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How to Do What You Love
fnord_ix writes "Paul Graham has another interesting essay talking about How to Do What You Love. He talks about the lies that adults tell kids about what work is, and how work is equal to pain." From the article: "I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They may have to be made to work on certain things. But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later. "
Sometimes you don't ever get to do what you love, but you still have to make a living. I think you're fortunate if you find something you love to do, but I don't think it's right to tell kids that it's what should happen either. That would just be a big disappointment if it didn't turn out that way.
Somewhere along the way I chose things electronic (and computational) and here I am...
What does the education system expose your kids to today?
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
I used to work on dull stuff.
Then I worked on interesting stuff.
They they took the interesting stuff and made it dull stuff in a foreign land.
Now I work on dull stuff.
As you work, remember who's creating the value, and who's getting paid for it without creating value.
I think if you love your job %25 of the time you are doing OK. Politics and tedious work 75% of the time is worth the programming 25% of the time. I just think about the money when I am getting yelled at for not being able to read a manager's mind.
It's easy to preach about how to do what you love when you're independently wealthy.
Certainly Graham's own actions are a large part of the reason why he's independently wealthy, but if he or anyone else thinks that luck was not an incredibly huge portion of it, they're wrong. And yet he (and other people like him) constantly preach on "here's how to succeed", as if, following their own advice, they themselves would actually succeed in any meaningful number of independent test runs of reality.
I don't mean to denigrate Graham, what he accomplished, or the fact that his own talents and efforts helped tremendously in those accomplishments. But these sorts of articles always strike me as unwarranted general conclusions from absurdly small sample sizes.
The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it
Sorry, that's an incorrect statement, and I wish it would die. It's simplistic and not based in reality and just gives lazy people and excuse to dodge doing important work. I'm sick of hearing it.
Look at the flip side, if you find something you love doing, will you still love it if you get paid to do it?
More specifically, would you still love it if you had deadlines to deal with?
People who love their jobs either thrive on the pressure, or have 'easy' jobs that they don't have to take home with them. For example, my mom loves her job because it's low stress, and when she goes home, she doesn't have to worry about work at all. I love my job because I'm an integral part of my company. We both have hobbies we do outside of work that neither of us could ever make a living doing (or would want to!). Sure, in bizzarro world, someone would pay me to sit on my ass and watch weird movies all day, but I would quickly hate it because the other facets of my personality would get ignored. Likewise, if I did my day job for free, I would not get anything done because the pressure would be gone.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
"It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed."
Dag B
I think they guy got it right about the way society looks at work. As I grew up, it was always assumed that work wasn't actually ever "fun," or else it wouldn't be called work. The fun you got was in the security you could go to the fridge and grab a sandwitch.
Well that isn't true right now. Labor can be done in one part of the world and instantly realized in another part. I hate to sound marxist, but the internet and the proletariat haven't even started to change the world.
-dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Don't really have much to say but the above. Quite honestly, life is long and tedious and the crap organization we humans have come up with for handling it means we have to resort to drugs/alcohol/sex/video games to alleviate that. Fuck.
Well, I don't have kids, but still being in the UK education system I'll give my views. I believe that here, as in the US, more and more children are leaving school without necessary maths skills. Calculus has been remove from the maths GCSE syllabus, fewer and fewer children are taking science GCSEs. I'm told that the requirement to do at least one language GCSE has also been removed. IMO, this is arrogrant in the extreme, the UK is already trailing the rest of the world in languages, this will only make things worse.
At A-level the situation is even worse. In my further maths class we had 8 people. Out of a year of 200. And 4 of them dropped out. The problem is that no-one these days seems to be prepared to tell kids the truth about studying: languages, mathematics, sciences etc. will open a lot of doors to highly paid, skilled and interesting work. Media studies will probably not, no matter how easy it may seem.
My father spent his life doing what he loved to do -- flying. It was his dream to fly when he was a child, and he managed his life so that he could do it as long as possible, even turning down promotions and better pay so that he could continue flying.
He made sure that he flew them all, too, from fighter jets to the largest commercial planes, from props to jets to helicopters. He never got tired of his job, and would often tell me to do what I enjoyed doing, and that the money would come eventually. He said that while he struggled with making enough money to keep his family going the way that he wanted to, but he never doubted. After I left home for uni, he moved into a better flying position and tripled his salary, finally allowing him and my mother to make the kind of money that they really wanted. It took many years for that to happen, though.
If you ask him, he'll tell you that he loved flying until the end of his career. Sure, he made some errors in judgement and would change some things about his life if he could go back, but he'll still say what he's always said -- "Do what you love to do, and then you'll do it well. When you do something well and it doesn't seem like work, you'll be successful at it." I used to call it "subjective pay per hour (SPPH)," meaning that sitting in a 40 hour a week job where every day feels like an eternity gives a lower SPPH than working twelve hours a day doing what you love and never noticing the time speeding by." I think a lot of people on this site know what I'm talking about.
