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I think your complaint goes away if you complete the sentence: Do what you love to create

Most people live read-only lives. They never create music, food, or art. They merely consume them.

But if you love creating music, food, or art you absolutely can make a career out of it. Of course, a middling chef or musician won't make it very far, but neither will a middling programmer really (though they may at least stay employed).

Nothing wrong with being a middling chef or a middling programmer; we can't all be rockstar ninjas, and there is plenty of need for normal chefs and normal programmers.

Of course there's nothing wrong with it. If you love it though, you'll probably wind up a deviation or two better than the average.

Just understand what you love. If programming is a day job, then that's just that. I happen to love this craft.

I don't think his complaint goes away at all.

For one thing, in my experience, most people don't love to create. Most people aren't artists, programmers, writers, chefs, or carpenters because they wake up in the morning and look forward to it. My overwhelming impression from the vast majority of people I've met in my life indicates that creating things is simply not a driving force. If given a complete lack of want, I'm convinced the majority of the world's population will choose to do nothing creative with it, and spend it socializing, fucking, and eating.

Scarcity is pretty much the only reason their butt finds their way to the desk every morning.

Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that.

Secondly, even for people who have strong passions in a particular craft, there's no accounting for supply and demand. We are incredibly fortunate that our passions lie in a field that is severely under-supplied, allowing us to enjoy incredible compensation and job security in an era where so few have just that. And our situation is highly temporary, I assure you. The ability for your passion to put a roof over your head and provide the basic necessities of life is... questionable.

So while I'm pulling in a 6-figure salary, have insane perks at the office, flexible hours, live in an amazing city, and have the money and time to pursue my dreams, I'm not going to stand on a soapbox and pontificate to everyone how, if they had only followed their passion, they could be happy too.

The reality is that we are the lucky few. For a vast portion of the population following their passions is a one-way ticket to getting evicted and digging through garbage cans.

well put. "socializing, fucking and eating" sums up 90% of the population and it is very good as it provide huge consumer market to the other 10%.

Exactly. I used to get outraged/saddened/furious when i see that attitude 90% of the population, till i realized, it's inevitable in any economy, except perhaps a communist style, forced one.

If given a complete lack of want, I'm convinced the majority of the world's population will choose to do nothing creative with it, and spend it socializing, fucking, and eating.

The reality TV show Big Brother is strong evidence in favor of your argument.

It's an artificial environment where people are aggressively prevented from creating anything. You can't even smuggle a pencil and a piece of paper into the Big Brother house -- if you wanted to write or draw something, you'd have to do it with your own blood on the walls, I guess... Once you're in there, your life for the next N months will consist solely of socializing, fucking and eating.

Amazingly, there are millions of people who find this prospect so exciting that they apply for the show year after year.

I don't think we should draw general conclusions about humanity based on reality show contestants. The draw to participate in Big Brother is that the house is full of TV cameras. Which, ironically, could actually be described as creating something.

Most folks haven't been exposed to creative activities since the 2nd grade. When they took the crayons away (only babies use crayons). Its deplorable that the most creative species on the planet provides so little support for expression, even quashing it. Color inside the lines! Park between the lines. Be a team player. Sit down, shut up and listen to the teacher.

Because you can't make money off somebody's creativity unless you can control and direct it.

It reminds me of something my father told me when I was figuring out what to take in college..."Find something you like to do and you will never work another day in your life."

His advice was not absolute, there are bad days, but overall he was correct. I wake up almost every morning looking forward to what I will solve/build that day. He was a chef, provided a great life for his family and still experiments in the kitchen even in retirement.

I think the "software as a craft" argument also fits here as people who like to program like to tinker at home much like wood working in your garage.

This is why my new passions are business, marketing, and making money.

"If given a complete lack of want, I'm convinced the majority of the world's population will choose to do nothing creative with it"

I don't know if I agree - I think if you move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs and they no longer 'want' the basics, they will allow themselves to advance into the 'higher stages' and then desire to fulfill those needs such as socializing, sex, etc. But presumably if those things all come easily as well, they will then move further up the line into creative expression, etc.

I know I've been most creative when I didn't need to be, and everything else in my life was more or less 'taken care of', and I suspect many people would have the same experience.

> And our situation is highly temporary, I assure you.

On what basis do you say that? And how long do you expect it to last before things change?

