It is interesting, but I completely disagree. At least in my own case. I've worked on projects that I've not been passionate about ("This is gonna make me super rich!"), and I always end up throwing in the towel and moving on. Passion is what drives me to keep going when there's simply nothing else.

In my experience people are usually far less passionate about making a bunch of money than they think they are (there are those who really are passionate about the abstract idea of making money or are truly passionate about some derived benefit- but they have to work a lot harder to avoid becoming an... unsavory person). We conflate our desire to generate and create value and wealth- which tends to be subjective at a deep level- with generating income.

Scott wrote for the perspective of success = money, appropriate for the publication and to some degree reflective of his personal passions, but I suspect that most HN users are more interested in the act of creation. Money / being rich remains a very, very powerful method of validation and obviously a primary source of "potential creation" and to a lesser degree freedom- but for at least "makers" it is a mistake to confuse it for a fulfilling passion.

Yeah, the problem is, no matter how good you are at doing something, there is somebody somewhere who is just as good or maybe better at the same thing, and he or she likes it. That person will kick your ass if you follow Scott Adams's advice.

(Advice that he apparently learned from an anonymous lending officer at a bank that isn't around anymore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocker_National_Bank)

If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. -Scott Adams http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...

You assume the market all has the same taste: While McDonalds has cheap and fast food, sometimes I like a French meal.

My IT support business is "ok" but it thrives because we fill a need that isn't met by other that who are indeed more passionate and smarter than us.

" I've worked on projects that I've not been passionate about ..... and I always end up throwing in the towel and moving on"

I've been there. And I have to say you'd be surprised how passionate you get when you get reinforced with money and something works. My guess is that had some of the projects you worked on hit in a satisfying way you would have found great joy and that would have made you more passionate.

It certainly doesn't work for everyone, I know people who own successful companies and still they're not that happy about having to run them.

But what if the project did make you super rich? You might find some interest, and could hire someone to do the drudge work. I think that's the key to his argument.

I suspect there's truth to both sides of this argument, and you can find a personal anecdote to believe either one. But unless you've actually hit success and walked away, I don't think you can wholly discount the Adams/banker approach.

Reminds me of the Tiger Mom's philosophy of parenting in which their children won't enjoy any of their activities (and usually they don't), that is, until they get good at them.

I had somewhat of a Tiger Mom. She forced me to do multiplication tables while my friends were still onaddition, learn guitar while my peers were learning basketball, play chess while the other kids were playing video games, watch Bill Nye while everyone else was watching Nickelodeon. And I hated it, to some degree I hated my parents for it.

Until I realized all these SKILLS made me really fucking successful compared to everybody else my age. And all of a sudden I had passion. Passion for math, passion for learning, passion for science and technology and programming and computers. Ultimately, those skills instilled within me the passion that leads to me writing this post on Hacker News today.

And I thank my Tiger Mom for that every chance I get.

My parents pretty much left me to my own devices, and I'm still posting on hacker news. Also, i know people who were forced to learn piano as kids etc. and they are pretty much nowhere as adults. I'd say it's more genetics than anything.

It's genetics, in that genetically you have a probability of being inclined towards whatever subject your Tiger parent is subjecting you to. If that isn't the case, you have a massive misallocation of energy.

I'm against Tiger parenting as a blanket strategy prescribed for all. The fact is that not all parents are equipped to micromanage their children's careers, nor does the physical and emotional abuse involved necessarily lead to best results. The latter is like a shot of steroids - get short term results but lasting damage in all but the hands of experts.

I'm just confused as to why we're using posting on HN as a measure of success.

Yeah me too :) I merely applied the measure used by OP to illustrate my point. Agree that there are better metrics for success; as for the measure for procrastination, it's probably spot on ;)

Conversely, I enjoy learning to do things, and after that magic has worn off I get bored.

Written enough code to put a 3D texture mapped model on the screen? That's enough for me.

Finally made a perfect batch of eclairs? I won't make any more.

That depends entirely on the child - my eldest is a perfectionist and hates being bad at something, the youngest is quite happy doing the activity, even if she isn't very good at it.

Tiger Mom doesn't follow the path of least resistance, and uses emotional and physical abuse to enforce compliance. That the child might achieve enjoyment at the endpoint is only one of many possible outcomes.

That's because it goes against the common strategy of "do what you love". I experienced this personally. I had very little interest in marketing. however after I saw some success I started getting passionate about it.

I myself found it very interesting. But honestly, I disagree on this.