passion

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The Antiportfolio: Counter-advice for Aspiring Artists
2 months ago
- The pressure to monetize every passion can drain the joy from creative work.
- Separating passion from financial stability can lead to a better balance.
- The value of an experience is not equivalent to its market value.
- Keeping creative work small and unoptimized preserves its magic.
- Hustle culture often leads to burnout and loss of joy.
- Dorm shows thrive because they are free from ROI pressures.
How to Do What You Love
2 months ago
- The idea that work is inherently unpleasant is taught from childhood, but it's a misconception that hinders finding fulfilling work.
- Adults often pretend to enjoy their jobs due to social conventions, misleading young people about the nature of work.
- Finding work you love is rare but crucial; one must avoid the traps of prestige and money.
- Two routes exist to do what you love: the organic route (gradually shift toward preferred work) and the two-job route (work for money then pursue passion).
- Early career decisions are often wrong; flexibility and consistent production help discover true passion.
What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
2 months ago
- The author's father, a mathematician, knew from age 12 that he wanted to work in maths, showing early clarity of purpose.
- The father enjoyed solving math problems as a reward, not work, and would complete textbooks immediately, unlike typical students.
- A key heuristic: if something seems like work to others but not to you, you are likely well-suited for it.
- Many programmers enjoy debugging, a task others see as tedious, illustrating this principle.
- Unusual personal tastes can be strong indicators of the right career path, as seen from the author's college experience of enjoying writing papers for friends.
- Deciding what to work on can be difficult and may require recognizing subtle clues about what feels enjoyable versus burdensome.
Fashionable Problems
2 months ago
- Many fields have only a small fraction of possibilities explored, despite extensive work.
- Even the smartest people tend to work on fashionable problems, being conservative in their choices.
- Unfashionable problems can be found in fields thought to be fully explored, like essays, Lisp, or venture funding.
- Discovering a new approach in a big but played-out field multiplies the value of the discovery.
- Genuinely loving what you do is the best protection against working on the same things as everyone else.

passion

The Antiportfolio: Counter-advice for Aspiring Artists

How to Do What You Love

What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

Fashionable Problems