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Before you can bring your unique contribution to a field, you must first go through a phase of mastering its fundamentals. This 'chop wood, carry water' period involves apprenticing yourself to the core skills. Trying to innovate too early, before developing competency, is a common mistake and often leads to failure.

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Rather than trying to start a new venture from scratch, ambitious young people should find a master in their field and make themselves useful. By helping with menial tasks and demonstrating value over time, they can earn a place on the team and gain invaluable experience that is impossible to acquire alone.

Don't search for a pre-existing passion. Instead, choose work that helps others, then dedicate yourself to becoming skilled at it. Passion and fulfillment emerge from developing competence and seeing the positive impact of your work, often in fields you never expected to love.

The advice to "follow your passion" is backward. Passion typically develops from a positive feedback loop of becoming skilled at something and receiving recognition for it. Focus on building expertise and achieving results in your early career, and passion will likely emerge from your success.

Many people hesitate to enter fields like AI policy because they lack initial passion. However, deep interest often develops after acquiring skills and engaging with meaningful work. Passion is a result of competence and seeing one's impact, not a prerequisite for starting.

It's a mistake to specialize too early in your career. You cannot identify your true expertise until you have explored various skills and platforms. Becoming a generalist first allows you to discover where your greatest talents and interests lie.

Stop searching for your passion. Instead, find a field where you have the aptitude to become great. Achieving a top 10% or 1% skill level generates the prestige, security, and camaraderie that ultimately create passion for the work itself. Proficiency precedes passion.

The idea of 'finding' your passion is a myth. According to Bilyeu, passion is constructed, not discovered. It begins with a simple interest and is forged through the difficult, often boring process of gaining mastery and pushing through fundamentals, which builds sustained interest over time.

Common advice to "follow your passion" is backward. Developing valuable skills and applying them to help others is what generates lasting fulfillment and passion. Chasing pre-existing interests often leads to hyper-competitive and ultimately unsatisfying fields.

Instead of searching for a job you're already passionate about, focus on becoming excellent at a valuable skill. The speaker learned from a successful founder that being passionate about excellence itself is the key. The love for the work often develops as a result of achieving mastery.

Advising young people to 'follow their passion' is dangerous as it pushes them toward hyper-competitive 'vanity industries'. A better strategy is to find a talent, achieve mastery, and let passion develop from the respect and economic security that success brings.