I need your advice wthat if u like somebody so much that it hurts just think that its someone else in not u wht do u do for real i lov e u t

January 2006To do something well you have to like it. It's not enough just to tell people that. The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids.

Was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Wasn't—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself.

And it did not seem to be an accident. Tedious because it was preparation for grownup work. The world then was divided into two groups, grownups and kids.

Grownups, like some kind of cursed race, had to work. Work meant to prepare us for the real thing. That we had it easy.

Was not fun. Kids instead of lying on a beach. I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want.

They may have to be made to work on certain things. Interesting stuff later. I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it.

Precisely because it seemed so anomalous. To use dry water. Meant work could literally be fun—fun like playing.

Took me years to grasp that. JobsBy high school, the prospect of an actual job was on the horizon. Would go to see them at work.

Enjoyed what they did. Private jet pilot. But I don't think the bank manager really did.

Despised your job, but a social faux-pas. Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do? Sentence of this essay explains that.

That's where the upper-middle class tradition comes from. The attitudes of people who've done great things. What a recipe for alienation.

Misled about the idea of loving one's work. Them to regard work as an unpleasant duty. To be even more onerous than schoolwork.

Claim to like what they do. Them are lying when they say they like what they do. The most dangerous liars can be the kids' own parents.

Work is boring. Case if parents were not so unselfish. Free from the idea of making a living.

Became not how to make money, but what to work on. The patent office) proved they weren't identical. To the world, and in the process not to starve.

Literally be fun. Surely one had to force oneself to work on them. Notice if you're doing it wrong.

Of graduate school. BoundsHow much are you supposed to like what you do? Know that, you don't know when to stop searching.

Or the desire to make money, or prestige—or sheer inertia. Would like to do most this second. Did so much that there was nothing they'd rather do.

Seem to be any sort of work I liked that much. There any sort of work I'd prefer? Food, than work on hard problems.

Love assumes a certain length of time. Over some longer period, like a week or a month. Unproductive pleasures pall eventually.

Of lying on the beach. "spare time" seems mistaken. All your time working.

Tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do something else—even something mindless. I put the lower bound there for practical reasons.

Enjoy, but admire. That's pretty cool. This doesn't mean you have to make something.

Wow, that's pretty cool. Merely reading books doesn't quite feel like work. Something with what you've read to feel productive.

That would make your friends say wow. Had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then. Anyone beyond your friends.

You shouldn't worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. Add to consider the opinions of people you don't even know?

4This is easy advice to give. Even your beliefs about what you enjoy. On what you like, but what you'd like to like.

That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. Like reading novels. Be a novelist?

Going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies. Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. Enough, you'll make it prestigious.

Consider prestigious were anything but at first. Mind—though almost any established art form would do. Do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. It is to bait the hook with prestige. Department heads, and so on.

Avoid any prestigious task. Had to make it prestigious. Prestigious, you should probably choose the other.

More genuine admiration for the less prestigious one. The other big force leading people astray is money. Is not that dangerous.

Injury litigation, ambitious people aren't tempted by it. Say, corporate law, or medicine. Another job to make a living.

Time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves? Of academic work, because fields vary greatly in this respect. And publishing papers is the way you compete for such jobs.

In the novels of Conrad. Kind of thing for fun. The advice of parents will tend to err on the side of money.

And whose parents want them to be novelists. Parents are "materialistic." simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. Pregnant, you'll have to deal with the consequences.

We find it so hard to discover what we like to work on. Are doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work = pain. How many even discover something they love to work on?

A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. Underestimate this task. You're a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial.

Find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves. Necessarily, but probably. Work you love does usually require discipline.

Glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. The trajectory of a ping-pong ball. Taking it up on the side.

Energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness. Out, or boldly carving a new path? You often can't tell yourself.

Early on, when they're trying to find their niche.Is there some test you can use to keep yourself honest? As an excuse for being lazy. Into the habit of doing things well.

Another test you can use is: always produce. Novelist, are you producing? One day as an opiate.

Too palpably flawed one you're actually writing."Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. Toward things you actually like. Hole in your roof.

Get to work on it. That's a separate question. By what seems possible.

The gap between them. Of intention than fact; it means, I'm not going to try. Next twenty years, they'd get surprisingly far.

Day for years. Work they love—that someone has to do the unpleasant jobs. How do you make them?

Invoked for over 30 years. Do unpleasant work, with money and prestige. Just has to make do without.

Chance anyone saying that about any particular job is mistaken. One were willing to do them. That's all too true, however.

Hard to get paid for doing work you love. Those you don't. To work on things you do.