The Minimalist “Following your passion is crappy advice”

In a recent speech, you told people to, “Do as Steve Jobs did, not as he said.” I thought this was great advice. Can you expand on it?

Steve Jobs, in his famous Stanford Commencement address, told the students (and I’m paraphrasing here): You’ve got to find what you love, don’t settle.

If you read the press and social media that surrounded the event, it’s clear that many people interpreted this as him saying, “follow your passion.” If you go back into the details of his biography, however you discover this is not what he did. He stumbled into Apple computer (it was a scheme to make a quick $1,000) at a time when he was “passionate” mainly about eastern mysticism.

But Jobs was open to opportunity. When he sensed that his scheme was bigger than he imagined, he pivoted and poured a lot of energy into building a company around selling computers. He cultivated passion. He didn’t follow it.