I have had a lot of problems with my father over the years, but this is one area where I believe he hit the nail right on the head.
Put identity in the browser.
Most jobs are dull and boring but are required to keep society going. How interesting is it to drive around in a truck and pick up rubbish? Drive the same bus every day? Clean freaking toilets?
Want geekier: How many coding jobs are pure maintenance and incorporate support? How many engineering jobs do you get where you're able to work on a space probe or an airplane? How many jobs in medicine are research positions, and how many of those are more than just lab work?
Most jobs are tedious. To do something great and interesting and original you have to put in a huge amount of time and effort. You have to be in the right place at the right time and be a better bet for the manager that hires you. Often what suffers is personal/social/family life.
Tell kids the truth. It's all out there for you but you have to do something more than the guy next to you to achieve something spectacular. Do this in a positive way and they may just skip some of the arrogance of being young and thinking the world will change at their whim. Some of them will want it bad enough that they will be great. Others will realise that the life they build around family and "normal" social lives aren't just a waste of life.
This guy would try to tell an 18 year old there's still a Santa.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
No, "luck" means the the trillions of factors you have no control over that effect your life happen to turn out in unusually favorable ways. What these people sometimes don't get is that there are a million other people just as smart as they are, who worked just as hard who just had worse luck and didn't end up wealthy.
Yeah, that's going to work SO well once they grow up. Seriously, children don't know what skills they're going to need to function in a modern society, nor do they understand how things are often related to one another. How many fields of endeavor depend upon solid math skills? How many times will a child change his or her mind regarding what they want to do later in life?
Teach them English so they can communicate. Teach them math so they're prepared for almost any job. Teach them history so their society isn't doomed to repeating the same mistakes. Teach science and biology and art and music. Teach them to think. Teach them to learn.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later."
Forking lies.
In primary school they told me I was doing dull stuff now so I could do fun stuff in high school.
In high school they told me I was doing dull stuff now so I could do fun stuff in uni.
In uni they told me I was doing dull stuff in first year so I could do fun stuff in second year.
I started work and they told me that I had to start at the bottom with the dull stuff and then I could work my way up to the fun stuff.
I'm starting to think it's all just a big lie to keep the masses working hard to achieve something that will never come.
- Jessta
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
It is my believe, that most of the succesful people in the world have one thing in common; they dare to take big risks.
This personality trade is also shared with most of the "losers" in the world.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
In my experience as somebody that was there, "the work you love" is a moving target.
... software developer.
:))))
...
My personal story is one of jumping around in school from area to area trying to find what i liked the most. Going through highschool, i've tryed (the optional classes on) electronics, chemistry and biology. I went to the University and started on physics. A year later i moved to and eventualy got a degree in electronics engineering.
All the while, ever since i got my first computer (a ZX Spectrum 128A) i was doing programing for the fun.
Eventually when i got out of University i started work as a
I spent the next couple of years marveling at how people were paying me to do something i would do for free
Now, if i was still 25 the story would end here - unfortunatly things change
The problem is, after some years working 8 h/day on something you love, it starts loosing it's appeal. To me it was a mix of:
- It started loosing it's challenge. No challenge, no fun.
- By making my work out of my hobby i've placed myself in the situation of constantly having to do it, even if i don't feel like it. Thus for me software development morphed from fun to obligation.
- In the quest for keeping my work challenging i've been moving upscale - from developer to designer to technical architect/analyst. This means that:
* It's harder to find a position at the level that i enjoy the most.
* I have to do side tasks such as "career management" in order to position myself to land a job doing what i enjoy the most. By "career management" read "doing boring stuff for CV improvement purposes".
* Higher level positions require me to develop skills other than the ones needed for software design and development - a slow process.
- There are few big (challenging) projects and many small (stupendously simple) projects/tasks. Thus when i started there were a lot of projects that i found fun, now there are few.
I still have moments of pure enjoyment from my work, but it went from 90% fun, 10% obligation to 10% fun, 90% obligation.
I can only speak from personal experience but I worked a dull IT job for about 5 years in order to build up my recording studio to be able to compete with other pro studios.
I went through a lot of depression because of it- losing sight of the end and getting lost from time to time.
Now 18 months after leaving IT I am starting to make a profit.
It has been quite difficult- but by focussing on what is necessary I've been able to do it and do it alone.
If I hadn't thought big and been pigheadeda bout it then I would never have gotten this far.
Everyone else I played in bands with has gone on to a normal job and stayed there, but quite a few wish they had my life.
I think it is a balance between wanting it, working at it and keeping in mind that you may fail but the important thing is to keep going and not give up.
To falter from time to time is ok, to give up is not.
My response to people who think that you can't get what you want is to say that you gave up too quickly.
Try again. You have nothing to lose whatsoever.
...to just love what you happen to do?
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
I don't know about love, but I do know this:
In a market economy, the only real measure of success is wealth.
