"Do what you love and money will follow" has genuinely wrecked many lives.
I know too many people (some very close to me) that followed this mantra. What ensued was most often very low paying jobs, or long term unemployment. The "luckiest" ones were able to do a career switch later in life. But there is an opportunity cost, as well as great time and effort involved on starting from scratch at that point.
Much greater advice is "do something that affords the lifestyle you want to have". This formula will be different for each one and will be a tension between work, money, and personal life. I know people who work jobs they don't love or hate, but pay enough to sustain their living expenses and support their hobbies.
On the other hand, I didn't follow the advice, and instead "Did something I kind of like okay, and can make decent money doing." I've definitely done that, but at the cost of never really chasing down my original dream. Now I'm a crusty old fart and I feel like I could never "do what I love" because I just can't live on entry-level pay anymore--partially due to my lifestyle, but also because I have children, and that's not really an expense you can budget your way out of.
So because I didn't do what I loved while I was young, I've kind of missed the train. I might be able to later in life, but I will have to wait quite a while.
On the other hand if you hadn’t done what you did - you might’ve been perpetually single because no one likes dating a bum, never had kids, and would’ve never enjoyed any of the accommodations in your lifestyle.
It's easier to have lower lifestyle expectations when you get fulfilment from your work; much less inclined to show off with a nice car if you can tell people you're saving the world instead of selling lootboxes to children.
Tbh - I find these things hardly overlap. People who like fancy things tend to like fancy things regardless of the job they have. Their satisfaction with their job rarely influenced their purchasing decisions - it’s mostly influenced by their disposable income.
I used to teach and I loved it other than the low pay. I then took a look at what life I wanted in my future and realized for me, what was important was the type of life I wanted overall. I want to be able to afford life's emergencies, I want to be able to not stress about money. I want to have a schedule that is flexible and where my employer trusts me to do my job like an adult.
I'm now a software developer and my job isn't as exciting as teaching and nowhere near as social. But it's affording me the life I want both freedom wise and money wise.
I don't think of my job as needing to be the thing I love for 8 hours a day. It's a thing I do for 8 hours a day that I like that then gives me a stress free 16 hours a day afterwards. It's a holistic thing.
The equally naive "follow your bliss" or "follow your passion" was the common coming of age advice given by many middle and upper-middle class American baby boomers to their children.
It was not naïve, they grew up in a generational-scale labor shortage with low inflation and incredibly low costs of living and low energy costs.
They had a minimum wage in a technical legalistic sense, but financial success was guaranteed in practice. Risk taking is safe if you're not able to fail.
Nobody lives in that kind of paradise now. Was all squandered.
If the "Do what you love" parents crash and burn, they tell their children to "Focus on career." If the "Focus on career" parents succeed, they tell their children to "Do what you love."
Definitely seems like a couple of generations ago you could do basically anything (As long as you did something) and come out pretty decent financially.
I wonder the extent to which that's the case (or maybe better said "that depends on what 'pretty decent financially' means").
Both sets of grandparents were blue collar (steel milling/odd-jobs and coal mining/nursing). My parents were the first generation to attend college at all and both became public school teachers. Both sets of grandparents had a sizable (very large for a hobby) home garden to supplement the family food and made use of it. I remember eating "government cheese" (literal cheese from the government) at times. They were not substantially better or worse off than the other working-class families we saw around us and hung out with.
Their pensions did ensure that they were able to not be in danger of starving in retirement, but they weren't traveling anywhere by airplane (I think maybe ever for one set and exactly once for the other) and, at the end, their estate was settled for an amount of money that one person could easily carry.
Is that "pretty decent financially"? I genuinely don't know; it was surviving.
I'm Gen Z. It's the perception I have but, I don't know if it's accurate. My perception is also definitely biased towards middle class. One other thing is that I'm not american, which probably makes a difference.
To refine things a bit more, it seems like if you got a degree and had a white collar job you were probably going to do decently. Nowadays degree + white collar job is basically baseline.
My parents are Gen X with degrees (Eng + Chemistry?) and they seem to have enjoyed their 20s and early 30s, settled down in their 30s and ended up pretty well off without ever really worrying about money.
I don't think that strategy would work very well today. The world seems a lot more competitive now than it was 20 years ago, and on average it seems like there are less serendipitous opportunities.
It's not at all surprising that being in the 83rd percentile of most educated in 1980 gave a better life outcome than having the same absolute level of education but relatively then being in the 62nd percentile in 2021.
Roughly speaking, your parents' degrees are about twice as uncommon in 1993 (~midpoint of Gen X undergrad graduation) as they would be today.
Not to mention Gen X is known for being a smaller generation than the ones before and after it, which is another factor that would have reduced competition for them in their careers.
US population in millions per birth year (alive today) by generation*:
Boomer - 3.7M / yr (70.23M / 19) alive; 4.5M / yr (85.4 / 19) originally born **
Gen X - 4.4M / yr (65.8M / 15) alive
Millenial - 4.8M / yr (72.19M / 15) alive
Gen Z - 4.3M / yr (68.6M / 16) alive
> My parents are Gen X with degrees (Eng + Chemistry?) and they seem to have enjoyed their 20s and early 30s, settled down in their 30s and ended up pretty well off without ever really worrying about money.
