I always hated that advice "Do what you Love". It's a fucking terrible advice. I know people mean well when they give that advice, but its a downright terrible advice for the vast majority of people.
Let me point out that this is an article written by a guy that ended up "loving" programming. I know that there is a lot of programmers here, (myself included) but let's face the reality here: only weirdos love programming. I say this because I'm a weirdo and I love programming, and every friend I know that loves programming is more or less the.. eccentric type. We just happen to be very fortunate in that we happen to love something that guarantees a middle class income and plenty of opportunities.
Most people are normal and love normal things. They like food, they like music, they like art, they like sex, they like sports, they like adventure. If you tell normal people to do what they love, you are practically dooming them to shit careers. It's all about supply and demand. Most people love the same things that other people love (except programmers, who are weirdos), and there just isn't enough jobs that normal people will love. Maybe 1% of normal people will end up in their dream job, and the other 99% end up on the hamster wheel chasing what they love.
I think your complaint goes away if you complete the sentence: Do what you love to create
Most people live read-only lives. They never create music, food, or art. They merely consume them.
But if you love creating music, food, or art you absolutely can make a career out of it. Of course, a middling chef or musician won't make it very far, but neither will a middling programmer really (though they may at least stay employed).
For one thing, in my experience, most people don't love to create. Most people aren't artists, programmers, writers, chefs, or carpenters because they wake up in the morning and look forward to it. My overwhelming impression from the vast majority of people I've met in my life indicates that creating things is simply not a driving force. If given a complete lack of want, I'm convinced the majority of the world's population will choose to do nothing creative with it, and spend it socializing, fucking, and eating.
Scarcity is pretty much the only reason their butt finds their way to the desk every morning.
Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that.
Secondly, even for people who have strong passions in a particular craft, there's no accounting for supply and demand. We are incredibly fortunate that our passions lie in a field that is severely under-supplied, allowing us to enjoy incredible compensation and job security in an era where so few have just that. And our situation is highly temporary, I assure you. The ability for your passion to put a roof over your head and provide the basic necessities of life is... questionable.
So while I'm pulling in a 6-figure salary, have insane perks at the office, flexible hours, live in an amazing city, and have the money and time to pursue my dreams, I'm not going to stand on a soapbox and pontificate to everyone how, if they had only followed their passion, they could be happy too.
The reality is that we are the lucky few. For a vast portion of the population following their passions is a one-way ticket to getting evicted and digging through garbage cans.
If given a complete lack of want, I'm convinced the majority of the world's population will choose to do nothing creative with it, and spend it socializing, fucking, and eating.
The reality TV show Big Brother is strong evidence in favor of your argument.
It's an artificial environment where people are aggressively prevented from creating anything. You can't even smuggle a pencil and a piece of paper into the Big Brother house -- if you wanted to write or draw something, you'd have to do it with your own blood on the walls, I guess... Once you're in there, your life for the next N months will consist solely of socializing, fucking and eating.
Amazingly, there are millions of people who find this prospect so exciting that they apply for the show year after year.
I don't think we should draw general conclusions about humanity based on reality show contestants. The draw to participate in Big Brother is that the house is full of TV cameras. Which, ironically, could actually be described as creating something.
It reminds me of something my father told me when I was figuring out what to take in college..."Find something you like to do and you will never work another day in your life."
His advice was not absolute, there are bad days, but overall he was correct. I wake up almost every morning looking forward to what I will solve/build that day. He was a chef, provided a great life for his family and still experiments in the kitchen even in retirement.
I think the "software as a craft" argument also fits here as people who like to program like to tinker at home much like wood working in your garage.
Most folks haven't been exposed to creative activities since the 2nd grade. When they took the crayons away (only babies use crayons). Its deplorable that the most creative species on the planet provides so little support for expression, even quashing it. Color inside the lines! Park between the lines. Be a team player. Sit down, shut up and listen to the teacher.
