"Follow your passion" never mentions supply and demand

[Ulax]

50 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I never agreed with his philosophy. I'm a follow your passion guy. To me, not following your passion is a recipe for mediocrity.

You cannot be great at something you don't love.

For me, love is not a luxury. I need it to be great.

Okay thanks. 

[Leo Gura]

23 minutes ago, Mata said:

I have a question about this, @Leo Gura. I really love dancing; it makes me feel alive and brings me a lot of joy. But I can't imagine it making me cry; it has almost the opposite effect and lifts my mood. When I imagine building technology that helps people, especially disabled people, though, thinking about the impact it could have has made me cry a few times. But when it comes to actually coding and building the technology, I don't really enjoy the process itself. So, in this case, which one seems closer to passion? I'm twenty-three, btw, and I'd really appreciate any thoughts you have on this.

Dancing in this case.

Or do your disabled thing but be the manager of it, not the programmer.

Building technology is engineering and programming, which is totally different from helping disabled people. Your passion here would be the helping people, not the engineering. You can find other ways of helping people than with engineering.

Edited 52 minutes ago by Leo Gura

[Mata]

24 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Dancing in this case.

Or do your disabled thing but be the manager of it, not the programmer.

Building technology is engineering and programming, which is totally different from helping disabled people. Your passion here would be the helping people, not the engineering. You can find other ways of helping people than with engineering.

Appreciate it, Leo, thank you so much!

[Ramanujan]

@MaxBlume i followed the "find your passion , figure out you life purpose" advice for 9 years. at the end i realised i am fucked. all these 9 years i wasted opertuinities after opertunities , trying to find my purpose. i realised that my parents become old, the money is not enough , i dont have a bachelors , i am living in india and only IT industry exist

american gurus can say anything they want. life situation in 3rd world country is different.  america has all the opertunities. india only have IT industry. and we have 1.5 billion population. the competition is astronomical. i wasted 9 years while others got bachelors and masters. 

american gurus only have life experience living in america. they dont know what it is to live outside america

like in asia , the best self improvment advice is to study well and school and college and get good grades and get a good job and  be a good worker

fuck

luckly i found i have a talent for IT.
the averge guy living in india is fucked if he try to follow his passion or purpose

 

[MaxBlume]

@Leo Gura

Agree on pragmatism and planning money years ahead. I think that's actually the core of what I'm getting at: if passion needs years of financial planning to be sustainable, then demand is doing a lot of the work. And I'm not saying great artists can't make it. Just that "possible" and "likely" are very different when your rent is on the line.

Supply and demand
Skill × demand = opportunity. Fields that are fun, creative and high-status attract far more people than the market needs, so pay drops for everyone but the top. Unsexy fields have the opposite problem: US construction needs ~349,000 new workers this year and most firms can't find electricians. Nobody's "passionate about wiring," but almost everyone competent at it earns a living.

Winner-take-most
One song can reach 100 million people, so listeners just pick the best. One electrician can only wire so many buildings, so the work spreads across many people. Spotify's 2026 data: of ~13 million artists uploading music, about 0.6% generated $10k last year and 0.1% hit $100k.

Survivorship bias
Success stories are what we see. The thousands who were also great and worked just as hard but didn't make it mostly stay quiet. Even Spotify's ~250k "serious professionals," who already have an audience, mostly didn't clear $10k from streaming.

Barrier to entry
Medicine attracts passionate people too, but licensing limits supply, so it pays. Design has almost no barrier. It got sold on social media as good pay, remote, no physical strain, and bootcamps flooded it.

Global competition and commodity
Digital work means competing with everyone on earth with a laptop. A bricklayer competes with people within driving distance. Now AI is turning digital execution into a commodity too, while physical work is much harder to automate.

Market shifts
When cars arrived, harness makers didn't get worse. If 10,000 excellent ones are left with 500 customers, #501 isn't incompetent. The market shrank, and getting better doesn't fix that. So the question isn't just "am I great" but "is this market big and durable?"

Employment: what I learned the hard way
I'm self-taught and got genuinely good at product design over years of near-daily work. I was laid off when companies cut whole design departments, then applied to 1,000+ jobs in two years. Hiring filters on paper, not skill. A master's plus four years at one company beats self-taught, no matter what the portfolio shows.

Entrepreneurship: what I'm learning now
So I'm trying to build my own thing. It skips the CV filter but has its own: marketing. I always assumed good work would get found. It doesn't. A great product nobody hears about makes nothing, a mediocre one with great marketing makes money.

Quality of life
Compare two people. One chases a passion in a flooded field, stays broke and anxious, and works a job they hate on the side to survive. The other does an OK job in a field with real demand, earns a stable living, has a family and free time for what they love. The second one often has the better life, and maybe more room for passion, not less.

Where I'm at
Right now I think passion is the second question, and the first is: what's scarce, what's needed, and what can I get good at that people will pay for? But I'm genuinely open to being wrong here, so I'm curious how you see it.

