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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.
when i grow up i want to work in a cubical.
also, my other car is a cubical.
.cig
In the Netherlands there are a few types of education for young kids, that are radically different. It's called 'Vrije school', free school. In this system, if kids don't want to do something, they are allowed to do something else, and do the task later.
There even is a more radical aproach called 'eigenwijs' which literelly means something like stubborn, but in this case means self-thought. In this system children get to decide what they want to do.
I personally don't think that this is the way education should be. Children are too young to make too many decisions. But to rigid is also wrong. I think you need a more Yin-Yang aproach. Work hard, relieve with something fun.
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.
nah, don't worry, in the corporate world, no one uses logic.
No Sigs!
What a load of crud. Somebody send him to Demotivators, quickly.
http://www.despair.com/potential.html
Here's a related article, The Puritan Work Ethic at Anxiety Culture.
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'?
That said, I think s/he might have focused more on finding ways to experience wonder from moment-to-moment. This isn't easy when you're slinging hash, or heading toward the 11th straight hour of wrapping up a code project for a manager named Godzilla.
Life really is moment-to-moment, and very, very non-linear. There are ways - without becoming a mindless new age fanatic - to deal with the everyday.
Many years ago I read a book on Aesthetics called "Art in the Everyday"; it had a big impact. (I think it's out of print, and most people would probably find it pedantic).
Wittgenstein had a great way of dealing with this; he said (to paraphrase) "don't wonder about why you are, or what you are, or how you came to be, etc. - simply wonder THAT you are.
Again, this is not about contemplating one's navel, but rather using good, time-worn techniques (meditation, etc.) to get beyond all the stuff that weighs us down, and use that weight as a lever to achieve some internal peace.
It's tough drilling down to the moment in difficult times, but there's peace there, no matter what. I wish we could teach our kids more about how to do that.
Lastly, none of this means quiting the world, and withdrawing. On the contrary, it's about finding ways to pay more attention to the world on a moment-by-moment basis. that's deosn't preclude anyone from being/doing in this world in any number of ways - i.e. agressive entrepreneur, waiter, writer, coder, nanny, stay-at-home-mom, etc.
As a kid I was taught that I had to learn Math. An no one explained to me WHY I had to learn math. To me it was more fun to play with my Commodore 64 and the Philips EE2003- electronics kits. I was very curious as a kid, and every time I asked those who tried to teach me math what X and Y meant they never explained it to me but just told me to concentrate on the math formula itself and just solve it the way it has been told and explained. They told me I did not need to know what X and Y stands for. This is just ONE event of my childhood and why the fun of math became a chore to me instead of the fun it really could be.
... 8-bit assembly back then. Food for thoughts.
Back then, teachers where not advanced enough with computers to know that the stuff I coded in assembly actually where pretty advanced math. And since I was only 11 years old I had no clue it was advanced, to me it was just pure fun and I could not get enough of it. Too much later in life I discovered the connection between the school math and the computer programming that occupied my childhood.
I think teachers should be more creative in showing kids how they could use the things they learn in real life. Because of these experiences in my childhood - I got very bad math grades and did terribly in school. Later in life - I got a job as a service technican, but still I had many holes and lack of real knowledge on how things worked because of my lack of schooling.
Much later in life I rediscovered math and how fun it could be - because it rewared my personal projects with results that I really needed, that made math a lot of fun. Now I just really wish I knew the connection as a kid, maybe I was not smart enough to see the connection - but its kind of funny that I actually performed very advanced math formulas and calculations in an even more difficult environment
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
"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.
Hey, don't we need gargage men, factory workers, and clerks?
This article is a lot of manure. "Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something." He speaks for himself, obviously, as there are whole legions of people who prefer this over their work.
"So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, is reading books." Is this guy serious? I guess he never ever read a book, or, if he did, he didn't get it.
Why does this get mentioned on Slashdot? Just because the guy is a programmer?
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
Paul Graham is such
a winner. That's
why all of his
articles look like
this on the screen.
He knows that there
might still be some
poor person trying
to read them on a
40-character
display, and he is
so tremendously
courteous to them.