With depression medication being so popular, is this partially the result of years of "Find what you love, and do it"? Does it contribute to people with any ability for introspection becoming miserable when they know and are being reminded that they're not doing what they love? I include the introspection bit since it's very easy these days to get sucked into one mindless time sink after another and never have any alone time with one's own thoughts. ("Consumerism" is probably the general form.)

If loving something specific, like Carmack does with video games and Feynman did with Physics, requires some amount of eccentricity, then by definition most people don't really love something they want to do it all the time. In that case, the advice is at best a NOP to people who are content with their life despite not loving something. For other cases, I could see it being damaging to people who will conflate "love" with "like" and ask where they can get paid to collect other people's tumblr posts on their own tumblr "blog", or damage people who will just be reminded that they aren't doing what they love but can't accept they'll never find something they love. I don't think it's all that dangerous for the rare "late bloomers" or people who already know what they love and happen to love something non-profitable--those people are going to do it regardless, they don't need to be told, they more often need to be told not to for their own health. Some will find themselves content even without much money, others will tolerate working years in the profitable salt mines being in a state of varying misery, and trading that for years afterwards doing what they please.

"shit careers" how? Because they don't pay well? You won't get rich? If you're going to dedicate the next 30 years of your life to something, you'd better damn well enjoy it or you will hate your life. You spend more time at work than with your family, so you'd better not hate your job or you'll go insane.

A job that you GENUINELY enjoy should ALWAYS be taken over a job that pays big bucks. We are EXTREMELY fortunate that the jobs we enjoy doing ALSO pay very well. Nevertheless, if I got paid a fraction of what I do I would continue to do it over a job that I did not find interetsing but paid well.

Do what you love - as long as you are above the poverty line you'll be happy. And most jobs will allow you to live above the poverty line :)

>>"shit careers" how? Because they don't pay well? You won't get rich?

Contrary to whatever you think 'getting rich' is very important. Its also fun to be rich. Its fun to know you don't have to worry getting up early in the morning and do all you have to to in a hurry just to hit the work desk. Its also fun to not come home tired wanting to do something you love but not having energy or the time to do it. Its also fun to not worry about saving some pennies every month just so that you would want to buy a new phone/tablet or whatever six months later. Its also fun to send your kids to the best institutions out there to get them educated. Its fun to drive the Ferrari, Its fun to go on unlimited vacations in Europe. I can go on and on. Trust me if you have money life is really 'fun'.

I mean the real fun. Not the make believe fun, they tell you in books and articles about fun while sweating at work.

>>A job that you GENUINELY enjoy should ALWAYS be taken over a job that pays big bucks.

Big bucks are more genuinely enjoyable, actually.

>>We are EXTREMELY fortunate that the jobs we enjoy doing ALSO pay very well

No, programming jobs pay marginally well. But that's still not sufficient for what one would call an awesome life.

>>if I got paid a fraction of what I do I would continue to do it over a job that I did not find interetsing but paid well.

I respect your choice, but I wouldn't. The concept of life is to live. And you need to money to live, which in turn requires work. But if you consider work as life. Then priorities all get messed up.

>>Do what you love - as long as you are above the poverty line you'll be happy. And most jobs will allow you to live above the poverty line :)

There is hardly any glory in poverty. And even if you are the best janitor in the whole world. You still won't be able to send your kids to a good university. You won't have a good home, car or whatever. None of that can keep you happy.

>Contrary to whatever you think 'getting rich' is very important.

To you. Just like the GP is projecting his view of the world as the view everyone should have, so are you. People are different (gasp) and that means their rankings of most any list of things you can come up with will be different.

>And even if you are the best janitor in the whole world. You still won't be able to send your kids to a good university

Maybe it is the grouch in me but perhaps your kids could get scholarships, or (gasp again) pay some portion of their own school bill. The idea that a parent is a failure if they can't pay 4 years or more of Harvard tuition in cash seems silly, to me anyhow. Also, anecdotally, everyone I met in college whose parents were footing the bill were kind of deplorable people to be honest. I am sure there are nice people whose parents picked up the whole cost of their college education, I have just never met any.

Getting rich is too much, but wanting financial security is not. There are few things more stressful and destructive than being too broke for too long.

I agree.

But I put a few things as they are because sometimes they are necessary to be put it that way.

Look at this way. These articles try to paint a picture that its OK to sacrifice your financial well being if you are faced with an option that offers perceived happiness. In reality this is rarely true.