That probably depends on where they were and what "end" of GenX they were. The early part of GenX was entering the workforce in a pretty nasty recession with high unemployment, high inflation and limited prospects (hence Grunge hehe). The boomers (although probably not those in America to be fair) went through periods like this too.
GenZ is experiencing high(ish) inflation and high(ish) interest rates now, but unemployment is still low and wages are still good. It can get much worse, and has done before. Generally though the bad times are shorter than the good times - hopefully that keeps holding true.
My dad was a high school grad from the middle of nowhere and was literally raised in a barn (the girls lived in the house—it was too small for all the kids) with no running water (manual-pump well). His dad was a small-acreage farmer and slightly-successful rodeo rider. Birth year puts him in the early part of the Boomer generation.
He puttered around with not-quite-successful-but-not-quite-failure blue collar sole-proprietor small businesses for most of his 20s, then got a low-level railroad job, worked his way up and spent his last ~15 years in middle management there before being forced into early retirement. Recall, just a high school diploma. He couldn't handle middle-school math (by more recent standards) when I was learning it, and could barely use a computer. But he could run a train yard. Go figure.
My mom quit work when they married in her late 20s, and never worked again. She had a junior college degree and just made enough to get by before that. Lived in a trailer when she was single.
They retired very well and paid my way through college in the early '00s. We never wanted for money at all when I was a kid—which is how they were able to drop four figures on a first computer (good ol' Tandy) for me, just in case that led to something. A big week-and-change road trip every year, sometimes flights instead, plenty of time off and travel around the holidays. We lived in some pretty damn nice houses (at times—there's only so much available when the railroad moves you to some podunk town and you want to buy on short notice).
On one income. In a pretty mundane, middling-pay career.
Union pensions and 20th century union health plans were magical. As were housing costs.
My point was that "seems" is probably based on performative information, like Instagram, not that 20 year olds are doing great.
People who work hard downplay how hard they work. People who got lucky play up how hard they work. Objective data points to lifestyles being mostly the same now and 50 years ago.
A couple of generations ago you could have 100sqm house, a small black n white TV, maybe a basic 4 cylinder car if you were doing quite well, and be happy about it. If I lived at the level of consumerism my grandparents did, I could still do basically anything and be comfortable financially. Instead I have every electronic gadget ever made and an expensive Italian automotive exotica fetish and a constant thirst for more dollars to keep the gravy train chugging.
My baby boomer uncle likes to brag that he bought a house at 19 after two years of delivering firewood in trunk of his car. He thinks kids today would get similar results with similar effort; it's very tedious.
I'm aware of, and agree with, the points you've so clearly articulated. But to my mind, being blissfully unaware of the context of one's material success is an example of naivety.
Current you versus future you - which one will be happier? If you can't make both happy, then I advise pleasing current-you. Because sometimes the future is cut short.
So, doing something that makes you happy, makes you happy now. It's obvious really.
No, not hedonistic swill. Just do a job or effort that is fulfilling today. They don't all fail, they can be useful whether you make a fortune or not.
> Current you versus future you - which one will be happier?...I advise pleasing current-you.
Focusing on yourself is a trap. While not ignoring your own needs instead focusing on the happiness of others (e.g. direct joy, relieving suffering, solving problems etc) is the greatest promotion of happiness in everyone including yourself while also having the meaning that will get you through the inevitable troughs.
Instead of following the notorious "do what you love and money will follow" advice, the author suggests instead to:
> And so, the advice I would give to young people is this: structure your life so that you have the time and money to do what you love. That’s not easy to do by any means, but it is a much more realistic goal.
I often tell people that when I first entered the tech industry many moons ago, I wasn't chasing the money. I simply loved working with computers. And it just so happens that working in tech is lucrative. But I do wonder, fast forward 15 years later, if I would've stuck around if the field wasn't as booming.
I wonder if I tricked myself into believing that working in tech is really my passion ...
I was making computer programs just for the heck of it even before I knew it was possible to make money with them. Even if the field wasn't booming, I would have stuck around and kept making them on the side. Doing what you love doesn't mean it can only happen full-time.
Broke: “figure out your passion and make that your job”
Woke: “get a lucrative career and find time to do your passions on the side”
Bespoke: “find a lucrative profession and gaslight yourself into thinking you loved it all along”
I know what I liked originally about computers was gaming, modding, hacking, and building them. I didn’t have a huge interest in programming and I definitely didn’t have an interest in having shitty managers. Yet here I am - big head SV engineer.
I've wondered the same, with the same lead into the industry. I don't think it's possible to extract the two from one-another.
I've nerded-out on the majority of the projects I've worked on through my career - especially in the latter years. But there are quite a few projects in the past that would not have come to completion without a big fat carrot to keep my belly full and my favorite bartenders' rent paid.
