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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. "
If kids don't believe that they can do what they want then the only reason they won't be dissapointed is that they don't realise there is anything better.
:)) and if they try and fail then so be it.
I say encourage kids to do what they want (within reason
Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Laugh It Off
YOu can always geta job doing what you love. Just realise that money isn't all that important, and go for it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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
This is less and less true the more you value having a family. :(
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.
Why do we always have these comments modded insightful? Why do we have to basically equate "we got it pretty good here in US of A" to "you can't complain about anything"? Even billionaires have their complaints. I am not saying those are always meaningful, but it's not possible to have meaningful discussions if you'll be blanket chastising any "complainers" for not being in the worst off category.
nah, don't worry, in the corporate world, no one uses logic.
No Sigs!
Here's a related article, The Puritan Work Ethic at Anxiety Culture.
Don't go into debt. You need to decide what your priorities are- enjoying your job, or that new house and new car.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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
Comparing the average US citizen to anyone else in the world,...
[ironic]Oh right, I forgot, you people in the USA are the only ones who work for a living. All of us here in Europe, all of that people in Japan live in the middle age, fighting constant wars and waiting for someone to slit our throats in the streets.[/ironic]
Maybe you wanted to say "Comparing the average First World citizen with anyone else in a poor country..."
Wait... do you mean like in LA? or more like in NY?
"Just break the silence, cause i'm drifting away, away from you..."(Muse - New Born)
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.
So I figured, damn the torpedoes: I'm going to do work I find interesting and enjoyable, or leave academia. After all, what's the worst thing that could happen? I'd end up doing stuff I hated, and have more money.
So I stopped worrying about what I thought other people would find interesting, and started working on problems that fascinated me. These days, I love my work and for the first time I really feel like I have a future in science. The thing is, if you find your work incredibly interesting, others may or may not find it exciting. But if you are an intelligent, curious person and you find your work boring, odds are damn good that other people will find it boring. And as far as I'm concerned, there are too many fascinating problems out there to waste time on the boring ones. These days, I wake up, and run over the dozen or so research projects I'm dabbling on, and say, "What do I want to work on today?", closely followed by, "And how long can I stall on this dissertation thing before my advisor kills me?"
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.
Problem is, kids are expecting to make a TON of money the first job they get (I'm included in this demographic as I don't yet have a full time job. But constant drumming into me "you're going to earn shit whatever you do" has convinced me otherwise, at first anyway), if they even want to get a job.
People are able to do what they want all the time, and they do need encouragement to pursue these goals. But they also need to be taught the importance of financial stability. My father had a job he never wanted, but it was the only thing he could do to provide for his family at 18. As he got older and his finances became more stable, he was able to pursue his dreams, and had any of them really taken off financially, I'm sure he would have seriously considered doing them full time. But they didn't immediately have money we could live on if he were to quit his proper job, so he never even seriously considered quitting his job.
That sort of situation is a good one, and one that a LOT of people (especially the more artistically inclined) should consider. And many people out there are in such situations. But it's difficult to drum this into teenagers, and so parents/teachers/adults instead go for the "you'll hate your job but you have to do it" route, with some offering the glimmer of hope "but if your lucky you'll be able to do what you want in your spare time." Kids do dream about the improbable, and unfortunately if the dreams aren't kept in check, they'll persue those at the detriment of financial stability. Sure you hear success stories, but for every one, there's an uncountable number of failures.
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.
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?
Go home to my wife and family. And do whatever we want. Well, afford.
I don't love my job, and I don't expect I ever will, nor will I need to. I do enjoy my job, however, and I'd look elsewhere if I didn't. Wanna do what you love? Try the missus.
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.
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
Bottom line:
(A) you have a roof over your head, and can get food in your belly when you're hungry, and nobody is about to beat you up or murder you...
AND
(B) this is not going to change in the immediate future...
THEN
(C) Any further problems you have are in your head.
This is true on multiple levels. On one hand, people fail to enjoy the work they have in front of them -- sometimes work they chose for themselves -- because it doesn't match their ideal of perfection. They're weighed down with "shoulds" ("I should have a better boss than this idiot") and "mights" ("The project might fail and they might blame me") and wild inferences ("The fact they didn't take my suggestion to use Linux means they disrespect me.").
On the other hand, people also mishandle priorities. This is what I think a lot of people talk about when they tell you you should "do what you love".
Suppose you have the talent to be a professional musician. Trying to become on is risky, but it's important to understand the scope and character of the risk. Failure doesn't mean for people with middle class backgrounds that they'll starve or die of exposure on the street. What it means is that they won't be able to live in as nice a house or in as a desirable suburb as their parents; or at the very least that their path to those ends might be delayed by four or five years. If you can break into your second choice field several years late, I don't think it hurts you at all to have trod a road less travelled. When you throw in the towel and go to law school like dad wanted, maybe you'll specialize in intellecual property law, or maybe you'll have a particular interest in contracts. Or if it's med school, maybe you'll become a hand surgeon, or a psychiatrist interested in art therapy. What will happen is that whatever you do you'll bring more of your personal uniqueness to it than if you did what was expected.
In any case, going straight to law school is, in my opinion, a mishandling of priorities. At the age when this decision faces people, the things that a successful law career (and Dad's connections) would bring aren't all that important to you. Some would argue this is immaturity, but I'd say that immaturity is appropriate for young people, who having the slack that more years ahead and no family to provide for have no rational reason, in my opinion, not to stock away memories that will last a lifetime and deepen the individuality they bring to their mid-life career.
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