Work is just one requirement of life. Of the many requirements which start from brushing your teeth in the morning to mosquito repellant in the night. You need money for nearly everything these days. And anybody who gives you an advice that doesn't account for this thing isn't just getting the point.

A millennium back all you would need is horse and ability to climb a tree. And you could do anything in the world, by just riding the horse and eating fruits plucked from the tree. These days you need money for everything.

If you feel you can be 'happy' by just doing work. Then sure you will be happy doing work. But you won't be happy doing everything else without money. And that everything else makes up a very big part of your life.

Sooner or later everybody realizes this.

The studies on happiness I've seen tend to conclude with "money doesn't buy happiness but lack of it does buy misery." The specific amount of lacking depends on the relative poverty line and in the US decreases as income approaches ~$75k/yr USD. But there's a lot of individual factors involved with happiness even if on average money has a measurable effect. Some people are really cheerful living below the poverty line but for most it's not a great place to be. Others make do with what they have and are content. Others use credit cards to inflate their income by $2k-$50k. There are also plenty of manically depressed millionaires, so cash alone is not sufficient for some. There are lots of blissful stupid people. I think the better question in these discussions is "what's the optimal happiness a human can achieve, and what can I achieve in the near future?" Since we can measure it I agree with you that money is an important factor, perhaps the dominating one for some individuals, but not the only one.

> "that's still not sufficient for what one would call an awesome life."

For what who would call an awesome life?

I stay at home with my family. We get up when we want to get up. My wife does contract work, enough to pay the bills and put a bit away at considerably less than full time, and she does it from the next room. My son has me as a dedicated full-time caretaker and educator. We don't go to Europe, but we can go to the park, grandma's house, or the mountains whenever we feel like it.

The concept of life is to live, and you need money to live, but how much money depends on what you want to do with your life. It depends on what "do what you love" leads you to, whether you need a high income to sustain what you love or whether you live for peanuts (and whether you can earn those peanuts doing something else you love.) You can take your Ferrari on the Autobahn; I'll be out playing in the dirt with my kid.

>>You can take your Ferrari on the Autobahn; I'll be out playing in the dirt with my kid.

Most people would be OK with that, the problem only starts when you start comparing the Ferrari guy and play-in-the-dirt-with-kid guy.

Objectively everyone is happy, subjectively they are not. And no human ever exists in isolation.

I downvoted a few of your comments in this thread and all for similar reasons, but I'll just reply to this one.

You're putting forth your ideas about money buying happiness as if they were facts that you have proven or that have been proven elsewhere. But human happiness is much more complicated than you think it is, and I think the spirit of most of the replies are merely suggesting that things are not as black and white as you have made them out to be.

> the problem only starts when you start comparing the Ferrari guy and play-in-the-dirt-with-kid guy.

That seems to be what you're doing, is introducing this "problem" by comparing these two situations, or comparing some other abstract ideal rich life with the life of middle class or "normal" lives, when in fact comparing them and trying to find out who is happier is very hard.

Here's another one to compare: I hate driving, so I think I would rather ride a bicycle than drive a Ferrari. But that's just me; I can't even articulate why I dislike driving. I would never suggest that someone else isn't happy driving a Ferrari and would be happier on a bike, because it's a senseless comparison. Same with the dad and his kid playing in the dirt.

While wanting a ferrari as a kid may or may not make you unhappy, I don't personally know anyone who was given a ferrari as a kid and was ultimately happy. They usually tended to end up less happy than children who weren't spoiled by their parents.

> Its fun to know you don't have to worry getting up early in the morning and do all you have to to in a hurry just to hit the work desk. Its also fun to not come home tired wanting to do something you love but not having energy or the time to do it.

You can also accomplish this by cutting expenses and reducing your working hours.

I guess it depends on your definition of "rich", but it's very easy to increase your spending to the level where your freedom is not necessarily much bigger than before.

> "You can also accomplish this by cutting expenses and reducing your working hours."

This is so easy for people like us to say. We're the ones pulling in 6-figure salaries, where I could conceivably work half-time and still pay the bills. Hell, I could work a quarter-time and pay the bills without experiencing a poverty lifestyle.

Try giving your advice to your local burger jockey, shoe salesman, and janitor. 50% of households in this country make <$37K a year. Where should these families cut their working hours?

Oh, the presumptuousness of the rich. We hear this topic a lot in this community because, let's face it, we're all making (in relation to the general population) ludicrous sums of money, living in absolute excess (not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that). To presume that most people have a lot of "fat" to trim from their lifestyles is severely misguided.