Exactly. I used to get outraged/saddened/furious when i see that attitude 90% of the population, till i realized, it's inevitable in any economy, except perhaps a communist style, forced one.
"If given a complete lack of want, I'm convinced the majority of the world's population will choose to do nothing creative with it"
I don't know if I agree - I think if you move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs and they no longer 'want' the basics, they will allow themselves to advance into the 'higher stages' and then desire to fulfill those needs such as socializing, sex, etc. But presumably if those things all come easily as well, they will then move further up the line into creative expression, etc.
I know I've been most creative when I didn't need to be, and everything else in my life was more or less 'taken care of', and I suspect many people would have the same experience.
Nothing wrong with being a middling chef or a middling programmer; we can't all be rockstar ninjas, and there is plenty of need for normal chefs and normal programmers.
With depression medication being so popular, is this partially the result of years of "Find what you love, and do it"? Does it contribute to people with any ability for introspection becoming miserable when they know and are being reminded that they're not doing what they love? I include the introspection bit since it's very easy these days to get sucked into one mindless time sink after another and never have any alone time with one's own thoughts. ("Consumerism" is probably the general form.)
If loving something specific, like Carmack does with video games and Feynman did with Physics, requires some amount of eccentricity, then by definition most people don't really love something they want to do it all the time. In that case, the advice is at best a NOP to people who are content with their life despite not loving something. For other cases, I could see it being damaging to people who will conflate "love" with "like" and ask where they can get paid to collect other people's tumblr posts on their own tumblr "blog", or damage people who will just be reminded that they aren't doing what they love but can't accept they'll never find something they love. I don't think it's all that dangerous for the rare "late bloomers" or people who already know what they love and happen to love something non-profitable--those people are going to do it regardless, they don't need to be told, they more often need to be told not to for their own health. Some will find themselves content even without much money, others will tolerate working years in the profitable salt mines being in a state of varying misery, and trading that for years afterwards doing what they please.
"shit careers" how? Because they don't pay well? You won't get rich? If you're going to dedicate the next 30 years of your life to something, you'd better damn well enjoy it or you will hate your life. You spend more time at work than with your family, so you'd better not hate your job or you'll go insane.
A job that you GENUINELY enjoy should ALWAYS be taken over a job that pays big bucks. We are EXTREMELY fortunate that the jobs we enjoy doing ALSO pay very well. Nevertheless, if I got paid a fraction of what I do I would continue to do it over a job that I did not find interetsing but paid well.
Do what you love - as long as you are above the poverty line you'll be happy. And most jobs will allow you to live above the poverty line :)
>>"shit careers" how? Because they don't pay well? You won't get rich?
Contrary to whatever you think 'getting rich' is very important. Its also fun to be rich. Its fun to know you don't have to worry getting up early in the morning and do all you have to to in a hurry just to hit the work desk. Its also fun to not come home tired wanting to do something you love but not having energy or the time to do it. Its also fun to not worry about saving some pennies every month just so that you would want to buy a new phone/tablet or whatever six months later. Its also fun to send your kids to the best institutions out there to get them educated. Its fun to drive the Ferrari, Its fun to go on unlimited vacations in Europe. I can go on and on. Trust me if you have money life is really 'fun'.
I mean the real fun. Not the make believe fun, they tell you in books and articles about fun while sweating at work.
>>A job that you GENUINELY enjoy should ALWAYS be taken over a job that pays big bucks.
Big bucks are more genuinely enjoyable, actually.
>>We are EXTREMELY fortunate that the jobs we enjoy doing ALSO pay very well
No, programming jobs pay marginally well. But that's still not sufficient for what one would call an awesome life.
>>if I got paid a fraction of what I do I would continue to do it over a job that I did not find interetsing but paid well.
I respect your choice, but I wouldn't. The concept of life is to live. And you need to money to live, which in turn requires work. But if you consider work as life. Then priorities all get messed up.