Some weeks - no matter how interesting the problem is - I couldn't possibly care. The money remains a great fallback motivator; And unfortunately, often can end up being a shackle to a project that's well past its sell-by date.
I have found myself in a similar position for most of my career. I also got into for the love of working with code. But I've stayed in the industry largely because it enables me to provide a comfortable lifestyle for my family.
I am still passionate about writing software, but the software I like to write doesn't pay the bills. It's avocational. The tech industry afforded my family the lifestyle I desire, but it didn't really ignite my passion, it was just lucrative.
I've since shifted into management. I'm finding new fulfillment in creating the kinds of teams I wish I had as an IC, that lets individuals work in ways they find fulfilling.
I wonder about this all the time. In the past 5 years I've learned a lot of IoT projects, electronics, arduino. I've played around with linux for decades, but my passion was originally music.
I went down the music path but the money was awful. It taught me how to apply myself to different projects, and I don't love tech as much as I love music, but it allows me to have the freedom to do other things, which I also love.
They aren't mutually exclusive. I think you and I both have enjoyed the happy coincidence that we like programming more than most things that pay equally.
The key takeaway I got from the article was a word I've not come across before: avocation - an activity that someone engages in as a hobby outside their main occupation. I've known of the concept since before I started work[1], but it never occurred to me that there would be an English word for the concept. Which, as I am supposed to be a poet, is a bit embarrassing.
Talking about poets, it's interesting that there's not many full-time poets in the world; most poets need a paying job (often in academia) to cover the bills. I personally think this is a Good Thing as it helps give them (us) a perspective beyond the poetry scene, and the blank page, which helps ferment more enjoyable poems.
[1] - A couple of weeks after starting my first full-time job I discovered I genuinely detest paid employment. For me, the day job really is just a way to fund the rest of my life where all the fun stuff happens.
My father (born in 1921 and a WW2 vet) was a machinist, a trade he actually enjoyed. But he lectured me as a child to know the difference between a “vocation” and an “avocation” using those exact words. Perhaps this was something that was taught to his generation in school since a lot of work back then was in the factories. So, he made it a point to be involved in bowling leagues, men’s clubs, church choir, etc. in his free time, just like many of his friends and coworkers. Just watch a couple of episodes of the Flintstones and you will see what life was like 50+ years ago. This whole concept of having a life and serious interests outside of work has been mostly lost—but it needs to come back for our collective sanity. The book “Bowling Alone” written on this topic a few years ago is worth reading.
Of course, while the men were out having an avocation, the mothers stayed home with the kids. Now, some sharing of those duties needs to happen. But it is really important.
That was my takeaway as well. The "hustle-mindset" of turning every interest, passion, and hobby into some sort of side-gig is so pervasive currently that the existence of the word that sums up essentially the opposite mentality surprised me. Happy to have found it.
I think this is a reflection of how financially insecure most individuals in modern society are/feel. I believe that if most people were in a better spot financially, then perhaps this desire to extract money from everything would decline.
> Talking about poets, it's interesting that there's not many full-time poets in the world; most poets need a paying job (often in academia) to cover the bills
Why don't they release poems like songs? In South Asia, there are poetry concerts and it is a hit with the older generation who were exposed to more poetry before movie songs became mainstream.
Similar to musicians, some would be able to live off of the royalties. Some more would be live off of touring. Some might be able to sell some merch. Some might get beer money - but overall the ecosystem gets more alive than the current state.
People love doing things that they think they are good at and get respect for.
It just so happens that our culture over-values things that are not aligned with contributing to a better society right now. Someone identifying as a musician will get more accolades from one's peers than a plumber and therefore feel that their passion is in the music.
We require a culture shift wherein we start to see, in a deep way, the value in the hard work of trying to make things better in the small, humble ways we are able to do ourselves. It is our values that are at fault.
Maybe this new generative AI will help us re-align our values by showing that art regurgitation is not a defining characteristic of what makes us human and therefore virtuous. Maybe what makes us human are the smart applications of insight in ways that improve the lives of those around us.
If you're a mediocre musician whom only your friends and relatives come to hear, you'll get a lot of accolades. The problem is, you'll suspect they're insincere.
If you're a good plumber, you'll get a ton of genuine ones from people whose dire problems you've solved.
I had a doctor once who said he sold his house to a plumber, who was trading up.
My experience with friends that are making music professionally is that you will be brutally insulted by every idiot on the internet no matter how talented you are, and very rarely receive meaningful feedback - positive or negative.
Most people make music for internal gratification.
> Someone identifying as a musician will get more accolades from one's peers than a plumber and therefore feel that their passion is in the music.
Identifying as a musician won’t get you accolades. Playing music that people enjoy will.
A smart insight is that music improves people’s lives even under materially poor conditions. This is why for example, black slaves in America originated many of the most beloved musical styles.
As an industry, video games suck, for a developer. No life-work balance, sudden firings, etc.
