Money or passion

Here is a piece from the Harvard Business Review on that question:

Starting with the key element of desire.

“… desire is all-important. You simply want to be doing something that you love, or something that is logically going to lead to something you love, in order to do your best work. That desire will make you more creative and more resourceful, and will help you get further faster.

And, it will help you persist. When you’re trying something that’s never been attempted before — beginning an unusual project at work, or trying to get a new business off the ground — you’re going to face a lot of obstacles. You don’t want to be giving up the first time you encounter one.”

There is a note of caution and sage advice about taking care of necessities of life first:

“If you can’t afford to do the thing you’re passionate about — for example, if you do it, you won’t be able to feed your family, or it would keep you from graduating college (which is something you think is more important than whatever you’re passionate about) — then no, you’d better not bet your economic life on it. A basic principle concerning how you should deal with an unknown future is that every small smart step you take should leave you alive to take the next step. So, make sure you attend to your lower order Maslow needs of food and shelter and the like.”

Here are some other pointers:

Research (such as The Power of Small Wins that ran in Harvard Business Review May, 2011) shows that people who make progress every day toward something they care about report being satisfied and fulfilled.

They are in favor of people being happy and into provoking people into pursuing happiness.

You are only one thought away from an insight — an insight that can change everything

Do at least one thing a day that makes you happy

The future is an unknown

Time is finite

The only way to know anything for sure is to act

Read more at Choosing between making money