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Author Topic: Why is it that so few people do what they love? Paul Graham does it again  (Read 8123 times)

urlwolf

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I have to share this with you. The clarity of Paul Graham is just scary. He has nailed the problem he writes about! I find that pretty much every paragraph is absolute brilliance. Why is it that so few people do what they love?
 
http://paulgraham.com/love.html

I think this topic blends with the entire DC philosophy.
 

app103

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Everyone's goal in life should be to blur the line between work & play...and get paid for something they would do as a hobby.

If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life...it's all play.  :D

JavaJones

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Reading Paul's articles is always dangerous for me. They're long and fascinating and insightful and they inevitably link to other similarly long and insightful and interesting articles. I will not be safe until I have read everythong on his site. ;)

- Oshyan

zridling

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Here's an interesting section:

This is easy advice to give. It's hard to follow, especially when you're young. [5] Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.

That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a novelist? But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies.


I have a PhD in Philosophy, something that I love, and I've seen young people who've seen my degrees and thought they wanted them, too. When I tell them that it took me 22 years of sweat, debt, and poverty to finally achieve it, they pull back. I was never in it for the degree, but then I never wasted a course that didn't count toward a degree either. I've seen many people try to write the next great novel only to find that their effort was awful or they really had no clue what it involved.

JavaJones

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Yes, people often confuse the result with the process. They want the result, not the process. ;)

- Oshyan