Went for a web development instead. I program games as a hobby, and have some open source libraries out. A family, a house, interesting challenges. I sometimes wonder, yes. I hug my son and see what I have built so far.
Thanks for sharing! I wanted to do the same, went to school for it, but it seemed like my passion would be exploited and I opted to design traditional software instead. So far so good! Care to share your libraries?
My libraries were originally made in Lua in order for me to better work with and learn the LÖVE framework.
* inspect.lua [1] is the most popular one. It transforms any Lua value (including deeply nested tables) into human-readable strings. It is very useful for debugging all kinds of Lua projects, not just games. It is a partial reason why I got my current web dev job at Kong.
* middleclass [2] is somewhat popular amongst people coming into Lua from OOP languages. I don't use it myself anymore and consider it a bit of a "clutch". Still, it has helped a lot of people.
* bump.lua [3] is a box-based collision detection and resolution library. The later part has some known bugs I never figured out. Still has been used by some people to do some fun stuff.
* gamera.lua [4] is a minimalist camera-system for LÖVE.
* anim8 [5] is an animation library for LÖVE
There's many other projects on my github profile. I must warn you that they are all in several degrees of disrepair, I pretty much abandoned all of my open source efforts when my first child was born. Ran out of free time and energy.
These days, when I want to scratch my game-making itch, I fire up PICO-8, an even more minimalistic gamedev environment than LÖVE. I find the limitations it imposes refreshing. It also means that I cannot use most of my old libraries. Which is fine.
For long time working in the tech industry was what I _loved_, heck I made my hobby (coding) to my job, what more could one want! But 20 years later and my love for coding was being drained by working in the ad-tech industry or building software to have people being replaced by a computer.
Thankfully stepping out of the tech industry has given meaning to what I do. I now do what I love but for something meaningful - coding for my own projects, be they good, bad or indifferent, for me they are meaningful.
An no the money does not follow but I can make others smile and occasional happy with what I do.
I accept that I have to make the money last and sized down: no more fancy restaurants nor expensive electric toys; instead more supermarket queues and eating at home. But life is no longer the rinse and repeat of a 9to5 office job.
> Rarely does a life leave time or energy for child-rearing, a paid job and a fulfilling avocation.
I could not imagine living a world where this becomes the norm. The norm should be "It's rare for a person to have a shitty job, a mortgage, student debt to pay off and no financial possibility to have children until they are 65".
>> Rarely does a life leave time or energy for child-rearing, a paid job and a fulfilling avocation.
> I could not imagine living a world where this becomes the norm. The norm should be "It's rare for a person to have a shitty job, a mortgage, student debt to pay off and no financial possibility to have children until they are 65".
This is the world you’re living in rightnow, it just sounds like you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t see it. For every worker who can sit home and code, there are at least hundreds of people doing menial jobs like harvesting crops, packing shipments, drilling for oil, fixing streets, etc. Most would probably describe those as “shitty jobs”, and sadly those jobs barely pay the rent.
>menial jobs like [...] drilling for oil [...] and sadly those jobs barely pay the rent
Out of all the jobs you listed, drilling for oil is the one that does not fit the bill, not by a long shot. In fact, in this market, it's by far the most lucrative you could have.
Ikigai is an excellent conceptual framework. I think something that many people tacitly work it out for themselves. For those not reading the article, please do click through for the Venn diagram of:
* What you love
* What you are good at
* What pays well
* What the world needs
Each of these are somewhat independent factors and Ikigai is at the intersection of all four. "According to psychologist Katsuya Inoue, ikigai is a concept consisting of two aspects: "sources or objects that bring value or meaning to life" and "a feeling that one's life has value or meaning because of the existence of its source or object"." [0]
In that I think Ikigai acts as a method for fumbling towards the higher bits of Maslow's hierarchy to self-actualization. [1]
I got into computers back in the Before Times because I liked it reasonably well, and it promised a decent paying job. I never did it at home just for fun. I hardly ever read technical literature that wasn't connected to the job. That said, it wasn't usually drudgery, and quite often it was way fun.
This also left time to learn piano, singing, and to visit 26 countries. If I'd done those things full time and waited for the money to follow, I'd still be waiting. Now I'm retired and writing, and definitely not expecting a lot of money to follow. (Some, anyway! I just got my year-to-date statement from Amazon.)
I'm not a religious person, but I always think of Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden, and told:
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
(good thing I looked this up. I would have said "by the sweat of thy brow")
My generation (I am 14) might need something hammered into their heads. Just drawing pictures or making mediocre music isn't gonna bring you a lot of success or money, either get better or find a way to monetize it. But doing something you don't care for and making it your life kind of makes you into a slave in a way.
“We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact.“
In the TV/movie days, the dream of being a star was also there for many, but it was also so obviously out of reach that only the most daring and talented even attempted it.
The difference with your generation is that everyone grew up with a movie studio in their pocket, and watching YouTube makes everyone think that being a star is a real possibility. For some it will work out, and talent may be discovered that otherwise wouldn’t have been, but that vast majority will have to come to terms with the cold really that work is actually work, same as everyone else.
