Do What You Love

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/do-what-you-love/

by aaronbrethorst • 14 years ago

140 76 14 years ago

blogs.valvesoftware.com

koide3• 14 years ago

This:

"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.

quaunaut• 14 years ago

As a recurring depressive, I can't help but think, "How the hell do people live day to day not knowing at least one thing they absolutely love?"

If not for my own things that I intensely can dig into, I would've offed myself a long time ago.

Lost_BiomedE• 14 years ago

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.

graeme• 14 years ago

By far the hardest thing for me was finding something that:

A. I love. B. Pays me money.

I don't think most people have trouble hitting either A or B alone.

Very few people find something that does both. I seem to have finally found that myself, but it took me 25 years.

kamaal8• 14 years ago

>>"How the hell do people live day to day not knowing at least one thing they absolutely love?"

Because so as long its financially lucrative, its better to start loving what you are doing. Than to keep searching things you would love to do.

The latter may not always pay well.

koide3• 14 years ago

It's amazing how different how life is lived and understood between depressive and non depressive people.

I personally have a really hard time even imagining depression, and I ask myself: "how can it be so hard to just pull yourself together?"

I can rationally understand it is really hard, but I can't imagine it.

varunsaini• 14 years ago

Very well said...it is not the destination but journey that matters most...

tarr11• 14 years ago

I love when people write these kinds of things, and include all the details. Makes it so much more memorable.

Good read.

lotharbot2• 14 years ago

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.)

bufordtwain• 14 years ago

This was the highlight for me:

"Perhaps the most useful way to figure out what you really want to do is to observe what you actually choose to do."

In other words, what do you do in your free time?

kamaal8• 14 years ago

>>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.

debt• 14 years ago

It seems so weird to me that we've gotten to a point where people don't think they are what they do.

mattgreenrocks2• 14 years ago

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.

grlthgn• 14 years ago

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.

rlu• 14 years ago

"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 :)

kamaal8• 14 years ago

>>"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.

mindcruzer• 14 years ago

"Don't do what you love" sounds like worse advice, so personally I have to agree with the former.

szcukg• 14 years ago

I like the blog post but this tops it. This needs to be added at the end of that post and at the end of every article which tells you, do what u love.

Jach2• 14 years ago

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.

steve-howard• 14 years ago

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.

staunch• 14 years ago

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).

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

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.

potatolicious2• 14 years ago

I don't think his complaint goes away at all.

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.

handzhiev• 14 years ago

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.

And this topic has been discussed to death here.

koide3• 14 years ago

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.

fghh45sdfhr3• 14 years ago

only weirdos love programming

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.

dllthomas• 14 years ago

> That's overstating it a bit.

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"?

dataminer• 14 years ago

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.

edwinyzh• 14 years ago

I like food, sex(who else on earth doesn't?), sports (specifically,tabletennis) and adventure. So what? I also like building interesting software.

You wrongly assumed people like building software can't/doesn't like other things else.

moocow01• 14 years ago

Unrelated but that background with the pale hues makes it tough for me to read. Maybe Im just getting old.

keiferski• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, you only get to write these sorts of posts when what you love is economically in demand.

kamaal8• 14 years ago

This might very well be the most important comment in the thread.

pauljburke• 14 years ago

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.

jamesrcole• 14 years ago

it depends on how much money matters to you

neilparikh• 14 years ago

Side note, but can some one explain or link to something that explains xor-based animation? I couldn't find much in a quick Google search.

jewel• 14 years ago

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.

http://z80-heaven.wikidot.com/sprite-routines has some sample code and perhaps a better explanation. http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/68k:sprites has some sample pictures.

gms7777• 14 years ago

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."

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

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.

EternalFury• 14 years ago

I get to quote from Gladiator, yeah!

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.

hcarvalhoalves• 14 years ago

"Do what you love, but please do get your PhD first. You do love academia, right? Right???"

tferris• 14 years ago

Do opportunities.

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.

ashwin_krish• 14 years ago

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.

mattgreenrocks2• 14 years ago

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.

gouranga• 14 years ago

Do what you love doesn't pay the bills.

If I did what I loved, I'd be in the garden or knee deep in solder.

I do what I have to do, so I'm chained in front of Visual Studio.

ljf• 14 years ago

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...

fallous• 14 years ago

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.

anamax• 14 years ago

I'm really glad that the guy who picks up my garbage doesn't do what he loves full time.

johnohara• 14 years ago

Personally, I prefer those moments in life when everything seems to strike a nice balance. I find they give me insight into what I love to do.

And yes, it generally involves creating something.

thedillio• 14 years ago

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.

Do What You Love

Related Stories