explore, you have to find something that catches your interest, catches your eye, you need to invest into it, you need to get good at it. And one of the things that Cal talks about is the research that shows that people tend to become passionate about the things that they're competent at. Yeah. People tend to find meaning in things that they are good at. And so by becoming so good, they can't ignore you, you, you basically take control of being able to direct where you find passion in your life. That is all true. Yes. Except, everybody has different aptitudes for different things. So like while that is still true, You still have certain talents and proclivities towards certain activities over others.

• 1:35:31Mark Manson?

  Yes. Like, I could start going to a basketball court every single day and practicing my free throws and three pointers, and I could get really, really good at it, and I could start loving it, but that doesn't mean I'm ever gonna make it to the NBA. Okay, that's a good point, yes. So it is just because I am just physically not bestowed with the necessary equipment to become an NBA player. And I think this realism is important on both sides of the argument. Let's say you want to be a singer. Singing is so fucking brutal. Like, it is the top 0.0001% of singers are able to make a living doing it. And I think, much like an NBA player, right, like, you need to, at some point, take an extremely honest look

• 1:36:16Mark Manson?

  at yourself and say, "I'm good at singing. I might even be great at singing. I might even be the best singer I know, but am I 0.0001% of singers?" Probably not, right? Like, it is, and if there's any evidence that you're not, then like, that, that should tell you something. Like, you need to be realistic about that. For the passion seekers, I think that's a very important, like, aptitude is a very, very important variable that doesn't get considered enough. Right. On the practical side, aptitude is an important variable that doesn't get considered often enough. I would say one of the most common versions of this question that we're

• 1:36:55Mark Manson?

  debating here, that I get from, is from Indians. Because in India, the culture is very much, your parents decide your profession and you have to go do it. And usually, it's doctor, engineer, lawyer. And I can't tell you how many emails I get from young Indian people being like, "My parents are making me go to this engineering school. I hate engineering. I'm not very good at it. My grades are not very good. I really want to go do some creative thing. What should I do?" And it is, so to come back to Cal's point of like, you've got this backend developer who's like, "Maybe I want to get in the frontend, frontend

• 1:37:37Mark Manson?

  development," and Cal's point is, "Well, just become the best fucking backend developer the planet's ever seen, and then you can use that capital to parlay it into this or that, the other thing." Sure, if you're a super talented programmer and you like programming, great. But if you're one of those Indian kids who got shoved through a computer science program or a software engineering program, never liked it, was never good at it.

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  Just got by.

• 1:38:04Mark Manson?

  Just got by, and now you've got this bullshit backend development job that you hate. And you're like, well, what's the most practical thing I can do that like has some creativity to it, that has some sort of like, something that I'm at least interested in, frontend development, because then I can be a little bit creative, I can be a little bit artistic with what I work on. And so that, that person, I would say, yes, you should pivot to frontend development, you should take the hit to your career and probably pivot to frontend development if you believe that is going to be emotionally sustainable enough in the long run. Like, it's worth giving up that career capital you accrued over however many years and starting

• 1:38:46Mark Manson?

  over just because A, it's going to be way more sustainable, and then B, you're going to be happier doing it.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. I think we might be converging then on, instead of finding your passion, developing your passion.

• 1:39:02Mark Manson?

  I like that.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  You and I can both agree on that.

• 1:39:05Mark Manson?

  I like that.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  And I think there's a lot more avenues.

• 1:39:07Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Like, it doesn't, doesn't pigeonhole you as much. And then the aptitude comes into that, the competence comes into all of that as well. Very similar, like what you were saying earlier, when I was a little kid, you know, growing up in Nebraska, like, especially in the 90s, like, football was everything.

• 1:39:21Mark Manson?

