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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
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.
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.
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.
...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.
Maybe the most important thing is not doing what you love, but doing who you love.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
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.