Why you will fail if money is your first motivation
And why you should rather focus on your passions
In Silicon Valley there is this famous quote:
“Chase your passions and money will come”.
Why this is relevant? Not because these people have a better sense of moral than you and me: we all want money.
However, they understood that if money is your first motivation when you work on a project, you will fail miserably.
When money is your first motivation, you will fail miserably.
Why? Because money is not a motivator.
Nowadays, starting a project, creating a startup is often done for the bad reasons: many people want to be entrepreneur because they want to be rich. The faster the better.
However, when passion is not your first motivation, your project WILL NEVER BE FINISHED, AND WILL NEVER SUCCEED.
Why? Because a project never happens as planned and during the phases of difficulties and doubts, if your first motivation is money your brain will find another idea which seems easier to reach. And you’ll quit your current project.
The case of John : money money money, the vicious circle
John have a pile of unfinished projects, all of these projects were one day “the greatest idea on earth to become rich”, his desk is full of post its : “Being millionaire at 23, Billionaire at 28”.
After another failure to finish its last project, John heard that some mobile indie games makes a lot of money such Crossy Road that made 3 million dollars in 3 months.
He’s a casual gamer, know how to program in C#, not passionated by game creation but dammit 3 millions dollars in 3 months ! He called some friends and they decided to create a new indie game that will be a hit and make them rich !
Step 1: We will make tons of money with this project!
1st day: “Super ! We will rich, sure we must learn how to make games but for 3 millions dollars I’m ready to learn to speak Uzbek!”
Moreover, making a Crossy Roads clone doesn’t seems to be hard. Let’s begin! At the end of the week we will ship our game and become rich!
What wonderful things I’ll buy when I’ll be rich?…
Step 2: Doing this project is much more harder than we thought…
Day 3: Finally, making a game is much more complicated that John thought.
There is a ton of problem: nobody knows how to make 3D assets, Unity Engine is a good tool but must first learn how to use it and it will take time… His team and him are less and less motivated by the project.
Step 3: Maybe we should find another project that will make us rich…
Day 5: Even if we finish this damn game, there is a ton of chances that it will fail miserably.
Moreover, we don’t know anything about game promotions.
Ok let’s stop this another labyrinthine system !
I found this new idea ! We’re going to be rich!
Step 4: We’ll make tons of money with this new project !
Repeat the process.
The vicious circle
Did you recognize yourself in this circle? If yes, it’s because your primary focus was money, sure you can lie to yourself and say “yes money is an important part, but I also think that my project is quite interesting…”.
Be honest with yourself, there are 2 possibilities:
- The first, you just lie to yourself, you read an article about the fact that the industry where you create your project is booming and you think you’ll make a ton of money. You’re not passionate about the topic but that’s not a problem…
- The second, you’re quite interested in this project, but it’s only because you don’t have other ideas and you hate to not doing something.
Remember the quotation from the physicist, Nobel Prize winner Richard P. Feynman :
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool”
How to quit this vicious circle
Fortunately it’s really easy, think:
If I was super rich and I did not need money, what would I work on? Which project?
And do that project.
Passion is the key, passionate people do not stop their project: when the project has some problems, they persevere.
Why? Because they have no reason to stop it, it is their passion, it is why they wake up early in the morning.
Instead, someone who is motivated by money will quit because there is a ton of easier way to make money.
Refuse the temptation to say: maybe if I don’t do that I will loose a gigantic opportunity even if it’s not interesting to me, it’s a lot of money : because you will never finish this project anyway so you will not lose anything.
Refuse the temptation to say: maybe if I don’t do that I will loose a gigantic opportunity even if it’s not interesting to me, it’s a lot of money : you will never finish this project anyway so you will not lose anything.
That’s all, I hope that this article will help you to quit the vicious circle and make projects that you love. 😄
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