  You know about, you grew up in Texas, very similar. I wanted to be a football player. Yeah, me too.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  I was, and, and like, I would, my dad, I would have him, we would play catch all the time. When he wasn't home, I would go out by myself, throw the football up in the air, run and catch it. And like, I was obsessed with it. I was just, I was dead set I was going to be a football player. Even to the point to, my, my dad explained to me when I was like five or six, what red shirting was. So in that collegiate program in, in the United States, you can, you can red shirt, which means you sit out for a year and you get an extra year added on to your eligibility for, for sports, okay? And so my dad explained that to me, and I just looked him dead in the eyes and said, should I red shirt, Dad? You know, when I was like five. I was that serious about it. You know what I mean? I am not a big guy. I would die if I was in anything above high school footballs, and the guy hit by one of those guys, I'd be dead.

• 1:40:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  Right? Like- By aptitude for football was not there, but I was very, very passionate about it as a kid. Probably a smart thing. I didn't try to go to the NFL.

• 1:40:16Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Okay, like.

• 1:40:17Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  It just was. So there's an aptitude side of it, too. I had to develop other passions in my life. And I think that's where we can maybe converge on this one.

• 1:40:26Mark Manson?

  I like the word develop because I, again, I grant that there are practical considerations.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:40:31Mark Manson?

  All these things. I think passion should be the long-term priority. Like you should find something or multiple things in your life that you feel passionately about, that you

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:40:40Mark Manson?

  deeply enjoy doing, that are, you're very intrinsically motivated by. And if you can find a way to make a career out of them, even better. Because I do think the, you know, the data is that like you probably will be a more satisfied, fulfilled person if you do that, and you'll probably go further. So like, if you can make that work, great. But I agree with you that it is a complicated process. And I think especially when dealing with some of these fields like professional football or professional music, like you have to be extremely realistic and you have to definitely think about a plan B, plan C, plan D. And then if you're a person who it's not obvious to you what your passion is or what

• 1:41:21Mark Manson?

  you want to be doing with your life, make it a goal to develop a passion in something. And then take the practical approach to doing what Jane Goodall did, right? Which is like, okay, well, at least take a step towards something that seems interesting or something that sounds exciting to you, and then just see what emerges from there.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  I can get on board with that.

• 1:41:41Mark Manson?

  All right.

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:42Mark Manson?

  We are landing the plane in the same spot. In a vacuum, I think both of these approaches are important, but incomplete. Follow your passion in a vacuum is important, but it's also incomplete. And it could definitely lead you down a bad path. You could. Mess up your life, waste a bunch of years, so on and so on. I think pursue financial stability, don't take too many risks. In a vacuum is also true, but also incomplete. Like if you only pursue that, you're probably going to leave a lot of life satisfaction on the table.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:19Mark Manson?

  And have a lot of regrets when you're older.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even there, I'm all for like taking big swings, like absolutely do that. That doesn't necessarily have to be your own passion though either.

• 1:42:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Like I'm all for taking risks and taking big swings and like putting yourself out there and going for it.

• 1:42:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  I just don't think passion is a great guiding principle for that even necessarily. It will fuel you along the way for sure.

• 1:42:41Mark Manson?

  It depends.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it absolutely depends.

• 1:42:42Mark Manson?

  It really depends and it is, I think the other thing that we agree on is that just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean it shouldn't necessarily be your job.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  Yes, right.

• 1:42:52Mark Manson?

  Like there are something. And it's funny because it's, I've had the conversation. So one of my good friends here in LA, he works for one of the biggest video game companies in the world and he's like one of the high end marketing directors at it. And so he is, every time we hang out, we just talk video games for hours, hours and hours and hours. And I have all these like thoughts and opinions and takes on video games because I play fucking all of them. And he, he lives in the video game marketing world. So he's always, he knows all the influencers, he knows all the streamers, he knows all the big, you know, all the marketing campaigns and everything. And I can't tell you how many times I've been talking to him

• 1:43:34Mark Manson?

  and I'll like tell him, I'll like make an observation about a game or about a company or something. And he, he'll just look at me, he's like, he's like, man, you gotta start a video game YouTube channel. He's like, you would crush, you would have such a good video game YouTube channel. And every time, every time I look at him, I'm like, I was like, I will never do that to myself. I will never, like, video games are my safe space.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  That's your pure.

• 1:43:56Mark Manson?

  That's where I go where it's just like, nothing exists. Like I don't want to ruin that by, by putting all these incentives and motives and shit on top of it. And it's just like my video, my video games are for me.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:10Mark Manson?