I agree with your response, but would like to point out that it's primarily a US phenomenon. Programmers in Asia don't get mega bucks, and even those who attempt to do startups mostly don't either (there just isn't a big consumer market and big bubbly stock market, excepting China and maybe India). They still enjoy their coding, though, even if it's just another mediocrely-paid job. You usually get less here as a programmer than a grad entering finance, law, or any MNC does (unless you're coding for an MNC).

>>(there just isn't a big consumer market and big bubbly stock market, excepting China and maybe India)

I am from India. And start up scenario in India is not very great. And programmer salaries are average no matter where you work.

How do you explain people that are financially secure but work anyway?

Working is part of life. Ferraris and vacations to Europe are fun, but there's plenty of more affordable entertainment that is just as fun. It just depends on your perspective and personality. Some people will never be satisfied with what they have, and no amount of money will change that.

If I had to choose between working 40 hours a week at a job I hate and driving a Ferrari vs 40 hours a week at a job I love and driving a Camry. I'd choose the Camry every time. (Obviously these aren't the only options in real life)

There are millions of ways to make money, and there are millions of ways to spend it. Being focused on 'getting rich' can easily make you blind to the big picture.

>>How do you explain people that are financially secure but work anyway?

Working on what? I pity the person who has all the money in the world to take a permanent holiday, but is still a MegaCorp slave. Who works from 9-5 every day. I can understand if you are working on a curious problem. But if you have a financial leg to stand on and you are still on a day to day job. You need to seriously rethink your life and how you are spending your time.

>>Working is part of life.

Part, yes. But not your whole life. That's the whole point.

>>Ferraris and vacations to Europe are fun, but there's plenty of more affordable entertainment that is just as fun.

Being happy with little isn't the same as having experiences bought by big money. At most, being happy with little is only a indication of compromise, you show when you resign to trying no more.

Even programmers often fail when doing what they love. How many great programmers don't move further than working in a company for salary (something most DON'T love) because what they love is to work on hackish stuff that doesn't interest real users (and does not make money).

The advice "Do what you love" has some ground but it shouldn't be taken as literally as most people do.

And this topic has been discussed to death here.

I love food, music, art, sex, sports, and adventure. I'm weird as hell, but I love to program. I just assume that "do what you love" is a short way of saying "find out something you love that other people need, and spin that into a career." I admit that since I've wanted to be a programmer for a long, long time I don't know what it's like to not know what I want to do, but I can't assume this is the only career that you can actually like.

You can certainly "do what you love" after work. I'd argue that that's what 99% of the people actually do, they stand a job they dislike and then they go home or to a bar to eat, fuck, socialize and watch sports.

I think that it's really important to try to find passion in our lives. Not necessarily a passion that is a job, but a passion that is fulfilling.

I know that this is not what the author is saying, but I think it's an important perspective to keep.

The advice is meant for the 10% not the 90%. People who took time to mail Michael Abrash, have some knowledge, ambition and passion. Out of these 10% some will have the drive to follow through, do the hard work and love the journey, they will become the top 1%. So the advice is not meant for everyone just for some.

only weirdos love programming

That's overstating it a bit. Despite the fact that I like food, music, art, sex, sports, and adventure more than I like programming, programming would still be one of my favorite hobbies.

I say would be because now it is a profession and when I leave work I don't want to touch a computer.

But the programming I like is the open source work I do between jobs, that kind of beautiful code I create for free. And in small doses. The large code bases that must ship on time, that's work that I would not do unless I get paid.

Now people that code all day at work, and then code a lot more at home and over the weekend, almost every weekend, purely for the love of coding, those might be a bit odd.

But not odder than any obsessive hobby, which can just as easily be sports or food. I think the oddness here is just the obsessiveness.

> That's overstating it a bit.

Is it? How many people, do you think, love programming but are instead do something else? Probably fewer than program but don't love it, given what the financial incentives have been for a while now. Most people, by far, are not programmers. How rare does something have to be for it to make you a "weirdo"?

"Don't do what you love" sounds like worse advice, so personally I have to agree with the former.

I like food, sex(who else on earth doesn't?), sports (specifically,tabletennis) and adventure. So what? I also like building interesting software.

You wrongly assumed people like building software can't/doesn't like other things else.

I like the blog post but this tops it. This needs to be added at the end of that post and at the end of every article which tells you, do what u love.