What I love is living in a very comfortable house in front of the sea, with nobody else around me for miles. What I love is sitting in a hot bath and reading a book. What I love is travelling and being entertained.
So far, nobody has offered to pay me to do what I love. It's a shame.
So I have to work for money like the greedy bastard I am, to make the world a better place for me.
Let me quote one of Ireland's most successful businessman, Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair, on "doing what you love":
"I am not a cloud bunny. I am not an aerosexual. I don't like aeroplanes. I never wanted to be a pilot like those other goons who populate the air industry"
Mr O'Leary is an interesting case when it comes to finding what you love. I would argue, from what I've seen his company do, and from interviews with him that what he <i>loves</i> is to be the maverick.
-To play with the EU bureaucrats i Brussels
-Mock Nicolas Sarkozy with adverts
-Get small cities to actually pay Ryanair to get routes to their airports
-Bypass the unions by having cabin crews from Eastern Europe.
I think O'Leary could have done the same with another industry if he wanted to. Doing what you love doesn't necessarily have to mean that you love the trade, but the feeling and excitement you get from doing it.
There's a philosophical undertone here that I can't quite put my finger on. "Do what you love" is just a saying. It implies a lot of things. One of those things is that you have do what you love for money. Get a job doing what you love. There are lots of things you love, one of them is worth money to someone else. Find /that/ thing and do it a lot and get good at it and do it for other people and then train other people how to do it for other people and voila, successful business. It's not as hard as it seems.
If a business out there is willing to pay 10 people to sit in a cube and do something all day, and it isn't all day, most of the time, cubers are getting coffee or chatting with coworkers and not really working and they get paid /bank/ to do it. If someone will pay you to sit in a cube and do something -- and you are /really/ good at it, then 10 other companies will pay you just as much to do it for them and you'll make a lot of money. Don't be lazy!
How about "Work /hard/ doing what you /love/ and the money will come." The focus here is on working hard at doing what you love, forget about the money. Just forget that money exists. If you're paying the rent or you can pay the rent for a year, quit your job and figure out what you love. Then get another job doing that thing. Why are you arguing with me when you know I'm right? It's not even I who am right, lots of people smarter than I am have been saying the same thing for many years. It's true and it works. Don't be a hater!
You said, "to make the world a better place for me."
I know. I know. Look, here's the deal. You can make the world a better place for you by making the world a better place for everyone. I mean, if the world is better for everyone and you are in that world and you are a subset of everyone, then the world is better for you too.
I'm not being naive, this rational.
I'm not saying you have to love your job every day. I love my job /almost/ every day, but sometimes a lazy customer calls and wants me to do /their/ job for them like I don't have my own work to do and I do it anyway to make the customer happy and I think to myself, "Man... why do I do that crap?" and I beat myself up and then I find a silver lining like, "Okay, if it was hard for that customer it is hard for other customers, so I'm going to make it easier!" And then I do and I have a better product and the world gets better for everyone, including myself.
That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. If the product I build is better for /me/ then it's better for a lot of other people too. If I make it better for /them/ then it gets better for /me/ too!
Man, I hope my tone doesn't scare people off. It sounds like i haven't really thought this stuff out, but I have. I've gone though all the arguments against it and I still believe it. I /believe/ it.
You don't have to believe it a lot of people don't believe it. A lot of people do things they hate their whole entire lives and then get fired, laid off, their pension plans get sucked away by some greedy bastard like you (jk, i'm playin, i'm playin, you seem like a nice guy) or cancer and die and they regret it. I don't want to be like that.
If I do what I love every day and it's honorable and honest and good, then I'll die a happy person and people will look at me like, "That guy never made a dime but he was always smiling and happy, except when he was exhausted from working so hard." Like Boxer in Animal Farm, except smarter and hopefully the bad guys won't turn me into glue for some booze.
Anyway, it'd be a nice life until the dead part. I'd like to live that life. Work hard. Love life. Die happy.
I've had lots of money and I've had no money and right now I have almost no money and I'm so happy. I'm working harder than when I had lots of money. I'm spending that money on my company and it's fun and I love what I do and I don't know, I don't think I'm special or different. I'm just like everyone else and if it can work for me, it can work for other people and if it does and they get happy, i'll be happier too!
In 15 years, if all this is a total failure, it is possible that I could look back and think, "Wow, I was so dumb, I shouldn't have listened to myself." That very well may happen, but I don't think it will. I don't believe it will. It's in the future, so by definition it is an opinion and it could be wrong, but I'm listening to myself right now, myself right now is saying, keep typing, keep telling the world the TRUTH and keep saying it!
There's an endlessly looping voice in my head saying, "There are going to be naysayers, don't listen to them. Those people need excuses for their misery. They need justification for not going for it, for not taking a risk, for not trying, for not working hard. They're lazy!"
Don't be lazy! Don't make excuses. WORK HARD. It's sooo much easier to work hard if you love what you are doing.
Here's one more quote and I'll finish with it:
Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life
So I have to work for money like the greedy bastard I am, to make the world a better place for me.
Let me quote one of Ireland's most successful businessman, Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair, on "doing what you love":
"I am not a cloud bunny. I am not an aerosexual. I don't like aeroplanes. I never wanted to be a pilot like those other goons who populate the air industry"