  Kind of like your woodworking is for you. It's too special. Like you can't share it with the world. So it's, I totally get where you're coming from with that. And I do think that is. I think that's the right option for a lot of people. Like, there's a lot of passions in people's lives that that is actually the optimal selection. Because if you did try to make a profession out of it, you would taint it in some way. You would ruin it in some way.

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  I have found that, like, I've done jobs for friends or friends of friends and stuff like that. Where I'll go in and like build them a cabinet, install it, all that kind of stuff. Some of that, some of it's fun, some of it, it just wasn't. And then I've gone the other way too, where I've just like, I haven't had time to even participate in, you know, go out into my shop or anything like that. I have found that balance where it's like, I need a little bit of this. I need enough of it in my life.

• 1:44:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  And I'm good.

• 1:44:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  So I know, I know, that's, again, that's an individual personality based thing too. I get it, but for me, yeah, that works.

• 1:45:05Mark Manson?

  We've established that there is a tension between these two things. Do you think it's necessarily a one to one trade off?

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:45:14Mark Manson?

  I feel like it doesn't have to be.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:16Mark Manson?

  I think it depends on the job and the person.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Yes, I think there's a big part of that too. I think there are just, there are people who just need a lot of stability in their lives.

• 1:45:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  I get that. And passion doesn't factor into it as much. It's kind of, you know, with like relationships. Some people need a lot of sex, you know, in their relationships, some people don't.

• 1:45:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily a one to one. I don't know what the right mix is. And I don't know how you would determine that necessarily, but again, it is hard finding that balance.

• 1:45:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  For most people, anyway.

• 1:45:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  Takes a lot of experimentation.

• 1:45:48Mark Manson?

  It does. It's almost, it's like almost finding a route.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:53Mark Manson?

  Through a maze.

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  Well, and like, you know, what if, what if your passion is like, financial, like trading stocks? Or, you know, like, that's a, okay, then go into that.

• 1:46:02Mark Manson?

  Amazing.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:46:03Mark Manson?

  Great.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  But what if it's, you know, crocheting?

• 1:46:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  You know, there's, there's that side.

• 1:46:08Mark Manson?

  Hey, there's some people crushing on Etsy.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  You watching those YouTube videos too?

• 1:46:14Mark Manson?

  No, I'm not, but it's funny. So actually, my brother, it's actually a really funny story. My brother and his wife are, were friends with a guy and his wife. And it was, I don't remember the exact details, but it was funny because he told me that the, the wife started getting really into crocheting and knitting and selling her stuff on Etsy. And it like took off in such a big way that like now she's making like million, tens of millions of dollars or whatever.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  I take it back. Never mind then. All right.

• 1:46:43Mark Manson?

  And then of course, the, the husband apparently like disapproved of it and was like, why, why are you wasting your time doing this? And then as soon as it took off, like she divorced him.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  Good for her.

• 1:46:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Some story. It was some fascinating of that story. I probably messed up a detail there. But, uh, but yeah, apparently you can make tens of millions of dollars crocheting and knitting and selling it online. So.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  Well, okay. So what do you think the right balance is? I guess, or, or how do you determine the right balance?

• 1:47:11Mark Manson?

  So again, I think the two variables here are the person in, in the, the field of where the passion is. So on the person, there's a spectrum, right? Some people, I think some people just have to live their passion and can't, really can't compromise on it.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  And if you're one of those people like, I can't not do this, then go all in.

• 1:47:32Mark Manson?

  And the irony is, is that if you're one of those people, like to Elon's point, you're probably not listening to those podcasts and you're probably not even asking the question in the first place. Similarly, I do think there's a group of people on the other end, the end of the spectrum that are just happy to get a paycheck. They don't really care. Like they're, they're like, I'm fine. I don't really think about this.

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:52Mark Manson?