>>Do what you love - as long as you are above the poverty line you'll be happy. And most jobs will allow you to live above the poverty line :)
There is hardly any glory in poverty. And even if you are the best janitor in the whole world. You still won't be able to send your kids to a good university. You won't have a good home, car or whatever. None of that can keep you happy.
>Contrary to whatever you think 'getting rich' is very important.
To you. Just like the GP is projecting his view of the world as the view everyone should have, so are you. People are different (gasp) and that means their rankings of most any list of things you can come up with will be different.
>And even if you are the best janitor in the whole world. You still won't be able to send your kids to a good university
Maybe it is the grouch in me but perhaps your kids could get scholarships, or (gasp again) pay some portion of their own school bill. The idea that a parent is a failure if they can't pay 4 years or more of Harvard tuition in cash seems silly, to me anyhow. Also, anecdotally, everyone I met in college whose parents were footing the bill were kind of deplorable people to be honest. I am sure there are nice people whose parents picked up the whole cost of their college education, I have just never met any.
Getting rich is too much, but wanting financial security is not. There are few things more stressful and destructive than being too broke for too long.
But I put a few things as they are because sometimes they are necessary to be put it that way.
Look at this way. These articles try to paint a picture that its OK to sacrifice your financial well being if you are faced with an option that offers perceived happiness. In reality this is rarely true.
Work is just one requirement of life. Of the many requirements which start from brushing your teeth in the morning to mosquito repellant in the night. You need money for nearly everything these days. And anybody who gives you an advice that doesn't account for this thing isn't just getting the point.
A millennium back all you would need is horse and ability to climb a tree. And you could do anything in the world, by just riding the horse and eating fruits plucked from the tree. These days you need money for everything.
If you feel you can be 'happy' by just doing work. Then sure you will be happy doing work. But you won't be happy doing everything else without money. And that everything else makes up a very big part of your life.
The studies on happiness I've seen tend to conclude with "money doesn't buy happiness but lack of it does buy misery." The specific amount of lacking depends on the relative poverty line and in the US decreases as income approaches ~$75k/yr USD. But there's a lot of individual factors involved with happiness even if on average money has a measurable effect. Some people are really cheerful living below the poverty line but for most it's not a great place to be. Others make do with what they have and are content. Others use credit cards to inflate their income by $2k-$50k. There are also plenty of manically depressed millionaires, so cash alone is not sufficient for some. There are lots of blissful stupid people. I think the better question in these discussions is "what's the optimal happiness a human can achieve, and what can I achieve in the near future?" Since we can measure it I agree with you that money is an important factor, perhaps the dominating one for some individuals, but not the only one.
How do you explain people that are financially secure but work anyway?
Working is part of life. Ferraris and vacations to Europe are fun, but there's plenty of more affordable entertainment that is just as fun. It just depends on your perspective and personality. Some people will never be satisfied with what they have, and no amount of money will change that.
If I had to choose between working 40 hours a week at a job I hate and driving a Ferrari vs 40 hours a week at a job I love and driving a Camry. I'd choose the Camry every time.
(Obviously these aren't the only options in real life)
There are millions of ways to make money, and there are millions of ways to spend it. Being focused on 'getting rich' can easily make you blind to the big picture.
>>How do you explain people that are financially secure but work anyway?
Working on what? I pity the person who has all the money in the world to take a permanent holiday, but is still a MegaCorp slave. Who works from 9-5 every day. I can understand if you are working on a curious problem. But if you have a financial leg to stand on and you are still on a day to day job. You need to seriously rethink your life and how you are spending your time.
>>Working is part of life.
Part, yes. But not your whole life. That's the whole point.
>>Ferraris and vacations to Europe are fun, but there's plenty of more affordable entertainment that is just as fun.
Being happy with little isn't the same as having experiences bought by big money. At most, being happy with little is only a indication of compromise, you show when you resign to trying no more.
> "that's still not sufficient for what one would call an awesome life."
For what who would call an awesome life?