Shame that we live in a market economy.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
But I've been doing what I love for years, and getting paid pretty decently to do it.
I graduated with a degree in English (go ahead and laugh, I use it every day to distinguish myself as the programmer who can write and speak articulately), and kind of floundered for a while not knowing what to do. I got a job as a glorified secretary at a small company, and wound up being the Computer Guy because I was the only one who knew anything about Linux when the previous Computer Guy (his name was actually Guy) quit. Of course this was in addition to my old job.
The job got worse and worse, more and more overtime, etc., but I stuck with it because my wife was in grad school and we needed the money. But one day I realized it was going to ruin my life and decided to make a change. I found a job at a place that shared my values (a university). It was less money, and still glorified secretarial work.
But, at least in my case, it mattered that I was articulate and had ideas to contribute about policy decisions. When there were gaps when people left, I was allowed to take on new responsibilities -- and get training and support to help me along the way. I got noticed by the head of the web development group when I volunteered to write a simple Perl CGI to replace the university's crummy static campus map website.
And it's been a pretty easy road since there. I've gotten to work on a lot of interesting projects. They let me switch to telecommuting full-time when I moved to England for a couple of years (the wife had a post-doc), and then to Florida (tenure-track!).
The lesson I've taken from all of this is: don't just slave away thinking your sacrifice will pay for your family. A crappy work situation can make your life miserable, even if you've got the house, the cars, the 2.5 kids, etc. paid for. Find a place to work that values you, and it'll all work out. Maybe not as well as it did in my case, but better than just sucking it up and staying on the treadmill.
And if you wanted to plan ahead, it could be even easier. You could figure out what the lucrative positions were ahead of time and get the education and contacts to get those jobs in the first place.
-Esme
Loving what you do is a discipline.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If everyone are going to do what they love, who's going to drive the bus, be the clerk at the mall, wash the floors, etc, etc.
I'm sure that there are lots of bus drivers out there who love what they do. Driving around town all day - meeting people all day long, listening to interesting or amusing chatter all day. You're off your feet, but there's still a challenge to navigating roads all day.
There's probably also janitors and clerks who love what they do, but probably not as many.
You will always need people to clean sh#tty toilets, and wash dishes, and dig holes, but those are entry level jobs, and for every generation that moves onto bigger and better jobs, there's always a fresh batch of entry level people needing those abandoned entry level jobs.
Maybe not everyone will be able to get the job of their dreams, but everyone should try.
And almost everyone who has the job of their dreams had to eat crap to get there. I'm doing what I love to do - but I had to do some pretty nasty things before I got here.
BRE
"Dude check me out. I'm like a little otter. A SEXY little otter"
After all, there is a difference between telling kids they can do SOMETHING they love and telling them they can do ANYTHING they love. Otherwise, I would have a well-paying job as a fraternity drunkard.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Various people have various needs. For every individual who needs ambitious work and a good challenge, there is another individual who NEEDS routine work where no brain work is involved.
/. how many people would rather code all day long than have to do a manager's work. I'm pretty sure that the non-techie type in the population see programmer's job as being as boring as wiping floors, yet there a bunch of people willing to do it and loving it.
As they say, having too many generals and not enough soldiers is not a good thing. Fortunately, not that many people really want to be generals, managers, PHB or whatever position needs to take responsibilities. Just looking around here on
The key is to doing what you love is to know yourself, know your needs, so you can translate them into something productive.
You're justifying your own misery, with an attitude like that. I've never been well-paid (within the standards of my profession), but I do something I enjoy and am paid well enough -- indeed, I've had better-paying jobs offered and turned them down because I don't want my work to be a "misery that keeps [me] from starving".
I started off doing part-time work for small businesses and people I met through my LUG; one of those just happened to be a student who had an internship at a Bay Area tech company (doing interesting work) he recommended me to; and things have been up from there. If I'd been working food service or retail (because getting a chance to get paid for doing what I have fun with is "wishful thinking") instead of networking with small businesses and the local Linux community to find small system administration and programming jobs, I never would have gotten started and never would have made that connection.
I was sleeping at the office for a while (and then staying with coworkers -- the Bay Area isn't a cheap place to live, but lots of tech company offices there have shower facilities and such), but it got me through. Sure, I wouldn't have been able to afford it if I'd tried to live there on my own -- but living with friends isn't such a bad thing. Also, I didn't drive -- I took light rail or carpooled to work, and only later bought a motorcycle.
40 hours a week is nothing -- I used to work 12-hour days, 6 days a week on a regular basis, but enjoyed it because I was doing what I like. (Over this last year I've picked up a family and a home life and all that jazz, and become a little more detached from my work... which is unfortunate; I'm enjoying it less -- but still, it's anything but misery).
I don't know your circumstances well enough to offer concrete advice -- but being resigned to where you are is no way to improve, and living expenses are something that can be managed.