It's often said that you should "Do what you love", but that's mostly bad advice. It encourages people to grind away their lives in pursuit of some mostly unattainable goal, such as being a movie star or a billionaire startup founder. And even if they do make it, often the reality is nothing like they imagined it would be, so they're still unhappy.
Do what you love is in the future. Love what you do is right now. As with the other patterns, it's meant to guide the small decisions that we make every moment of every day. It's less about changing what you do, and more about changing how you do it.
"Do what you love" treats "what you love" as a fixed thing, but it's not. I used to hate running. I would sometimes force myself to run a few miles because it's supposed to be healthy, but I never liked it. Then I read a book that said we are born to run, and that it can be fun. Inspired, I decided to try running just for fun, focus on the quality of every step, and forget about the goal completion aspect of it. Very quickly, I learned to enjoy running, and over time I've transformed my entire relationship with fitness and exercise to be oriented more toward enjoyment.
Naturally, this more intrinsic approach ultimately improves the quality of our efforts, which generally leads to greater extrinsic rewards as well. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are best when they are both pointed in the same direction. ...
Real work always seems to involve a certain amount of unpleasant, grinding effort though, and startups often have a lot of it. It's like having a baby. It's 5% cute, adorable moments, and 95% dirty diapers and vomit.
The key to loving these more unpleasant moments is meaning. If we genuinely care about and believe in our mission, then those difficult times begin to take on a more heroic quality.
Thank you for the quote, I like the part about the "what you love part" being fluid. I think that's why sometimes your career being "what you love" can be tough, because unless you're the boss, it's hard to steer the barge to align the group goals with your personal goals (another commenter had a good take on that aspect.)
For me personally, since I'm not the boss, I do what I can in my work to align the company goals with my goals, and vice versa, but also remember to fallback on what my real passions are on my own time. For me its a helpful way to cope when the goals really diverge and it's out of my hands.
>It's like having a baby. It's 5% cute, adorable moments, and 95% dirty diapers and vomit.
So true lmao, and you have to worry about them for several years until they are strong enough to walk their own path, even then, the worries at the back of your mind never goes away, they’re your kids after all, that’s why I will never have kids.
Do what you love is in the future. Love what you do is right now. As with the other patterns, it's meant to guide the small decisions that we make every moment of every day. It's less about changing what you do, and more about changing how you do it.
"Do what you love" treats "what you love" as a fixed thing, but it's not. I used to hate running. I would sometimes force myself to run a few miles because it's supposed to be healthy, but I never liked it. Then I read a book that said we are born to run, and that it can be fun. Inspired, I decided to try running just for fun, focus on the quality of every step, and forget about the goal completion aspect of it. Very quickly, I learned to enjoy running, and over time I've transformed my entire relationship with fitness and exercise to be oriented more toward enjoyment.
Naturally, this more intrinsic approach ultimately improves the quality of our efforts, which generally leads to greater extrinsic rewards as well. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are best when they are both pointed in the same direction. ...
Real work always seems to involve a certain amount of unpleasant, grinding effort though, and startups often have a lot of it. It's like having a baby. It's 5% cute, adorable moments, and 95% dirty diapers and vomit.
The key to loving these more unpleasant moments is meaning. If we genuinely care about and believe in our mission, then those difficult times begin to take on a more heroic quality.
https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-technology.htm...