It is possible to find something you like that also pays well (most tech people here probably got here that way), but it does mean that you need to do the “hard things” early in life. Figuring out how Linux or Rust works is far less fun at the beginning, and you need to make a real effort to pull away from social media and video games to focus on things like that. I suspect it’s much harder today than it was 15 years ago.
Another reality is that virtually all of those stars are psychopathically hard workers, doing insane stuff behind the scenes to be who they are. My kid thinks Tom Brady is cool - he doesn't realize that Tom is a crazy dude who lives what would be a miserable life for 166 of the 168 hours every week. My kid just sees the touch downs and the people cheering and boy does it look fun.
I should have said: A life that most would find miserable.
He may well find it satisfying and/or enjoyable. But it appears to be some kind of severe workaholism he has, and I'd speculate there is a 50% chance football owns him, not the other way around. It would be fun to be him for just one Sunday though right???
Y'all should enjoy drawing pictures and making mediocre music without worrying about how that relates to success or money. Your career is important, but it's only one part of a good life. Things that are enjoyable but unproductive often have a way of building skills and character that can later help you in unexpected ways.
It may seem like 14 years old is "too soon" for being preoccupied about one's livelihood but, based on my experience, it is certainly healthier than waking up as a 27 y/o man and finding that the perception of your personality has been built on a lie, well intentioned as it may be.
The common view we have of teenagers, as devoid of any agency, vastly underestimates them, not only that, it excludes them for the "res publica": the participation to the public life, exclusion that emerges then as lack of maturity. All the acting out and "teenage angst", it is my opinion, is actually a call for responsibility and participation, and it is by this participation, and the subsequent confrontation with the messy reality of life that make you realize your limitation and allows you to grow out of your childish dream if they are, indeed, childing. This dampening of expectations is not a negative thing: it's what has allowed civilization to go on: almost nobody wanted to be a farmer. Keeping the door open for the odd wind of luck while living a pragmatic, if not as colorful as one's fantasies, life is the more realistic and healthy way of organize one future while the "think about this later" is a recipe for regret and depression caused by the mismatch between what it is and what I wished it were.
> Y'all should enjoy drawing pictures and making mediocre music without worrying about how that relates to success or money.
Or whether you have to have health insurance. If having health insurance wasn't tied to employment, just think of the opportunities that could open up.
of the basic necessities, health insurance is perhaps the easiest to acquire as a financially strapped person these days, due to Medicaid (assuming you’re US). shelter, on the other hand…
Given the state of the world, naturally there is greater pressure to survive, requiring one to focus on the short-term: securing capital or success, which in this context I interpret as 'fame' and perhaps implies capital. If this is the model under which we operate, indifference towards this pressure indicates to me that a person is either unwittingly/willfully ignorant, or has a value system that prioritizes internal satisfaction.
The beauty and tragedy of our culture is the ability to leverage your future for a moonshot. It enables some real treasures to be discovered who can share their creations with the world, but each comes with the invisible cost of hundreds and thousands of failures who must "settle" for an average life. The success of the fortunate comes in no small part out of the investment of time, energy, and money from the failures. Young people are the worst at risk-assessment and at thinking through long-term costs, so most will happily alter the shape of their 99%-probability future if it improves the shape of their 1%-future. Dreams are powerful.
You can do something you don't care for without making it your life.
Twelve years ago I wrote a blog post on exactly that concept of people going after optional disproportionally large gains, where everyone else only see the survivorship bias:
"I have to wonder then whether, over many eons, we've evolved the risk appetite required to explore options - i.e. in exploration of new food sources. However, while I would argue that such risk appetite is a superior trait for populations, it may be of net negative value for any particular individual singled out of a population. Because, while a roaring success may benefit that individual as well as the population around him, say, if (s)he found a new food source and also could control its public distribution for his/her benefit, it could also turn out that the exploration fails, and the individual perishes from exposure to whatever risky environment in which he placed himself in the first place. So, extrapolated over many generations of natural selection, this successively repeated scenario would breed individuals into risky-options-seeking automatons, who don't necessarily do so on the net likelihood of their own benefit. In a large population of such risky-options-seekers, some would inevitably succeed, improving the lot of the population, but those that failed would be crossed off the natural selection list, even though the same traits were being exercised in survivors and non-survivors alike.
So when it comes to the value of risky-options on the individual basis, I would argue that the jury's still out, and that economic conservatism may be the individual's value maximizing choice after all . . ."
"Economic conservatism" is a value-maximizing choice in some ways, but there is also the value of risk-taking as self-actualization. "It's better to have loved and lost," as they say.
There is value in being granted the freedom to fail, and even smart risks require a chance of failure; that's why banks and investors exist as they do. The difference is that a teenage individual is far worse at analyzing risk and the consequences of failure while having almost absolute authority over their own direction.