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.
What does the education system expose your kids to today?
STDs mostly. I'm not kidding, 25% of Americans age 15-39 have genital herpes.
While I generally don't admit it in face-to-face settings, I too fall into that statistic... but I'm not foolish enough to kid myself into blaming the educational system. Even at a young age I understood some of the negative consequences some actions might carry. Most generations since the '80s AIDS scare have grown up with a more realistic perception about sex.
Yes, since the day I found out, I've learned far more about STDs than I ever have at school. And yes, I wish the hassles of living daily with this was imprinted more on me back then, it might of made me more paranoid. But I certainly knew I was taking some chances redeeming those glory hole coupons at the fair last year.
STDs mostly. I'm not kidding, 25% of Americans age 15-39 have genital herpes.
Uh-huh. And are they getting it from their teachers?
I have a career that I love. I work for people I love. The work I do (write niche software facilitating education) is a cause I love.
I get paid rather well, to do work I love, for people I like working with. It wasn't at all easy to get here but I persisted in doing what I love, and what I get passionate about.
And I love it.
Seriously, the only problems with doing what you love is
A) Figuring out how to make doing what you love create wealth desired by somebody else, and
B) Finding that somebody else.
People that are passionate about what they do are more productive than those who dread monday morning. So, it's easy to see why somebody, passionate about their work, following their dreams, can live without the political infrastructure of an existing company.
In short, if you really love what you do, do as Paul suggests and consider a startup! It's risky, and it's hard, HARD work. It requires that you give all you've got and then some, and you're more likely to blow it than not, sometimes in embarrassing ways. If it wasn't hard and risky, everybody else would do it, too!
I've been involved with 5 startups, 1 was barely break-even (actually, net loss unless my time was free) and 1 was profitable. The one that's profitable is the one I'm still with, that I love doing.
So ask yourself: how much do you value your own happiness and satisfaction? Be honest. If you don't much care about "putting in the time", then get up tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM, spend 20 minutes on the freeway, and make sure you get to your job 10 minutes early, so that the boss notices and gives you that $1.00/hr raise you're hoping for at the annual employee review next summer!
But, if you value your satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, and love of life, consider what you really like to do, what would bring satisfaction day in and day out, and what legacy you want to leave behind you. Decide who you want to be, and be that person.
And go for it!
My story? Well, I've always been at least peripherally involved with IT. I knew all about the 386DX vs the 386SX vs the 486DLC back in the day. I've nearly always had a computer of some type, and took some programming classes in college - but never found my passion.
In 1996 I started a computer store, with $2,000 and some card tables set up in a shop downtown. In a short while, working, hustling and selling, I had a decent business going. But it sucked. Windows driver conflicts were such a pain, customers returned computers when they visited porn sites and got a virus, you name it. I got sick of "wipe and reload". I hated it.
But I was making pretty good money! Not like, wealthy or anything, but considerably better than most jobs. During this time, I met a gentlemen who mentioned Linux for the first time. I did some searching. I bought "Red Hat Linux for Dummies" complete with a copy of Red Hat 5.1. I experimented with it, and discovered that I LIKED it. It blew me away when I hacked together a relational database with BASH! (simple/stupid, but it worked)
Very quickly, I wanted to do Linux and databases full time, and after alot of discussion, I got my wife to agree.
In the spring of 2000, I gave the shop to my manager for just $10,000. (basically, the money that I owed) I pursued a contract that would give some immediate money, and worked HARD on honing my skills. I read books, websites, etc. every chance I got. Work got hard to find, and things got very tight for a while. (You may recall a certain recession going on about 2002/03) I almost lost my house. Repeatedly. I worked long, 14-hour days, coaxing whatever money I could out of the meager contracts I managed to close.
Bills weren't getting paid, kids needed new clothes and shoes, and I was stressed to the max. I started having trouble with high blood sugars, and terrible insomnia - often several days without sleep.
But the turnaround was so sudden, it was very difficult to adjust to. In a single month, my income quintupled! And, not
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"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?
