Before you read the rest
Before you read the rest of this post, you should probably do two things:
1. Read the essay I'm about to respond to: How to Do What You Love by Paul Graham, who is (among other things) a web entrepreneur and programmer. It's a lengthy essay (it took me a little less than 10 minutes to read, and I am a relatively fast reader), but it's worth it.
2. (Optional, but helpful) Read Ethan's response to the same essay. (Ethan's post was actually where I found the essay in the first place.)
"Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties."
The fact it's often really hard to do what you love is one of the main themes of the essay, in my opinion. I found that reassuring -- and I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that way.
Another excerpt I liked was about what to do when you aren't doing a job you love, or when you're unsure about it:
"Sometimes jumping from one sort of work to another is a sign of energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness. Are you dropping out, or boldy carving a new path? You often can't tell yourself.... Is there some test you can use to keep yourself honest? One is to try to do a good job at whatever you're doing, even if you don't like it. Then at least you'll know you're not using dissatisfaction as an excuse for being lazy. Perhaps more importantly, you'll get into the habit of doing things well."
One of the nice things about the essay is that it's well-written enough to resonate with a lot of different people, in a lot of different ways. I appreciate that the parts Ethan found relevant were different than the parts I liked, because it gives me that much more to think about. As it is, Paul brings up plenty of other good points to chew on -- though I haven't formed coherent-enough opinions about most of them for it to be worth quoting here.
First of all (and what I took the strongest issue with), is Paul's all-encompassing definition of what a person "does" as his or her "work." I'm going to try and use the word "career" instead of "work," since one of the things he points out at the beginning of the essay is that work, to so many people, is the opposite of play (a conception that he tries to dispel in the essay).
But there's so much more to life than your career. Yes, your career is a hugely important part of your life, considering that you spend a large chunk of your waking hours at your job. So yes, it's important to enjoy your job. But if you don't love it, I think that's okay. A person "does" so many other things: spending time with friends, talking and thinking about the world around you and your relationship with it, and, when you get older, taking care of your family and kids.
At this point in my life (and most of my friends') it's easy to become consumed with "what you want to do" in the sense of a career, just because, well, we're still young. But what if you had to choose, say, between your career and your family? It's not a new idea -- ask anyone with a job and a family what is more important to them, and unless they want to be perceived as a heartless jerk, of course they'll say family. So why is loving your career always viewed as the key to being happy?
Of course it's not possible to quantify these things, but just for a moment, think about it this way. Let's assume that the ideal scenario for a person's life is "loving" everything you "do": your job, your familial responsibilities, even your hobbies (like cooking, knitting, whatever) -- and that "love" equates to 100%. But we've already established that it's really hard to find something you love doing, career-wise. So: what if you're at 70% with your job and 100% with everything else? That doesn't sound unreasonable to me (though maybe Paul would argue that I'm lowering my expectations in this example). But in this respect, I sometimes think the people who are full-time moms and dads might be, well, on to something.
Paul also writes, "If you have to like something to do it well, then the most successful people will all like what they do." But he doesn't define what the meaning of "success" is, and in any case I think his first assumption -- that you have to like something to do it well -- is flawed. In a way, he even contradicts himself later in the essay when he writes, "A friend of mine who is a quite successful doctor complains constantly about her job. When people applying to medical school ask her for advice, she wants to shake them and yell 'Don't do it!'" Isn't that an example of someone who does something well but doesn't like it?
Which brings up another thing I've always pondered about. What's the difference between liking what you do at your job, and liking the satisfaction that you get from "producing" (as Paul calls it), or from knowing that you're contributing to and making a positive impact on society?
They are not the same thing. Take doctors, for example. I am sure there are plenty of doctors who don't love the day-to-day tasks of making rounds, who don't love the long hours and the stress. But it's worth it when they feel like they've saved a patient's life. Likewise, I'm sure there are public school teachers who get frustrated with their students and the endless paperwork, and who don't like the drudgery of planning daily lessons. But it may be worth it to them when, at the end of the year, a student tells them that they're a favorite teacher, or when their classes perform well on standardized tests.
The same case can be made for jobs that are normally not viewed as "do-gooder" jobs, like acting. The physical act of memorizing lines and being in front of the camera is different from the satisfaction an actor gets when he sees himself on screen, or when critics give positive reviews about his new movie. So what makes people love their jobs? The act, the results, or both? Where should the motivation lie? Does it matter?
I think the idea of "loving what you do," just like the idea of loving another person, is a complicated emotion to judge, pinpoint, and act on. Paul Graham does a great job in his essay explaining how money, prestige, and tradition all prevent people from finding what they love to do. But he doesn't quite explain this one -- and for me, that's always been the hardest part.