[Ramanujan]

On 9/27/2026 at 1:59 AM, Lyubov said:

You need to work towards finding a balance where you can live from your heart and passion but not at the expense of being so naive. Balancing wonder and naivety. If you were not so blinded by your emotions and expectations you would of probably been able to reason how placing such a financial burden on what you enjoy would not be a wise risk to take without some knowledge of something else which could help you float in the water. 

7 habits of highly effective people solve this.  infact i would say following 7 habits is far better than following leo's course. 7 habits has everything. leo's course fucks you up if you made a mistak

like for 9 years i tried to find my purpose , while living in india. i am fucked. 

[Ramanujan]

20 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

If you start your own business this is an "end run" around trying to fit in, but you need to have talent and business skills or someone who handles this for you.  You might also fail this way.  You can make it work, but you have to stick with it, and also make real things happen, not just plans.

business success depend on your type

very few types can succed in business.  its inborn

like some successful types = ESTP , ISTP , ESTJ

[Leo Gura]

15 minutes ago, Ramanujan said:

the averge guy living in india is fucked if he try to follow his passion or purpose

I understand your frustration. Advice does not work for everyone and requires customization.

However, the average guy living anywhere will be mediocore. Being really successful at your passion is rare and difficult everywhere. Yes, 3rd world is harder. But most people who take a course will not become successful. Those are just the statistics of success. Success requires exceptional effort, and yes, some luck too.

Edited 15 minutes ago by Leo Gura

[Ramanujan]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Working your passion is a luxury that most people never want bad enough to earn it.

Working your passion is EARNED by working extra hard, and extra clever.

Working your passion is not something you can have by default, since then everyone would have it.

Working your passion is an act of CREATION. You have to create that kind of lifestyle, which requires that you really want that kind of lifestyle and willing to bleed for it.

It is like having a family. How do you get a family? You CREATE it.

or there is a better option 

use getting things done by david allen and grind your way through life

if you use GTD , you dont need passion. You will get high . GTD methodology make you high and removes stress and you can do any work. GTD bypass passion. 

ofcourse GTD has problems but that can be easily fixed

[Leo Gura]

@Ramanujan Of course you can grind through life.

But that's not what I can teach.

You are talking about a way of life that is not acceptable to me.

People have different standards for what they will accept.

Edited 10 minutes ago by Leo Gura

[Ramanujan]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I understand your frustration. Advice does not work for everyone and requires customization.

However, the average guy living anywhere will be mediocore. Being really successful at your passion is rare and difficult everywhere. Yes, 3rd world is harder. But most people who take a course will not become successful. Those are just the statistics of success. Success requires exceptional effort, and yes, some luck too.

yeah well said

i thought you are gonna gaslight me

i fucked up big time. 

thankfully i will get out in future

but the average indian guy  who follow "find your purpose" will get fucked really hard

the odds are against you .  

few have made it. like ramanujan got into maths college , sn bose become a big name in physics , many excel in music here

for the average guy living in india, the best advice is to study well in your college , discover your talent and get into a field you have talent in

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Ramanujan said:

the odds are against you

I know that. Of course they are against you. What do think the odds were that I would succeed at YT? Very low.

By definition, anyone trying to be very successful has very low odds. But it's not a lottery, it's much more in your control than that.

But looking a pure statistics, 90% won't make it.

Edited 5 minutes ago by Leo Gura

[MaxBlume]

@Leo Gura

Really appreciate the honesty here. I've gotten a lot of value from your work, and I know no advice fits everyone. In the end, each of us has to take responsibility for checking if it actually applies to our situation.

If the odds of succeeding at your passion are that low, what should most people do?

Edited 4 minutes ago by MaxBlume

[Ramanujan]

3 hours ago, Majed said:

My highest passion is rap music. 

Do you think it's possible for me to live off of it one day ? 

Somehow i always knew it had to be my career since i was 11 years old instinctively.

you are living in jordan

isreal is right next to you 

once they are done with palestinians and lebnon, they are gonna come right at you

find a way to get out of jordan instead of  following your passion

[Ramanujan]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I know that. Of course they are against you. What do think the odds were that I would succeed at YT? Very low.

By definition, anyone trying to be very successful has very low odds. But it's not a lottery, it's much more in your control than that.

But looking a pure statistics, 90% won't make it.

yup . i fucked up big time. but i found a way out . i have a talent for IT. AI will fuck up IT . so not sure how i will do

for now i will get into IT. 

although i stand by the statement that for an indian guy , getting good grades in school and college and getting a good job is the best self improvment advice

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, MaxBlume said:

@Leo Gura

So my question: if the odds of succeeding at your passion are that low, what should most people do?

It is not a matter of odds, it is a matter how much you are willing to work for it and how creative and strategic you are able to be.

It's a matter of attitude too. For me, not following my passion is simply an unacceptable way to live. I live that attitude. I cannot imagine living otherwise, which is why I have the career I have. If I didn't have this attitude I would have settled for a comfy 9-5 job and you would never know about me.

Edited just now by Leo Gura