They would tend to suggest the figures are closer to 1.4% in males and 2.2% in females. But if there's any conflicting data on this, I'm more than happy to accept it!
PS The Pubmed ID of the article is 16026639. You can get the abstract here
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.
Graham has knocked the humanities before, implying they have less worth than the sciences (French literature being intrinsically easier than the hard sciences, IIRC)--which I find odd coming from him especially, whose personal selling points include a mixed background in computers and painting.
You shouldn't find it odd - you should find it more convincing, being that he's someone saying "subject A is harder than subject B" when he has experience in both.
Graham's point seems to be that in the hard sciences there are definite answers for questions, a clear "right" and "wrong", whereas in subjects like literature there are not (except in the trivial sense of a grade-school-style quiz that simply tests whether or not you actually read the book). Hence, a college degree in literature is easier than one in the hard sciences because in literature you have a much broader range of what can be considered "correct."
I believe the comparison you're referring to is along those lines: that most Physics graduates could complete a degree in French Literature rather easily, while most French Lit grads would have considerably more difficulty completing a degree in physics. Based on my experience, that comparison is dead-on accurate.
To put it yet another way, imagine how far you'd get in a physics program writing papers on the postmodern ennui of electrons.
...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...
Well, he did say they couldn't add...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
One of the oldest quotes about loving your work i know is this:
"If you do something you truly love, you'll never work a day in your life."
This is certainly true, but i don't know anybody who is *this* fortunate. Most of us simply work to live, and then there's that batch of people who live to work. We usually call them Workaholics. I'd say that most of those people do it compulsory, and are not actually having fun doing the thing they do.
I have done helldesk work for 5 or 6 years, and then got a shot at becoming a network/sysadmin. I started working for a detaching agency here in The Netherlands and although i had some crappy assignments, i had my little gems too. The project im on right now is the best ive had so far, and im absolutely loving it. I have no doubt that i'll get crappier assignments after this one tho, but im willing to take it in stride. I guess thats just life for you, taking the good with the bad. I dont think there *is* a job that doesnt have its drawbacks.
"Sarcasm is for *winners*, Alan." - Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men)
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.
Maybe the most important thing is not doing what you love, but doing who you love.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
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"
Am I the only one who has the same vague feelings of discomfort about Maciej Ceglowski?
My Dad was a physician.
Everybody assumed that I would be one too--take over the practice when he retired.
Dad always told me "Do whatever you want to do in life. But do it well. Son, I don't care if you're a ditch-digger. But if you choose that path, you better be the best damned ditch-digger around." Dad also taught me that if you're working hard, you're doing good. Worst thing you can say about a someone is "That boy don't like to work."
Wound up being an engineer. Turns out, I'd always been an engineer; just didn't know it.
Folks tell me I'm pretty good at it, too.
So, as I sit here waiting for something to break (should't be long...)..
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
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.
The main point of the article is to do what you love.
The discussion point I was addressing was Graham's contention that the humanities are easier than the hard sciences, which was written in a different article entirely.
And while people most certainly love literature and many will write artistic criticism without being paid to do so (just look at how many offer unsolicited movie reviews on myspace), nobody would write papers on gender bias in postmodern literature unless they were eyeing the carrot of tenure or some other extrinsic reward. On the other hand, plenty of people would still work on problems in number theory regardless of whether or not they were getting paid.
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.
Yes, the French have figured out how to create and maintain a 10% unemployment rate!
You're looking at the wrong issue. Plenty of people would write about the social effects of gender bias in media (e.g. literature) even if they weren't getting paid. Secondly, you're promoting the fantasy of a passionate scientist working alone with pencil and paper which, since around 1300, just ain't so. Modern-day contributions (after Galileo) to mathematics require institutional support. Everything is else is just amateurism.
The only way what you said could be true is if you defined "institutional support" only in the most trivial sense possible (e.g. "Kentucky Fried Chicken is the institution that supports my Playstation gaming career.") Einstein wasn't being paid by the patent office to work on relativity, as I recall.
So I can find nothing wrong with your argument, aside from the fact that every bit of evidence suggests the exact opposite.