  Most people are somewhere in the middle and they're somewhere along that spectrum. So there's going to be a lot of people who really defer towards financial stability and they just probably just want a job they don't hate. And then there's a lot of people that are like, feel very strongly that they need to, to care about their work or care about something they're doing, but they don't know how to compromise or balance or negotiate the financial concerns and the, the practicalities with doing something that they love. So that's the first, I guess, kind of. Axis of concern, the second axis is what is the thing that you're passionate about? Like some, some things can be very lucrative. Some things have very clear career paths to them.

• 1:48:33Mark Manson?

  If you're really into spreadsheets and organization, like my God, there's probably a million companies that are happy to hire you. If you, if you love software engineering, there's a million companies that are probably happy to hire you. So like that side of the spectrum, I think it's kind of a no brainer. It's like, go do the thing you love, because there's plenty of opportunities out there. I think where it gets very complicated is when you are on the other side of the spectrum, where this is something that is not obviously lucrative, or it is a, like a power law market, like a creative field like acting or music or something, where 0.0001% of the people accumulate 99.99% of the success. I think in those cases, then you have to take a really hard look.

• 1:49:17Mark Manson?

  And, and I think there's probably two kind of hedges there, rather than going all in. One is find the adjacent job or position, like we talked about, you know? If you love music, so one of my really good friends from music school, he, he had a similar experience to me. He got about halfway through, he realized like, I'm not good, I'm not gonna make it, I'm not good enough. But he noticed that he had a really good ear, and he could, he like really picked up a lot on like sonic subtlety, and he liked the kind of the engineering side, the sound engineering side. So now he actually does sound design at a video game studio. And he loves it. Oh, okay. And he's great at it. Yeah.

• 1:50:02Mark Manson?

  And never thought he'd end up there. And it, all the music training actually paid off perfectly, because it's, he had to learn about all the different softwares, and the way sound waves work, and the way our ears process sounds, and music, and tones, and all that stuff. Okay. So that's an example, right, of like a hedge? And sure enough, he ends up in a place where he's doing sound design for another thing that he loves, which is video games. So like, he's happy as a fucking clam. The other hedge, I think, is understanding that you can do the thing you love, but you're also probably gonna have to do a bunch of things that you don't love, which is like the bakery example, right? Where it's like, okay, you can make baking work, but you're gonna have to be willing to do a lot of other things that you might not love

• 1:50:45Mark Manson?

  or might even hate, right? You're gonna have to go hire people, you're gonna have to train people, you're gonna have to go get a loan and deal with the bank and rent out of space and do branding and marketing and promotion and online ads and all this stuff. I think what will happen to some people, and I would include myself in this case, is that you will have the pleasant surprise that you actually really enjoy lots of different parts of the business as well. So it's like, maybe you love the baking, that's what you're really passionate about, but in the process of promoting, trying to get the baking out to the world, you discover that you really like branding and design too. And so, great, you can really focus on that aspect of the business and then just go find a business partner

• 1:51:30Mark Manson?

  or hire somebody to handle all the boring backend stuff that you don't wanna deal with. You see that happen a lot. I would characterize myself as that. Like, obviously, writing is/was the passion. As a side effect, I found that I really enjoy a lot of the system-building, operational side of like building out a content business and a media business and understanding all the numbers and analytics and growth that goes into a business like this. Like, it's fun for me.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes work for you too. It works very well for you.

• 1:52:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah, there's aspects of the business that I hate and I go and hire people to do those things. So that's the other hedge. And it's realistically, I think, anywhere you end up, optimal is probably enjoying what you do 70 to 80% of the time, right? Like, I think it's every job, no matter how much you love it or care about it, you're probably not loving it 20% of the time and there's probably things attached to it that you don't love to do. And so I think just realism around that, understanding, like, even if you land your dream job, working at your dream gig, there's gonna be days where you're like dragging yourself out of bed, you're like, this sucks. That's just life. That's normal.

• 1:52:44Speaker 01

  Even when you do what you love.

• 1:52:45Mark Manson?

  Even when you do what you love.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  You will hate these. Yes, that quote is not true.

• 1:52:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Uh, yes, the, the you'll never work a day in your life.

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:52:53Mark Manson?

  Bullshit.

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  Work very hard, actually.

