Models and film stars often can’t leave their homes without being accosted by photographers and media and overzealous fans. That’s the hard truth. It’s right, but…. Indeed, Jaffe, spotlighting Maya Tokumitsu’s recent book on the subject Do What You Love: And Other Lies About Success and Happiness, explains that the myth that “each individual’s specialness will guide him or her to work that he or she enjoys and that also happens to support, at the very least, an upper-middle-class existence” is insidious. In both of those cases, I spent my full-time effort on one thing and devoted some of my spare time on a “side gig.” The side gig in both cases was the thing I was most passionate about–solving some very interesting problems in the first case and writing in the second case. On the other hand, choosing a career based on average income and your personal aptitude will lead you to a job with a strong income level and a career path you’re naturally suited for, but you may not end up enjoying your job or your career at all. A better life is what comes to mind. I sometimes have to meet word count restrictions, though I do have almost unlimited freedom in terms of topics and the ideas I express. I’ve written mobile apps. I used to love sci-fi. If that ocean dries up, the answer’s no. And so on. Together, these two cases taught me something very valuable: It makes a lot of sense to pursue a passion as a side gig. If I had described all of that to myself at a younger age, I wouldn’t have believed I would do anything like that. Too much stuff is made carelessly, thoughtlessly, and offers no real human benefit. The question isn’t doing what you love. Can it? Solving those kinds of problems? Having been through both sides of the issue, I can say without a doubt that there are big advantages to doing what you love as well as big advantages to focusing on salary and skills. Of course, here in the real world, most of us have people to support. Forget about what you love right now. Do what moves you. When you do, the passion will follow--and if you work hard enough, someday you'll be so good they can't ignore you. I have to do media interviews, some of which I enjoy, some of which end up going in awkward political or social directions that make me want to hang up and pretend it never happened. The same thing was true when I was in college. There are deadlines and contractual obligations. That’s why it doesn’t love you back. I used to love music. Not just walk someone else’s trail. So that you can grow by reaching, stretching, exploring, and even falling – but not getting crushed along the way. And that’s completely fine. I wrote rough drafts of several novels, including one called Rings of Saturn that I actually sent to publishers and received some positive feedback on (it was a story about two highly competitive brothers during an era shortly in the future when we were starting to mine different parts of the solar system for resources). It’s immature (sorry, I said it) to still only love comic books at 40 to the way you do at 14. Make it a hobby, make it a labor of love, make it a plan C. But don’t make it your One True Path. Now? Such a job really doesn’t exist unless you’ve already achieved financial independence or have some other source of income, at which point it’s almost more of a hobby than a “job.”. Writing software? Possibly. I make a reasonably good living (perhaps aided by the fact that my tastes are pretty simple). It was incredibly enjoyable work, one I found deeply rewarding. Maybe any love in it. How about you? The reasons for this are many. When you choose to “do what you love,” what you’re actually saying is that you’re choosing a job where some of your time–ideally, a significant portion of your time–is spent on something you love to do. The two jobs I’ve loved the most in my entire life started as part-time side gigs. Now I love art. You don’t build relationships, accomplish much, learn, challenge, create, grow. That’s what I’m striving for. I’d estimate that I spent several thousand hours trying to earn money from my writing before earning more than a pittance. Start with the last one. Better yet, you can fail over and over and over again. It wasn’t until I started working for that professor mentioned earlier that I really found something that clicked. This is the best route I’ve found to get there. There is no job that’s 100% “doing what you love.” The most famous novelist in the world still deals with agents and publishers and the like. The jobs that allow you to do things that you love and pay well usually have a very high skill threshold and there usually aren’t many such positions. Those things were interesting, but none of them really clicked with me in a deep way–and in at least a couple of those things, I didn’t do well at all. “What you love to do is to make a difference,” David Sturt says. I played online poker (I actually did well at this, but then the legality of it came into question and I didn’t want to bank a career on it). That doesn’t mean it’s all perfect. There were three classes I deeply enjoyed in high school–math, English, and biology–and I felt that the jobs I could end up doing with a biology degree would be incredibly enjoyable. What I love is secondary to that. Great, right? I didn’t really worry about the pay too much. Often, you have to end up “making your own job” via entrepreneurship or self-employment to do the thing you love, and that means figuring out how to get someone to pay you for what you want to do, which is tricky in all situations and very tricky when your area of interest isn’t widely profitable or popular. “…and they lived happily ever after…” sure sounds great and it is something you can achieve if you always keep in mind it won’t be smooth sailing all the way through.
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