Do What You Love or You Will Destroy Yourself

http://adamconrad.posterous.com/do-what-you-love-or-it-will-destroy-you-or-ho#

by acconrad • 15 years ago

88 30 15 years ago

adamconrad.posterous.com

acconrad3• 15 years ago

This is the story of how I tried to start my own start up on nights and weekends and couldn't handle the balance. I may have lost the love of my life, and it's forced me to examine what I really want to do with my life, and how everyone needs to do what they love. I'm submitting this in the hopes that others don't go through the same mistakes I did, and perhaps others could share how they've been able to find balance or the trials and tribulations you've been through to find happiness in life.

chadgeidel• 15 years ago

Don't misunderstand me - I appreciate what you are saying here, and we could all take your advice to heart, but sometimes "doing what you love" simply isn't possible.

People in the US and other technology-oriented areas of the world (I'll admit I'm completely ignorant) are amazingly lucky to enjoy a wide range of career choices. We get to choose a career. Certainly we can choose things that are more pleasant than others.

But to say everyone has the option to do "what they love" is not accurate. Do something you don't hate sure. Do something you enjoy maybe. Sometimes we can't do what we love.

I love driving my car really really fast (and do when I have a chance to) but there's no way I could make a career out of it. I also happen to love technology (not my job so much) so I'm lucky to work in a field that I enjoy.

I have been thinking lately though that I should try to go somewhere else where I will be "happier" - somewhere that will challenge me. In this aspect, I'm absolutely going to follow your advice.

acconrad3• 15 years ago

I tried to keep this as open-ended as possible, so try and re-frame this as doing anything you love. Maybe you are doing the activity you love, but as you've suggested, perhaps it's not the ideal place. Or maybe you love your job, but you don't love the balance or you've lost the love of the activities you used to enjoy, like sports or camping.

For me, it was just learning to love in general. I needed to remember what it was like to love playing the guitar, to love spending time with my friends, and to love sitting down at the computer and cranking on code I enjoyed. Perhaps doing what you love means working a job that allows you to pursue all of your passions in your spare time. My hope is to share an experience so others don't hit rock bottom before they discover what they love to do in life.

ChuckMcM4• 15 years ago

I'm going to disagree with this assertion: "sometimes 'doing what you love' simply isn't possible."

The twist is that it may be true that you cannot survive doing some particular thing you love doing, it is has been my experience that you can find something you love to do that does in fact pay for your expenses.

The example "I love driving my car really really fast (and do when I have a chance to) but there's no way I could make a career out of it." is an interesting one, and to give you a flavor of how I think about these things.

Have you explored what it is about driving your car really really fast that triggers your happiness/reward center? Is it the inherent risk of losing control? Is it the rapid fire decision making? Is it the minimization of time between destinations? Is it some sense of freedom about being able to go anywhere ?

If you can get enough introspection into finding out what it is that you love about driving your car fast, it can lead you additional activities that you will also love.

My conjecture (and its just that) is that the base class of things that trigger our reward centers rapid enough or deeply enough cause us to 'love' doing them, is relatively finite with respect to the set 'all possible things you could do.'

Its worth spending some time thinking about because everyday you spend doing something that you don't love doing, is a day you will never get back.

WalterSear3• 15 years ago

For most people, this is absolutely the most self-destructive advice possible, since they have not learnt how to foster a love for things that meet either their needs or wants - which is something that you fortunately learnt early on, the easy way, at 15.

Give someone without a viable skill set this advice, and watch them go to art school/form a talentless band/become an unemploued actor/rapper.

But yeah, fuck soul sucking jobs. I'm so bad at them, and they are so bad for me, I've sworn off them too.

"Do you have the ability to throw yourself against the currents of our culture and recognize that you are not the center of your life? The tasks and summonses are the center. Your happiness and your worth are a byproduct of how you engage them. Most of us are egotistical and most of us are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only when the self dissolves into some larger task and summons. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself."

http://adamconrad.posterous.com/do-what-you-love-or-it-will-...

acconrad3• 15 years ago

Great point! To be fair, my audience is mostly the tech types (hence the post to HN), so I expect that those reading this are not the type to leave and become unemployed actors, but very important nonetheless.

WalterSear3• 15 years ago

I agree that the skills and mindset of this forum is certainly a cut above most. But that doesn't mean that it's not full of irrational, wishful thinkers. You know: human beings :)

I do, however, have a second objection - it's not enough to enjoy what you do, and be good at what you do - you also have to be lucky. Good thing that being lucky is a skill.

"...Newbie drinkers of the 4-hour Kool-Aid don’t seem to get this. They think lifestyle design is a guaranteed path out of their crappy lives in cubicle prisons and the burden of the middle-class life script, mortgage and all. A question I recently answered on Quora very clearly reveals the mental model many people have: Is it hard to build, market and maintain a web app that makes at least $1000 a month? ...

You can tell an engineer asked this question even without reading further, because the question asks about how hard the work is. The gambler/marketer version of such questions is always how lucky do you have to be? The engineer asks about effort. The gambler/marketer asks about odds, and picks the game with the most favorable odds that he can find. 2/3 is better than 1/2. If I’d asked the question, I’d have phrased it as: how many apps do you have to publish in order to be fairly sure of having at least one hit that makes $1000 or more a month?"

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/02/the-las-vegas-rules-i-t...

In other words, perseverance and risk management are essential skills - ones that few people seek serious training and practice in, rather than lip service.

A bad job will kill you, but poor risk management will do it faster. People don't just need to hear that making the jump is good - they need to know what to expect when they do, and how to plan accordingly.