I stay at home with my family. We get up when we want to get up. My wife does contract work, enough to pay the bills and put a bit away at considerably less than full time, and she does it from the next room. My son has me as a dedicated full-time caretaker and educator. We don't go to Europe, but we can go to the park, grandma's house, or the mountains whenever we feel like it.
The concept of life is to live, and you need money to live, but how much money depends on what you want to do with your life. It depends on what "do what you love" leads you to, whether you need a high income to sustain what you love or whether you live for peanuts (and whether you can earn those peanuts doing something else you love.) You can take your Ferrari on the Autobahn; I'll be out playing in the dirt with my kid.
So you're planning to buy your kid a ferrari, because he wants it?
Screw that. If my kid is the kind of person who wants a ferrari, that will motivate him to get rich and buy one. But I would be really disappointed in myself as a parent if that's what my kid grows up to value.
I downvoted a few of your comments in this thread and all for similar reasons, but I'll just reply to this one.
You're putting forth your ideas about money buying happiness as if they were facts that you have proven or that have been proven elsewhere. But human happiness is much more complicated than you think it is, and I think the spirit of most of the replies are merely suggesting that things are not as black and white as you have made them out to be.
> the problem only starts when you start comparing the Ferrari guy and play-in-the-dirt-with-kid guy.
That seems to be what you're doing, is introducing this "problem" by comparing these two situations, or comparing some other abstract ideal rich life with the life of middle class or "normal" lives, when in fact comparing them and trying to find out who is happier is very hard.
Here's another one to compare: I hate driving, so I think I would rather ride a bicycle than drive a Ferrari. But that's just me; I can't even articulate why I dislike driving. I would never suggest that someone else isn't happy driving a Ferrari and would be happier on a bike, because it's a senseless comparison. Same with the dad and his kid playing in the dirt.
While wanting a ferrari as a kid may or may not make you unhappy, I don't personally know anyone who was given a ferrari as a kid and was ultimately happy. They usually tended to end up less happy than children who weren't spoiled by their parents.
> Its fun to know you don't have to worry getting up early in the morning and do all you have to to in a hurry just to hit the work desk. Its also fun to not come home tired wanting to do something you love but not having energy or the time to do it.
You can also accomplish this by cutting expenses and reducing your working hours.
I guess it depends on your definition of "rich", but it's very easy to increase your spending to the level where your freedom is not necessarily much bigger than before.
> "You can also accomplish this by cutting expenses and reducing your working hours."
This is so easy for people like us to say. We're the ones pulling in 6-figure salaries, where I could conceivably work half-time and still pay the bills. Hell, I could work a quarter-time and pay the bills without experiencing a poverty lifestyle.
Try giving your advice to your local burger jockey, shoe salesman, and janitor. 50% of households in this country make <$37K a year. Where should these families cut their working hours?
Oh, the presumptuousness of the rich. We hear this topic a lot in this community because, let's face it, we're all making (in relation to the general population) ludicrous sums of money, living in absolute excess (not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that). To presume that most people have a lot of "fat" to trim from their lifestyles is severely misguided.
I agree with your response, but would like to point out that it's primarily a US phenomenon. Programmers in Asia don't get mega bucks, and even those who attempt to do startups mostly don't either (there just isn't a big consumer market and big bubbly stock market, excepting China and maybe India). They still enjoy their coding, though, even if it's just another mediocrely-paid job. You usually get less here as a programmer than a grad entering finance, law, or any MNC does (unless you're coding for an MNC).
Even programmers often fail when doing what they love. How many great programmers don't move further than working in a company for salary (something most DON'T love) because what they love is to work on hackish stuff that doesn't interest real users (and does not make money).
The advice "Do what you love" has some ground but it shouldn't be taken as literally as most people do.
I love food, music, art, sex, sports, and adventure. I'm weird as hell, but I love to program. I just assume that "do what you love" is a short way of saying "find out something you love that other people need, and spin that into a career." I admit that since I've wanted to be a programmer for a long, long time I don't know what it's like to not know what I want to do, but I can't assume this is the only career that you can actually like.