Hi Bob, I just want to say you're 14 -- don't worry about making money or success. There's plenty of time for that. And for coming to terms with the lack thereof. You're still a kid so get off Hacker News and go enjoy drawing pictures and making mediocre music. After all, unless your a child prodigy, what else could it be but mediocre? And that's more than enough! You won't get a second chance at being young, enjoy it while you can.
there are plenty of ways to earn an income doing both of those things, it just might not be 'for yourself' and it might not meet your expectation of 'a lot of money' but you can in fact be comfortable and earn a living.
also most professionals in any field are by definition mediocre.
If something is so much fun that you'd be willing to do it without getting paid, other people probably will do it without getting paid, which means that nobody's going to pay you for it.
Go to any un-juried street art fair, and see all the mediocre art being offered by people with no outstanding talent. They probably love making their art, and not only would they do it without getting paid, they actually are doing it without getting paid.
The other strategy is to have a rare skill or set of skills such that, even if lots of other people will do it for free and therefore underbid you, you can still find buyers despite your higher (non-zero) price tag.
There are a few books around that topic. I did read the Cal Newport - "So good they can't ignore you" where the summary says: Skills trumps passion and following you passion is a bad advice.
I did follow that book for the last 5-10 years of my career and can say, I did double my salary and have now a life where I can easily afford big holidays, not worry about any car or health issues/breakdowns and put money on the side. But deep down I truly regret not turning my career in the middle to something closer to what I wanted to do. Today I have some small regrets not having followed a bit more the "passion"-things mid-career or trying to combine them and not always focus on money and climbing the ladder...
One better advice is: If you want a satisfying career, ask yourself: What activities do I keep returning to, even though they are challenging?
I very nearly looked for the most dead end, brain dead job possible when I was in my mid 20s. The plan was to do something that enabled me to just think, which is my passion really. Thinking and learning and digging out the truth. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd followed through. Would I have been happier, would I have been more productive for society or less? Maybe one of the hundreds of projects I don't have the energy to complete would have been completed and born fruit. In this path of life I feel like a tree that is continually bearing fruit, only to have it fall to the floor and rot unused. If I'm honest I think society would be better to let those with the disposition to dream and build without need for employment. Society as a whole would be better to allow those whose disposition forces them to continually create, to do just that, create. To be called to something is a gift, to be denied your calling creates a wound deep within the soul.
Employment is an abstraction of resource-gathering. Every living being must gather resources to survive. Modern society does not enforce employment; employment is the manifestation of resource-gathering in modern society. Thinking and learning and digging out the truth is an incredibly popular lifestyle aesthetic. It's incumbent upon you to discover how to live that life while providing value to society, and if you cannot, then there exist some truths that others already discovered which are still foreign to your understanding. It's OK to think for your own intrinsic enjoyment, but if you aren't able to match the baseline of other successful thinkers then what is the utility to society of endowing you with what ultimately amounts to unlimited leisure time? Pontification is a perfectly acceptable hobby.
That would be true if there were vast numbers of truly creative people driven by nature to create and then create again. But there aren't. There are the correct number. The distribution of personalities reflects the need for those personalities as discerned by natural selection operating at the level of societies for 100s of thousands of years. There are the correct number of thinkers. The correct number of doers and they should all be supported to perform the functions for which they were designed by nature.
Complex societies haven't existed for hundreds of thousands of years, natural selection has not had the time or the ability to put selective pressure on creativity. This is simply an unfounded sociological theory that justifies you doing exactly what you want to be doing.
So is modern economics - a post hoc justification for greed.
The same has been said of modern conservatism:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
Brandon Sanderson did much of his early work while employed as a night security guard. If he hadn't had the time to write those early books, he might never have been paid enough for writing to write full time. That kind of 'growth hack' can make sense in some circumstances.
I can tell you what happens because I moved furniture for 3 years after I graduated college so I could work on my internet business:
Failure.
Utter, complete, soul-crushing, devastating failure. Not just in one thing. I'm talking a 20 year death march finally ending in burnout in 2019 just before the pandemic. My experience has been that the more mindless the work, the more psychologically taxing it is for creative types like pretty much everyone on this site. Opportunity cost becomes all-consuming.
My regret is the opposite of yours. I wish I had gone and worked for a major corporation for a few years and saved up a few hundred grand so I could get out from under obligation and invent the things that I was born to build.
I wish I had lived in a van and avoided expenses and helped with communal projects in a makerspace.
I wish I had worked on any personal project at all of my choosing, instead of letting others dictate which personal projects had merit and coopting my motivation.
My spirit has been so utterly shattered so many times, that I no longer hold strong beliefs or expectations. I've toiled under such a level of negative reinforcement for so many years that I no longer trust my own instincts. I don't believe that the future will necessarily get better, that the past even existed, or that (as the article said) money comes from doing the things we love.
But you know what? I feel alive for the first time since I was maybe 5 years old. Watching the world work through some of the existential crises that I've faced since the 90s has been very healing for me.
