One of the revelations of my early 30s came in reading Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion In The Quest For Work You Love, a book that dispelled the age-old career advice “do what you love”
The “do what you love” advice is in generous at heart, because it refuses to look at the big picture.
The big picture? Survivorship bias.
Newport’s point is that for every Olympian on the podium, there are thousands of other athletes who are also “doing what they love.”
But no one is asking them for career or goal advice.
The same goes for nearly all cases where someone claims “do what you love” as a mantra.
Survivorship bias is the tendency to focus on “the survivors” and ignore everyone else.
Plus, the “survivors” can’t always speak accurately as to why the “survived.”
Why did one company make it, while others withered? It’s more satisfying—say, if you were the CEO—to credit the company’s vision than to point to luck or an unforeseen regulating benefit. After all, plenty of other companies had the same vision.
Taylor Coe 