You can certainly "do what you love" after work. I'd argue that that's what 99% of the people actually do, they stand a job they dislike and then they go home or to a bar to eat, fuck, socialize and watch sports.
I think that it's really important to try to find passion in our lives. Not necessarily a passion that is a job, but a passion that is fulfilling.
I know that this is not what the author is saying, but I think it's an important perspective to keep.
The advice is meant for the 10% not the 90%. People who took time to mail Michael Abrash, have some knowledge, ambition and passion. Out of these 10% some will have the drive to follow through, do the hard work and love the journey, they will become the top 1%. So the advice is not meant for everyone just for some.
That's overstating it a bit. Despite the fact that I like food, music, art, sex, sports, and adventure more than I like programming, programming would still be one of my favorite hobbies.
I say would be because now it is a profession and when I leave work I don't want to touch a computer.
But the programming I like is the open source work I do between jobs, that kind of beautiful code I create for free. And in small doses. The large code bases that must ship on time, that's work that I would not do unless I get paid.
Now people that code all day at work, and then code a lot more at home and over the weekend, almost every weekend, purely for the love of coding, those might be a bit odd.
But not odder than any obsessive hobby, which can just as easily be sports or food. I think the oddness here is just the obsessiveness.
Is it? How many people, do you think, love programming but are instead do something else? Probably fewer than program but don't love it, given what the financial incentives have been for a while now. Most people, by far, are not programmers. How rare does something have to be for it to make you a "weirdo"?
More like people only want to read them when what you love is economically in demand. These always remind me to go back and reread the sections on survivorship bias in fooled by randomness. I'm not sure if that's ironic or not.
"In general, try things that seem worthwhile, set goals and work hard to achieve them, and see where that leads and how you respond. It’ll be clear when something becomes compelling"
Everybody says "do what you love". Few say how to find what you love. Fewer still say how to manage to work as hard as you should to find what you love.
It's kind of a circular problem, when you love something you'll naturally work very hard on it, when you are still searching what it is you love, it's really hard to get the energy to work as hard as you should to find the elusive loved mission.
Most people's minds are very good at finding or making up that one thing when it is needed for survival. For happiness, that is a different head of cabbage.
Imagine having nothing that you love to do, and imagine the things that you previously loved to do are now laborious and draining, no matter the positive things you tell yourself about them.
Think of something you really enjoy doing, and really look forward to, now imagine replacing the positive anticipation with dread instead.
Imagine knowing you should be getting positive feedback from some accomplishment or activity, but all that your brain and emotions register is "meh." It's not that you don't try to pull it together and keep slogging forward every day, achieving things and smiling at people, it's just that none of your efforts ever seem to pay off emotionally. It's not that you don't recognize and routinely count your blessings, but rather the very act becomes negative as you lament not feeling much of anything for them.
I understand the sentiment that it's hard to imagine, I hope this description may help.
It's good of you to try to imagine it, as most people seem not to make a conscious effort at empathy if something isn't directly affecting their lives.
I'll second what others have written in this thread, and if you'd like to hear a further description, please send me an email at the address in my profile.
I think it's important to remember that "Do What You Love" may not lead to financial success. It will only lead to you doing more of what you love, which may or may not ever pay well.
(I'm a stay-at-home dad, and I love it. But it doesn't generate a lot of cash.)
In the movie, Cicero says: "Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to."
I love building things and programming, but I love it when it is a process of self-accomplishment, driven by a deep desire to create, discover and learn.
In my job environment, however, these values are irrelevant and what I love to do otherwise becomes what others trample and waste.
So, yes, do what you love to do when you can and do what you have to do the rest of the time. Unless you don't care about living under a bridge.
Every time I've tried to push my career in some direction, I've been left unhappy and frustrated. Whenever I've held on and enjoyed the ride, I've found myself in new and exciting territory. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but I know enough to stop trying to force what I think it should be; instead, I'll watch and see what happens and make the best of it.