I have no great words of wisdom to impart. But I do feel a calling to find peace. In my own life, I've been practicing service to others, who are an aspect of myself under reincarnation and the multiverse (quantum immortality, etc). Which looks like setting boundaries and communicating intentions even if I can't meet them at that time. It means basic kindness to everyone I meet, even finding ways to love them no matter how much I disagree with them. And giving them the dignity to succeed and fail and learn in their own way.
I guess what I'm saying is that I've largely abandoned logic, because I've experienced what it's like to try as hard as I can but have it end in tragedy. Bad things still happen no matter how much we try to prevent them. But good things also happen when we aren't expecting them, through the infinite power of serendipity (one of the forces that created the universe). So I've shifted to magical thinking (faith, hope, love, meditation/prayer, manifestation, etc) and have witnessed how reality has shifted to reflect my inner world (as above, so below). Now I walk in wonder as the world solves nearly every problem I wanted to solve, but without my ego's attachment.
Next steps for me are to keep applying small moves to shift laterally into neighboring realities along this timeline. This is an embrace of the free will that science claims doesn't exist. It's seeking meaning through art and culture as our system of necessity works tirelessly to obliterate it. That's how and why I'm working towards the rejection of economic systems, since they're based on constructs like artificial scarcity and denial that wealth creates poverty for someone else through ignorance of karma. Loosely, that looks like being as vegetarian as possible, while still providing for the nutritional needs of my body when warranted. It looks like acknowledging my inner monologue but recognizing that it's not my consciousness, and heeding my subconscious by being an audience for my dreams. And showing up, even on days when I start from a place of zero energy, which is all too often in these times.
I wouldn't trade the pain I've experienced, since it resulted in my conscious awakening. Being here now is priceless.
If this all sounds like gobbledegook, and maybe it is, then you the reader have the priceless gift of youthful thinking on your side. Run with that and don't get dragged down by rantings from old burnouts like me. Your achievements remind me that anything is possible, even when I'm my own worst critic and limit myself with labels like I just did. Everyone has to find their own way.
Thanks. Your comment resonated with me. I had a similar crash/burn at the same time after a decade of 100hr work weeks hoping to "break out" but it never happened. I don't really know what comes next either or even if I have real wisdom from it, I no longer have any concerns about it though.
For a while when people ask me what I do I told them "I'm a failure." Which got some interestingly hostile responses much of the time, so I've stopped doing it. I think those are just other people on the same path but don't want to admit it yet.
I'm fortunate, in that I was able to save up enough of a modest nest egg, so that it doesn't matter.
I have skills that could make a lot of money. The problem is the way that the folks that pay me, treat me, and my work.
People seem to take the fact that they pay money, to be carte blanche to treat the people they pay, like garbage.
When I was younger, I could eat that s**t, but as I got older, I got crankier.
Nowadays, I do very good work, for free, for folks that couldn't afford me. They can be a pain, but I can also walk away (or threaten to), and we can usually work through the rough bits.
1) Figure out something that you are good at but don't like and make plan how to levarage that in the best way to become financialy indepenend (aka rich) from that.
2) Now you can do what you want.
For the average Joe this means that we'll be spending a lot of time outside of work working on 1). There is no other way for those of us from non-rich families: we have to wisely sacrifice free time and convert that free time into a non-linear $$$ return in the most practical way possible.
What gets to me is how many talented developers at Google and Facebook are willing to take big salaries and turn a blind eye to the "meaning" of their work. I'm friends with such people. They are lovely humans. But I zone out when they talk about their work. I just don't care how fun the work is when the outputs of the company you work for I don't agree with.
What if their work is meaningful? What if ads are just a way to help small businesses reach customers?
The idea that Google is doing some awful thing is cynical. Even if you dislike ads, Google Cloud is infra for developers and applications to help businesses/people do work. All good stuff.
But exactly zero of my half dozen or so friends at Google or Facebook jobs are meaningful. They enable the machines.
> What if ads are just a way to help small businesses reach customers?
I see this argument all the time online. But never in person. I don't think people say it in person because they know they don't truly believe it justifies the rest of the stuff.
It's unlikely to be a good assumption - that what people say in person is what they really think and what they say from behind a fake name isn't. There are a number of things people truly believe and don't say in person because of the expected negative reaction. I use my real name online and I'm careful of what I say. You seem to have created a fake name an hour ago to say something that you probably believe, but don't want to risk offending someone - it's a rational thing to do.
For me I'd love to be a Highschool teacher, but the pay is simply not there. It's hard for me to convince myself to take a huge pay cut from Software Engineering though. Huge bummer to me.
I taught high school for five years but have been a software engineer for the past ten.
I'd love to teach again - but sadly that would mean going back to a one bedroom apartment in a not-great part of town. Where I'm at now, I have a nice place in the country and the means to pursue hobbies that I couldn't before.
have you ever considered providing mentorship opportunities to high schoolers?
imo it is very possible to get the joy of teaching and passing on your knowledge & skills w/o being in the system.
