With depression medication being so popular, is this partially the result of years of "Find what you love, and do it"? Does it contribute to people with any ability for introspection becoming miserable when they know and are being reminded that they're not doing what they love? I include the introspection bit since it's very easy these days to get sucked into one mindless time sink after another and never have any alone time with one's own thoughts. ("Consumerism" is probably the general form.)
If loving something specific, like Carmack does with video games and Feynman did with Physics, requires some amount of eccentricity, then by definition most people don't really love something they want to do it all the time. In that case, the advice is at best a NOP to people who are content with their life despite not loving something. For other cases, I could see it being damaging to people who will conflate "love" with "like" and ask where they can get paid to collect other people's tumblr posts on their own tumblr "blog", or damage people who will just be reminded that they aren't doing what they love but can't accept they'll never find something they love. I don't think it's all that dangerous for the rare "late bloomers" or people who already know what they love and happen to love something non-profitable--those people are going to do it regardless, they don't need to be told, they more often need to be told not to for their own health. Some will find themselves content even without much money, others will tolerate working years in the profitable salt mines being in a state of varying misery, and trading that for years afterwards doing what they please.
If loving something specific, like Carmack does with video games and Feynman did with Physics, requires some amount of eccentricity, then by definition most people don't really love something they want to do it all the time. In that case, the advice is at best a NOP to people who are content with their life despite not loving something. For other cases, I could see it being damaging to people who will conflate "love" with "like" and ask where they can get paid to collect other people's tumblr posts on their own tumblr "blog", or damage people who will just be reminded that they aren't doing what they love but can't accept they'll never find something they love. I don't think it's all that dangerous for the rare "late bloomers" or people who already know what they love and happen to love something non-profitable--those people are going to do it regardless, they don't need to be told, they more often need to be told not to for their own health. Some will find themselves content even without much money, others will tolerate working years in the profitable salt mines being in a state of varying misery, and trading that for years afterwards doing what they please.