mattnewport comments on Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality - Less Wrong

105 Post author: patrissimo 14 September 2010 04:17PM

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Comment author: CronoDAS 15 September 2010 03:07:05AM 20 points [-]

Paul Graham on "How to do what you love":

It used to perplex me when I read about people who liked what they did so much that there was nothing they'd rather do. There didn't seem to be any sort of work I liked that much. If I had a choice of (a) spending the next hour working on something or (b) be teleported to Rome and spend the next hour wandering about, was there any sort of work I'd prefer? Honestly, no.

But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.

Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.

As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of "spare time" seems mistaken. Which is not to say you have to spend all your time working. You can only work so much before you get tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do something else—even something mindless. But you don't regard this time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn it.

I put the lower bound there for practical reasons. If your work is not your favorite thing to do, you'll have terrible problems with procrastination. You'll have to force yourself to work, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior.

Comment author: mattnewport 15 September 2010 04:26:26AM *  1 point [-]

I'd read this article before but it was useful to read it again in the context of this discussion. According to Paul Graham, my suspicion that most people who say they like their jobs are lying is correct. However he also claims that a few people genuinely do find something they love to do. He also makes a point of saying in this essay that it is very difficult to find something you love to do and can get paid for. I find myself still wondering whether anyone (i.e. me) can find something they love to do and get paid for it or whether it takes the combination of a certain personality type with the right kind of work to achieve that.

As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of "spare time" seems mistaken.

I find it difficult to imagine crossing this lower bound for anything I'd have to spend 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year on until retirement or death. I find it more plausible for something (or a series of somethings) with a more flexible schedule. I've been trying to figure out possible candidates that would also bring in sufficient income and haven't had much success so far. As Paul Graham points out in the essay, if it was that easy it would be a lot more common than it is.

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