a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz: “Don’t follow your passion”

So don't follow your passion. Now you're probably thinking that's a really dumb idea because everybody who's successful, and if you poll a thousand people are successful, they'll all say that they love what they do. And so the broad conclusion of the world is that if you do what you love, then you'll be successful. But we're engineers and we know that that might be true. But it also might be the case that if you're successful, you love what you do, you just love being successful and everybody loves you. It's awesome. So which one is it? Well, I think to figure it out, you kind of have to go back in time, you have to back off when you were successful to like right now when you're graduating as the class of 2015. And the first tricky thing about passions are they're hard to prioritize. Which passion is it? Are you more passionate about math or engineering? Are you more passionate, passionate about history or literature? Are you more passionate about video games or K pop? These are tough decisions. How do you even know? On the other hand, what are you good at? Are you better at math or writing? That's a much easier thing to figure out. The second thing that's tricky if you're going forward in time with this follow your passion idea is that what you're passionate at about at 21 is not necessarily what you're going to be passionate about at 40. Now this is true for boyfriends as well as career choices. The third issue with following your passion is, excuse me, a little trouble with the throat, is you're not necessarily good at your passion. And has anybody ever watched American Idol? So you know what I'm talking about. Like, just because you love singing doesn't mean you should be a professional singer. And then finally, and most importantly, following your passion is a very me centered view of the world. And when you go through life, what you'll find is what you take out of the world over time, be it, you know, whatever, money, cars, stuff, accolades is much less important than what you put into the world. And so my recommendation would be, follow your contribution, find the thing that you're great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better. And that is the thing to follow now.