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maia comments on Open thread, 11-17 March 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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This is really frustrating because I feel like the culture is constantly spamming two contradictory memes. Lumifer even explicitly gave me both of them upthread.
But in my case (and probably a substantial majority of people) I honestly think that the venn diagram between one and two might have literally zero overlap. Like, isn't the whole point of a job that it isn't fun, and that's why they have to pay you to do it? I tried to compromise by double majoring in something I am genuinely passionate about (art) and something practical (comp sci), but I feel like this is still not enough somehow...? Sometimes I think the only winning move is to get lucky and be born the type of person who has a natural burning desire to become an engineer.
Cal Newport's 'solution' to this is basically: Get good at something and then you'll enjoy it; expecting to enjoy anything that you are not yet good at is unrealistic. I think this probably isn't the entire story, because natural aptitude and enjoyment are real things that can cause you to like things more or less initially... But for me at least, this does explain a lot of my enjoyment of things. I find that there are some programming tasks I used to really hate doing, which I now dig into feeling fine, because I've gotten good at them. It probably depends on your personality and how you react to different incentives, as well.