To make decent money with a passion you often need to be in the top .1%. It's not like you need to be among the best in the world to make money working in fast food or law, compared to being a sprinter or chess player. Part of the problem is people will do hobbies for free, hence why they are hobbies and not jobs. Also, hobbies/passions do not create as much economic value compared to jobs. Coding the infrastructure that powers Amazon's store probably produces more economic value than learning how to play guitar, that is just the reality of the situation.
> Coding the infrastructure that powers Amazon's store probably produces more economic value than learning how to play guitar, that is just the reality of the situation.
This may be correct but I feel like there’s an incorrect assumption that producing economic value leads to receiving economic compensation. The amount you’re paid for your output doesn’t directly correlate to the amount of output, it correlates to how well you can hold that output hostage in exchange for money.
A professional open-source developer on a major project like flask almost certainly produces way more value than a Google Junior engineer but still probably doesn’t get paid as much.
I think part of the problem is that "what you love" is too coarse of a term; the author hinted at this but didn't really dig into it. I would break it down into at least three parts:
1. Something that's fun to you (the moment to moment lights up your brain)
2. Something that gives you esteem (feeling like you're good at something, and probably also having others validate that with praise and/or payment)
3. Something that gives you a sense of purpose in life (like you're contributing to something bigger than yourself- can be artistically, socially, etc)
Combining those with:
4. Something that makes you money
we have four different needs that can be met by the same or different activities. Finding three in a single activity is hard; finding all four in a single activity is nearly impossible. But one or two here, one or two there, is very doable (assuming time allows). I tend to think a person should aim for a primary job that fills two, or maybe three, because of how much of their time it takes up. But they should not hold out for a job that fills all four.
What's important is to become aware of exactly what each of these needs looks like for you personally, and which activities do and don't fill each of them. Then you can plan and prioritize to try and fill the gaps in your life.
PS: I've found that #3 tends to revolve around people other than yourself. That could mean moving them or bringing them joy through art/creativity, or raising children, being a community leader, doing charity, or even just building a product that directly makes people's lives better. The specifics depend on the person. But totally insular activities probably won't ever do it for #3; I think we've got something at the base of our monkey-brains that has an unchangeable need to be helpful to the tribe.
does this reframing do anything to solve the underlying dichotomy? few people, i venture, can truly find meaning in the present business environment. maybe it makes it easier to justify work at a non-profit, if the work is menial but meaningfully impactful.
Generally, to "do what you love" successfully for money, you need people, management, planning, self-development and marketing skills. And you generally need to be quite exceptional in at least one of these areas.
Most of us can make smarter decisions, get more sleep, be more efficient doing both what we don't want to do and do want to do. This is self-development. Without it, your productivity will be too low to make much money. Many of the best opportunities to be self-directed (which is a lot of what people "love") are in small business, where marketing dominates.
There is something to be said for loving what you do - which is to say, your job might be inglorious to some, but if it can be done well or badly, why not do it well? And then unfortunately the answer is, "Because I'll get fired for doing it well." Because yeah you work for people who hate everything they do and have contempt for everyone doing it.
But it is possible to love being an accountant, a janitor, and then some, if you're permitted to treat that job as something meaningful rather than hateful. We've been taught to be angry that we aren't living out some fantasy and hate everything around us.
There seems no obvious reason that everything good would be profitable, as if profitability is an expression of goodness. But as long as you can fund the good stuff somehow, it'll be OK.
This can also apply to going to college. I know several people who went to college, mounted up a healthy college dept, and ended up going into the trades to make enough money to eat and pay the dept. As hard as it is to say, young people have to stop listening to their parents or others who will advise/force/scare them into a decision that will financially hurt them for a long time.
There's "overhead" in every profession: time spent in cars and airports, time spent in boring meetings, time spent writing grant proposals, time spent on the day job while auditioning, etc.
If you can spend 20 hours per week doing the thing you love, year after year, you're doing well.
I love not having a boss, so I spent ten years being a prole and working my arse off.
Now I do what I want.
Some people want to spend their 20s doing what they want. I didn't feel I had that luxury. I didn't feel that I could just "not have a boss" straight away.
There’s a whole meme in blind about aerospace engineers earning peanuts. Not sure if there are too many wanna be astronauts or just the nature of finances when primary customer is the gov. Even SpaceX is supposed to pay only soso!
theres nothing wrong taking and using family money or inheritance if u can. put it to the best use.
the other aspect that must be acknowledged (if not encouraged) not outright avoided is the idea of sacrificing yourself for the art. a bit like a suicide bomber. being an artist isnt about having a middle class income and lifestyle so you dont 'die penniless'...there is something more mystical that only an artist can bring to life for themselves and others.
I know too many people (some very close to me) that followed this mantra. What ensued was most often very low paying jobs, or long term unemployment. The "luckiest" ones were able to do a career switch later in life. But there is an opportunity cost, as well as great time and effort involved on starting from scratch at that point.
Much greater advice is "do something that affords the lifestyle you want to have". This formula will be different for each one and will be a tension between work, money, and personal life. I know people who work jobs they don't love or hate, but pay enough to sustain their living expenses and support their hobbies.