>>In other words, what do you do in your free time?
To make 'free time' work economically viable. You have to do it full time. And to win doing it full time, you will have to work crazy hours. At that stage it no longer remains enjoyable.
People enjoy the 'free time' work because it comes with some mental perks. No fear or losing something on failure. Risks are cheap, having options to always drop it and do something else. None of that is possible if 'free time' work becomes full time work.
Well, they aren't. They just cognitively distance themselves from it because it sucks.
And I say this as someone with an achievement neurosis. I fight this perception of myself and others because it ultimately does not benefit me -- I'd be working hard either way. No need to pile my identity onto it.
There is money in gardening - I have friends that are very successful at it, and are still hands on, picking and planting the plants - while making more than enough to live a happy life.
My father loves drawing and making stuff, he is a pretty damn successful stage designer.
You have to love what you are doing AND be good at it AND good at selling yourself. But if you can crack that you really can love getting up each day. I know I do, and I know most of my friends and family do.
My richest friend works 60 hour weeks to have a great car parked outside his office and to support a stunning home he never 'lives' in - and he will tell anyone that no only does he hate his job, he isn't happy. But he really thinks having more (holidays, watches, suits, etc.) will make him happy, but they haven't yet...
Do garbage men and sewage workers love what they do? I doubt it. Are their jobs absolutely vital to the very existence of modern civilization? Absolutely.
"Do what you love" seems to fail if you wish it universal as a categorical imperative.
On this same topic, Mike Peters, pulitzer prize winning cartoonist, gave a brilliant commencement speech at Washington University in St. Louis this May.
I admit though, I consider myself one of the lucky few (and probably stand amongst many of you in this category) for whom doing what I love coincides with doing what actually makes me "successful" by our society's standards.
I loved this line though, perfectly described my college experience and discovery of programming: "I was good at lots of other things I did academically, but they all felt like work."
Going along with grlthgn, The bigger problem with 'Doing what you love' is most times, we are not aware of what we love. It is just impossible to find what you love. Sometimes the thing we love is short lived. This leads us to the next question, do everyone in the world have some this life-long activity they love? That question has never been answered.
It's not impossible, but it does require introspection, and a willingness to change things up. The combination of qualities excludes many people - you can have introspection without action, but it can end up in depression.
It's also partially generational, too. Later generations aren't as tied to their jobs because they grew up in a world where, collectively, employers didn't take quite as good care of employees.
In a Stanford lecture, Tina Seelig said something along the lines of: find where your interests, what your good at, and the market (ie someone will pay you) intersects and do that. I've always liked that advice.
That's all about and if these opportunities are about your passion even better. Otherwise you wait for the perfect idea or stuck with a crappy thing for years only because it's you passion.
When the display only has black and white pixels, you can XOR the a "sprite", or image to the screen to draw it, and XOR the same sprite in to the same location again to undraw it. The advantages are that you don't have to redraw the entire screen this way each frame, images can overlap, and you can draw your image on a black background or a white background.
For animation, you pre-XOR the sprites together so that a single XOR both erases the old image, and draws the new one, in a single blit.
Let me point out that this is an article written by a guy that ended up "loving" programming. I know that there is a lot of programmers here, (myself included) but let's face the reality here: only weirdos love programming. I say this because I'm a weirdo and I love programming, and every friend I know that loves programming is more or less the.. eccentric type. We just happen to be very fortunate in that we happen to love something that guarantees a middle class income and plenty of opportunities.
Most people are normal and love normal things. They like food, they like music, they like art, they like sex, they like sports, they like adventure. If you tell normal people to do what they love, you are practically dooming them to shit careers. It's all about supply and demand. Most people love the same things that other people love (except programmers, who are weirdos), and there just isn't enough jobs that normal people will love. Maybe 1% of normal people will end up in their dream job, and the other 99% end up on the hamster wheel chasing what they love.