Why “Follow Your Passion” Is Bad Advice for Your 20s
If you’re at a point in your life where you’ve been wandering around seeking career advice, just to hear the one piece of advice pushed on every single person on this planet — “follow your passion” — then welcome to the club.
The club where we rebel against advisors who don’t actually know what advice worth giving means, because some of us, myself included, are just as lost. Being human is hard enough. Making decisions every single day makes it harder.
And then someone comes to you asking for advice their life decisions depend on, which makes it worse.
So most of the time, when a 20-year-old asks you “what career should I pursue?”, you go blank, because how are you supposed to tell them where they’ll end up when you yourself ended up somewhere that has nothing to do with what you studied? All that’s left to say is, “Don’t worry, just follow your passion.”
The problem isn’t that a 20-something doesn’t know they should follow their passion. The problem is they don’t know what passion actually feels like, what it truly means, or whether it even works.
For those who seek advice in their 20s, or those who tend to give it, this article is for you. Instead of listening to hollow advice, or being forced to give it, this is about understanding one fact: your 20s are often the decade when you’re discovering who you are, not expressing a fully formed identity.
You’re mistaking “interest” for “passion”
When I was 16, I scored a good 8.9 CGPA in my studies. I thought I loved science and should pursue something in that field. I later realized things got complicated and too much to keep up with. Turns out I wasn’t passionate enough about what I was studying to stick around.
During my higher studies, I realized I had a passion for music. On the side, I was learning and experimenting with music, and it was actually going pretty well. I won a fair number of awards in various competitions and local concerts, and eventually got the opportunity to represent my university at a national level.
I was convinced this was what I had to pursue. My passion was in this field. I might as well become a singer, a professional musician. But there was an obstacle: my very Asian parents never wanted me to do anything in music, so studying music was off the table.
Then, one night, I had a random dream. I was flying an airplane. It felt so good, I felt so alive. I thought it must be a sign from the universe, and started searching “how to become a pilot.”
I’d guess 60% of people who ask that question online give up right after finding out the cost. I was one of them. But watching so many aviation videos, I developed a keen interest in the field — so much that, two years later, I ended up a flight attendant with an international airline.
The point is: just because you like something and are interested in it doesn’t mean you’re passionate about it, or that you have to build your life around it.
Your passion changes because you change
Your 20s are full of identity shifts. You might want to become a pilot at 20, decide to become a flight attendant at 22, and by 27 you are working a 9-5 you never asked for. That’s normal. Change is inevitable.
You can enjoy doing something new, then be good at something else entirely the next day. You can then become curious about something with nothing to do with your current profession and try learning more about it later.
The problem is the sheer amount of information we’re surrounded by in this era, and social media makes it worse. Every time you see someone thriving in a different career, you start questioning your own.
Your brain goes, “Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.” This creates career FOMO — constantly abandoning one path because another one looks more exciting.
The core point is that passion is dynamic. If you keep chasing it, you’ll eventually crave stability, but until then, all you’ve known is uncertainty, so you never learn what being stable actually feels like. You don’t need to discover your passion. You need room to experiment enough to discover what actually fits you.
Passion doesn’t protect you from reality
No matter how passionate you feel, and no matter how much you love doing something, there will come a point where you’re forced to ask: “Can I really make a living from this?” You’ve probably seen people online claiming they became millionaires by staying consistent on YouTube.
There’s a reality behind that story that never gets talked about — like all those pieces about how passionate MrBeast is about YouTube, and how invested he still is in it. The reality is he’s been through situations most of us don’t even think about.
The constant exhaustion and burnout from staying in front of the camera, making content around the clock, living a life without an ounce of true comfort, moving and performing all the time — it’s genuinely exhausting.
Very few people can actually keep up with that kind of pace. What people see is him becoming a billionaire by posting content on YouTube. What they don’t realize is he also invested millions to get there.
Is this really what passion leads you to? At some point, passion fades, and you still need the ability to keep up with the work and stick around.
