The Fortitude Chronicle: A Weekly Digest of Athletic Determination

Monday Momentum

For the Relentless Mind

You're Optimizing For the Wrong Thing

Stop Chasing Passion

Most career advice is backwards.

"Follow your passion" sounds inspiring until you realize most people don't know what they're passionate about. They're waiting for some lightning bolt moment of clarity that never comes. Meanwhile, life passes them by.

Here's what actually works: chase competence, and passion follows.

Passion isn't something you discover—it's something you develop through a predictable sequence. Get slightly better at something, and you like it a bit more. Like it more, and you invest more effort. More effort builds more skill. More skill creates more enjoyment. The cycle compounds.

Research supports this: competence alone doesn't guarantee success without some form of motivation, but motivation without competence goes nowhere. They feed each other in a continuous loop. The question is which one you start with.​

Most people start with the wrong variable. They wait to feel passionate before they commit to getting good. This is backwards. Passion emerges from competence, not the other way around.

When you're bad at something, it's not enjoyable. You struggle, fail, and feel incompetent. This doesn't inspire passion—it inspires avoidance. But push through that initial discomfort, build some basic skill, and something shifts. You start seeing progress. Progress creates positive feedback. Positive feedback fuels continued effort.

The "passion-driven" approach sounds romantic: explore what excites you, follow your heart, do what you love. The problem is that what excites you when you're incompetent often isn't what excites you when you're skilled. Beginners and experts love different aspects of the same field.​

Start by getting really good at something valuable. The passion will show up later.

Competence, motivation, discipline, consistency, and passion are all necessary. But the order matters. Most people try to manufacture passion first, then hope discipline follows. This fails because there's no foundation to build on.

The correct sequence: pick something worth getting good at, apply discipline consistently, build competence through repetition, watch motivation increase as you improve, and let passion emerge naturally from mastery.

Discipline gets you started. Consistency keeps you going. Competence makes it rewarding. Passion makes it sustainable. But passion is the result of the process, not the prerequisite.

This doesn't mean picking something you hate. It means picking something that's valuable, that you don't actively dislike, and committing to getting better at it regardless of how you feel initially.

As you develop competence, you discover aspects of the work that genuinely engage you. Skills that felt tedious at first become interesting once you understand their nuances. Challenges that seemed overwhelming become engaging puzzles once you have tools to solve them.

The passion you develop through competence is more durable than the passion you chase without skill. It's grounded in real ability, not fantasy about what you think you'd enjoy.

Stop waiting to feel passionate. Start building competence. Pick something valuable, get disciplined about improving, stay consistent long enough to see progress, and watch what happens.

The passion you're searching for is on the other side of getting good at something that matters. Not before. After.

Most people have this backwards. They're waiting for passion to give them permission to start. Champions start first, build competence second, and discover passion third.

You don't need to love it to begin. You need to begin to love it.

Two Quotes

1. “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” — Marie Curie

2. “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” — Victor Hugo

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To Building Fortitude.

 Best Regards,

Colin Jonov, Founder & CEO Athletic Fortitude