• 1:52:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Ultimately, I think, you know, considering those two dimensions, I think listeners should ask themselves where they are in those two dimensions, right? Like, what's your risk appetite? How uncompromising do you feel you are around your passion? And then secondarily, like, how extreme, how all in is the thing that you love doing? Like, how, how much can you hedge against it? Or how many, like, adjacent avenues are there to doing something? So this is, now, this is my bias. You, you, you mentioned that you feel like most people don't know what they're passionate about or have mild passions and they're like, you know, you worry about them getting led astray into making bad decisions based on emotion. I'll, I'll tell you where my bias is and what, what I worry about people doing.

• 1:53:43Mark Manson?

  I think probably the most common, the most common story in the world is that people have a passion or they have something that they really wanted to do. They couldn't really do it, or it didn't work out. And so they found something that's maybe a little bit adjacent or kind of in the same vicinity of the thing that they wanted to do. And in the process of doing that and real, and getting good at it, or finding kind of their niche that they get good at, they, they slowly grow to love that thing.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:54:15Mark Manson?

  Kind of like my friend who ended up doing sound design at the, the video game studio. I think that's probably the most common story.

• 1:54:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:23Mark Manson?

  That happens.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, I think I have a very similar story to it. Working isn't my only passion. Yes, that was. When I got into this industry and got into working with you, I, I was excited. I didn't know what to really expect, but I did definitely develop, like, the better we got at it, the more I understood about it, the more I learned about it. Uh, like, all the behind the scenes stuff that goes on, like, yes, I developed more of a, I guess you could call a passion for it, yeah.

• 1:54:46Mark Manson?

  Okay. All right, you can stay.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  I, okay, okay. My, my, on me, I really do think I've just kind of found this like best of both worlds type of situation because I enjoy my job very much. I find a lot of reward. It's a rewarding job that I have.

• 1:55:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  You just gave me a raise up to $12 an hour. So like I'm making

• 1:55:07Mark Manson?

  Look at you.

• 1:55:08Speaker 01

  bucks now.

• 1:55:09Mark Manson?

  Time to go get the big tool, big boy tools.

• 1:55:12Speaker 01

  No, but like it does, like I said, it's been a stable enough environment for me. I know it's not always stable for you. But, but you provide this like layer of stability for us. And I get to do that. And then I do, there's a lot of freedom in my job that I, I get to kind of set my own days and what they look like. And there's a lot of creative freedom within that. Kind of set the bounds for it, but we get to play around in that. And then I, I have enough time and the resources to go out and like, kind of just have other things that I can focus on. One of the things too, that I like about woodworking is it gets me away from a screen because I just sit in front of a screen so much.

• 1:55:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  And so like, I think that's part of why I like it too. Why I've developed such a passion for it is because it gives me a nice balance there. So I, I don't know. I feel like I'm just incredibly fortunate in that where I've been able to kind of like, like piece this together in a way that really works for me. So, yeah, it's, it's been great.

• 1:56:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's when I think about all the people that I know that are, that seem very happy with, with how they spend their time and happy with their, their lives. They're all over the map on this. Like it's like

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Lots of avenues to get.

• 1:56:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Like I, like I said, I have a really good friend who has a job he doesn't hate.

• 1:56:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:23Mark Manson?

  And spends all of his free time doing the thing that he loves and that works. He's, he seems very happy with it. I, I think I'm, I'm definitely at this extreme of both ends in that I think I'm a personality that really couldn't live any other way.

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:38Mark Manson?

  And, and I, it just happened to work out that I, I made it at the thing that I really love doing. So, it's sometimes I wonder like, and I've had people ask me before, like, what would you do if your books never took off or became popular? And, and it's like, it's hard to know.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:57Mark Manson?

  Honestly, I'd probably be writing a sub stack, grinding away 40K a year or something. I, you know, I don't know. I, it's, I can't imagine doing anything else. Like I just, the thought of doing another job makes my head explode. So.

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  I'd be in the NFL, so.

• 1:57:17Mark Manson?

  You'd be in the NFL? You'd be a red-shirted, uh, still red-shirting, uh, for the University of Nebraska.

• 1:57:26Mark Manson?