DavidSJ• 15 years ago

This is one reason people should be allowed to spend their childhoods doing what they love rather than following someone else's curriculum for them. By the time they have to fend for themselves, they'll have a chance at having found something they love and which pays the bills.

Confusion2• 15 years ago

This assumes that, when left to their own devices, kids will stumble upon things they love. This is false, because kids mostly don't know where to look, don't have any incentive to look and have the attention span of a goldfish.

You are thinking what it would have been like for you and the error you are making is forgetting that most kids are not like you were. Most kids don't end up as adults on Hacker News. When left alone, without being introduced to a wide variety of subjects, most kids would play games on the street with their friends, never take up a book and certainly never attempt to organize anything bigger than the next match against the kids of the next neighbourhood.

sliverstorm3• 15 years ago

Two problems:

1) The more I love what I'm doing, the more I let it consume my life. My job cannot be my life.

2) The more I love something, the easier it is to burn out in 2-4 years.

If you find yourself doing something you really love, pace yourself and don't let it consume your life, and your love will live long.

mkn• 15 years ago

Drivel. All of it.

Right off the bat, try these on for size: Do What You Can Tolerate, And You'll Get By; Do Something You Hate If You Have To, Otherwise You'll Starve; Do Something You're Indifferent To But Pays The Bills, Or You Won't Be Able To Afford Anything; or, Do Whatever Comes Along And Have Fun In Your Free Time. Those are your writing assignments. 1000 words or less. Due tomorrow.

A healthy dose of realism would help the author along, as would taking the attention-whoring down a notch or two.

I spun into a soulless depression--working by day, working by night

And now the author is in his manic phase, which will also pass. Seriously, if you're in "soulless depression," don't change careers, get mental help.

Cognitive behavior therapists would call what the author is doing "awfulizing." He's making the consequences of a course of action out to be far worse than they really are, and working himself up over it. "Oh, it would be absolutely awful if I had to do X for a living!" Well, no. You could develop coping skills instead of insisting that everything has to be perfect in order for your life not to be awful.

Oh, well. It takes all kinds, I guess.

r0s• 15 years ago

> Do Something You Hate If You Have To, Otherwise You'll Starve;

You make a great point here... as I lift the pistol to my mouth.

The illusion of desperate survival is so pervasive it spans all class lines. Most people would consider trading modern convenience for a little labor or discomfort(say, washing dishes manually, or lawn care) to be a fate equal to desperate poverty.

This entitlement is truly fear, and it motivates otherwise capable entrepreneurs into a life of bland wage slavery. When starvation is invoked as a warning here, it is truthfully in regard to modern privilege. A warning that the service and maintenance of modern life will fall on the misguided consumer. If they should choose to be self sufficient on small income, they will have to learn how. A fate apparently worse than starvation. Fear motivates this attitude.

keeptrying3• 15 years ago

I don't think you have understood the article. Try reading it again without bias.

Your comment seems to be a rationalization of your own job.

The author is positing that there are situations out there where you could love your 8 hours a day of work and the time after it. And that in most cases you can do this by refocusing on your minimal "needs" as opposed to the many "wants" that you feel due to a variety of pressures in life: "nice car", "big bank account", societal, status-symbols etc.

Also his post is aimed at technology professionals who love technology but just need to find the right situation. So it's much less riskier than changing fields but people still don't make the effort to find a better situation. And I've seen the very same thing happen.

gruseom• 15 years ago

It isn't drivel. He's saying that if you ignore what your heart and soul crave, you will suffer increasingly until you wake up and make changes. That's a practical truth, one worth repeating because most of us do so assiduous a job of forgetting it.

Realism? He identified a false assumption and corrected it. How much more realistic can you get?

don't change careers, get mental help

What's mental help? Sounds like something we could all use.

Work is what we spend most of our waking hours doing, so work that sucks is life that sucks. That's not "awfulizing" - those consequences really are bad. There may be good reason to accept them for a while, but that path is fraught with risk, because (we've all seen examples of this) "a while" can so easily turn into decades, into a lifetime. When someone breaks out of that trance, we should all applaud.

Confusion2• 15 years ago

A blog post such as this cannot possibly contain any definitive truth. At best, it can offer a new/different way of viewing things and perhaps convince you that this other way is valuable instead of, or more likely: in addition to, the outlook you had before reading the article.

The fact that you could write different articles, with different titles, arguing different points, does not imply that the contents of this article is 'drivel'. It shows there is a wide variety of valid arguments that support multiple ways of viewing and living your life. Which ones you find compelling, which ones you choose to accept, that is up to you.

Disagreeing with the arguments presented or the fact that there are alternatives you consider better supported are insufficient reason to call something 'drivel'.

wazoox• 15 years ago

Sometimes, to get what you love you need to sacrifice something else that you love, too. To be able to stay with my sweetheart (I'm still with), 15 years ago I had to quit my activity as a musician, arranger and artist to get a job bringing enough money to live with. Your job is only one part of your life; if your life is balanced enough, nothing more than 25 or 30% of it.

cglee• 15 years ago

This is right on. Many recent grads have such a strong identity associated with their job that of course it's soul sucking if you don’t like it. But if your life is actually your family, then working a mediocre job to pay the bills and send your kids to baseball practice and live in a safe suburb isn't so bad.

rfrey• 15 years ago

More timeless advice is to love what you do.

glassx• 15 years ago

"If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with"

Do What You Love or You Will Destroy Yourself

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