This is an uncomfortable truth, but I’ll say it anyway: you can be passionate about something and still not be motivated or disciplined enough to stick with it until you get close to monetizing it.
The hidden problem: you expect work to feel meaningful all the time
I’ve seen people online giving career advice in a pretty delusional way. They say, “Follow your passion, do something that never dulls your spark, feel excited every time you work.”
Whenever you hear advice like that, your brain goes, “Maybe this isn’t what I’m supposed to do.” In reality, as humans, we’re part of evolution’s premium subscription so we ARE meant to lose our spark every now and then.
We’re meant to not like what we do sometimes. We’re meant to feel those emotions no matter how much we hate them. What’s the point of living if it’s all good and perfect all the time?
There have to be ups and downs, which is why sometimes all you can do is sit around and push through the day. If you have to go through these things anyway, why not spend them doing what you actually want instead?
Every career has repetition, difficult people, boring administrative work, rejection, deadlines, learning curves, and days when you don’t want to show up. Make the distinction between loving a career and being willing to tolerate its difficult parts.
So what should you follow instead?
The answer you’re looking for isn’t in anyone else’s opinion. If you ask a career counsellor for advice, they’ll simply tell you their opinion of what you should do — but that’s no guarantee you’ll actually like it.
The answer lies within you. Instead of asking “What am I passionate about?”, try asking “What am I curious enough to get good at?” It can be as small as learning a foreign language.
Try it for a month. If you can genuinely stick around and keep up with it, that’s how you build skills. Try and test what you actually like to do in the moment. For your career, look for the intersection of:
• What you’re good at
• If there is something you’re willing to work hard at
•What can people can actually learn from you
• What someone can pay you for
Say you’re good at learning languages, and willing to work hard enough at it that people can learn from you and pay you for it — that’s it, you’ve found your career as a language instructor.
Once you find this path, the passion develops subconsciously. You’ll hardly realize how you got there. It’s as simple as trying something, becoming good at it, getting recognized for your skills, gaining confidence in your profession, becoming more interested, and eventually developing passion for it.
Passion isn’t always the starting point. Sometimes it’s the result.
Build your 20s around experiments, not one perfect decision
I hate how people glorify their achievements at a young age. I understand the excitement of getting to show off what you’ve built early on.
A lot of them became millionaires at 21, own mansions at 20, and started families at exactly 19. That’s not really an achievement, because life is long enough that a happy ending at 19, 20, or 21 doesn’t mean much yet.
But when a 25-year-old sees some kid online earning $100k at 21, of course they feel left behind. They start questioning their own life unnecessarily.
These young entrepreneurs are actually just experimenting early — it’s just that they’re doing it subconsciously, and that’s a good thing.
But they think they’ve made a perfect decision and that life is sorted. What they realize a bit later is that life humbles every single person on this planet, including the almost-trillionaire Elon Musk.
So if you’re in your 20s, instead of deciding “this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life,” try doing it for six months. Try internships, freelancing, and volunteering. Build small projects, talk to people already working in the field, take courses, shadow professionals, and learn valuable skills.
Change direction when the evidence tells you it’s not working out. You’re young enough to run every experiment you want. And it’s not about being an expert in your 20s — I’ve known people figuring things out in their 40s and 50s.
Changing careers in your 40s is also something to be proud of. You can do it all, as long as you don’t trap yourself in the system, running like a rat on a wheel.
Final thoughts
The best advice I ever received in my 20s was to stop seeking advice at all. Life is all about figuring things out for yourself.
So the best thing you can do is build options and see what keeps you hitched long enough that passion follows you. Don’t follow your passion — let it follow you.
Your 20s don’t need to be about finding the one thing you’re meant to do. They can be about becoming the kind of person who has options.
Build skills, relationships, savings, experience, health, confidence. Try things, fail at things, change your mind.
Then, when you eventually discover something you genuinely care about, you’ll have the resources to pursue it.
Maybe the goal of your 20s isn’t to find your passion. Maybe it’s to become capable enough that you can afford to pursue whatever eventually becomes meaningful to you.