  All right, um, any final takeaways, any lessons that you took from this episode?

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  Hmm, I mean, I, I do go back to that, the, the point you brought up repeatedly about like, hey, this is a pretty individual thing. There's a lot of, like, that was really reinforced through all this, um, research because some people just have more of a penchant for risk.

• 1:57:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:46Speaker 01

  Or they really are clear on what they want to do, or they've already developed, they've developed their passion from a very young age, too.

• 1:57:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:52Speaker 01

  You know, like my, my, my ex-girlfriend with the vet thing. The, but yeah, the avenues by which you can get to like a, a fulfilling life where you're working on things that are meaningful to you, there, those are numerous. There are so many ways that you can get and do this.

• 1:58:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:10Speaker 01

  Uh, get into this, do this the way that you want to do it. And that to me, I was just like, okay, that's actually kind of, it's very reassuring in many ways. Like, I think we do get a little bit pigeonholed. It's either all passion and go for it, you know, you just have to go for it, dude, and just, just lock it down and grind and.

• 1:58:25Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  You don't have to do it that way.

• 1:58:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  And so that was, that was refreshing.

• 1:58:28Mark Manson?

  I think my big takeaway is that this is just a false dichotomy.

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:33Mark Manson?

  It's, it's funny because the, the story behind this entire episode is actually kind of funny. Um, so this was originally pitched to me, uh, my former YouTube director, shout out to Devin, he's out there listening. Uh, so Devin, as you know, fucking lives and breathes YouTube. Like, he was.

• 1:58:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:58:52Mark Manson?

  He is the most obsessed person with YouTube I've ever met in my life. And he worked with us and, you know, ran, uh, our YouTube channel for, for a number of years. And, uh, so he originally pitched this as a YouTube video for us to do last year.

• 1:59:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:08Mark Manson?

  And he had all like outline, intro and outline and like kind of bullet points of like what he thought would be really good. And, and I remember I, I sent it back to him and I was just like, I'm not buying it. Cause it was very much like a, you know, take the risk, you know, it's just like, just go for it. You'll be happy you, uh, regret minimization type stuff. Like you'll be happy you tried, even if it doesn't work out. And I was like, yeah, I don't, I don't know, man. I think that, I think we need a little more nuance here. And then. He ironically, he was very passionate about the concept. So he was like, he's like, no, I'm gonna make it work. You know, give me another shot at it. And so he went and they like revised a bunch of stuff, dug up some research, sent it back to me again, like a month later.

• 1:59:48Mark Manson?

  I was like, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't know. Uh, I think this should be a podcast.

• 2:00:00Mark Manson?

  And sure enough, um, after, you know, after all the research and digging into it for like two and a half hours, um, yeah, I think it's a false dichotomy. And I think that's why I, cause a YouTube video, it's, you know, it's like you get 15, 20 minutes and you usually need to kind of pick a side and argue it. I was like, no, this feels like, this is like a very nuanced thing with a lot of, a lot of variables, a lot of considerations and it is a very personal thing.

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  So YouTube does not like nuance.

• 2:00:30Mark Manson?

  No, unfortunately. So yeah, I think that's my biggest takeaway is that it's, this is a false dichotomy. I like the phrase, develop your passion.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't follow it.

• 2:00:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, instead of following it or choosing it or finding it. Um, I think that is probably the most accurate way to.

• 2:00:47Speaker 01

  It highlights the process oriented nature of, of the whole thing.

• 2:00:50Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  It's not, passion is an event. It's not an event.

• 2:00:53Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  It's a process.

• 2:00:54Mark Manson?

  And then, and then it also implies that you can develop it in a place that it wasn't before.

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Which is also true.

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  That's awesome. The world is yours.

• 2:01:04Mark Manson?

  Well, yeah, well, hopefully, uh, hopefully the audience has developed an intense passion for us during this episode. And if you have, be sure to leave a review, follow us on whatever platform you're listening on. Anything else you want to say, Drew?

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  I think that's it. We did the pod.

• 2:01:20Mark Manson?

  I think you can go home now. You can fly home. Start your six months off.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:01:25Mark Manson?

  Thank you, everybody.