Grrrr. Articles like this really irritate me. While he's sort of right, I think the whole article is somewhat misleading. In my experience, if you're the best at something, you'll probably be able to make a decent living doing it, unless it's underwater basket weaving levels of useless.
What people don't seem to understand is that passion and discipline are interlinked. Like any long-term relationship, your passions are going to have ups and downs, times where you don't want to push forward. Discipline and willpower are the only ways anyone can convert passion into marketable skill.
So yeah, you can do anything you want. You just have to be willing to be disciplined on top of being passionate.
The actual interesting phenomenon here is how this pablum makes it to the frontpage. It shows how philosophically and emotionally juvenile the readership here is. It exposes HN as a frat-like atmosphere full of blowhard meatheads obsessed with trite "Top N Ways to Succeed!"
Your comment is level-headed and insightful and it's a rehash of ancient understandings regarding the value and meaning of work and life. Passion, discipline, prudence temperance justice fortitude patience charity faith and hope.
These "link-bait" discussions were stale thousands of years ago. How very simple-minded the "smart" people here are, for all their delusions of high intellectualism.
Maybe if HNers took more humanities they wouldn't be so fascinated by these shallow articles.
What people don't seem to understand is that passion and discipline are interlinked. Like any long-term relationship, your passions are going to have ups and downs, times where you don't want to push forward. Discipline and willpower are the only ways anyone can convert passion into marketable skill.
So yeah, you can do anything you want. You just have to be willing to be disciplined on top of being passionate.