[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Have you found something you love to do? If ... ___________________________________________________________________ Ask HN: Have you found something you love to do? If yes how? I have worked in many different fields(web dev, analytics, product management) but can't seem to stick to one. Is it about the field or something about myself that I need to change? How do I go about solving this?? Author : aj_nikhil Score : 132 points Date : 2021-12-25 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago) | bahumbug wrote: | I really like selling drugs. I mean, I really like it. I spent 25 | years coding, and I hated it. I hated the techbros who ruined the | industry, I hated the dudebros who invaded every San Francisco | coffee shop to talk loudly about their investments, and I really, | really hated the way the tech crowd shifted from being kind of | wild anarchist DIY hippy hackers to being right-wing law and | order, thin-blue line types. | | Now I produce sell Cannabis & Psychedelics in California where | it's sort of legal. I have a huge social life, I've networked | with dozens of other artisanal pushers, and now I can pickup | like-minded girls and guys by saying "Hey, want to come back to | my place and roll Molly or trip on shrooms?" | | I make more than twice as much as I did as a backend developer, | mostly in BitCoin and cash, and all I do is hang out with people. | I haven't had a major depressive episode since my last day of | work where I quite by sending him some scat porn and a video of | me pissing on my work laptop. | deltaonefour wrote: | It's cool I'd be down to spend the rest of my life hanging out | with people but not into the drug aspect of it. Glad you found | something you love. | sebastian_z wrote: | For me the key is intuition. I do what feels right. If you come | across something that you like, do it. | thatsamonad wrote: | I enjoy working on and solving technical problems, but the "core" | thing that I've found I really love is working with other people | to figure things out together (even though I'm fairly | introverted). Once I realized that it shaped my perspective on a | lot of work tasks and hobbies. | | For example - a good friend and I regularly play battle royale | and co-op games together after work in the evenings. The joy of | those games, for me, is that we are communicating and working | together to achieve something or win. I don't get the same kind | of enjoyment from single player games or games where I'm just | grinding alone. | | I think looking at "core values" and trying to extrapolate from | there might be a good approach (or at least it has been for me). | If you don't have a sense of what those are, maybe take some time | to reflect and see if you can find or create them. | polishdude20 wrote: | This is exactly me. I get super bor d of playing single player | games and I don't even play multiplayer games alone. I always | need to play with a friend over discord. It's my way of | socializing and getting that feeling of playing a team sport. | Overwatch has been really fun over the years. | mattlondon wrote: | I think for me it was kinda letting go of what job title or self- | imposed "career objective" I had set myself and just focusing on | trying to identify the things I found the most satisfying. Or at | the very least what I _disliked_ the most. | | I stopped trying to weasel my way to the "right" job/role to get | one step closer to my "career goal" or had the right job title, | and focused on some self reflection about what I get the biggest | kick out of. If you had a good day at the office today, | _actively_ try to identify what it was _specifically_ that made | your day good (was it a day of code? Bug fixing? Debugging? | Meetings? Design work? Etc) | | Sounds obvious and simple but I think it took me a decade or so | to realise this. Perhaps I could only really come to this | conclusion once I had already "proven" myself career-wise and was | making enough money to come to the realisation that I could stop | trying to climb the career ladder and focus a bit more on what I | get a kick out of, and not if the next role was a steppingstone | to something else. | adamcharnock wrote: | After 15 years as a freelance developer I've started a rural | wireless ISP. It hasn't entirely displaced my freelance work, but | allows me to help people in a way that being a developer didn't | (tangibly, at least). | | Now I install internet access for people, on infrastructure I | have built, and I see how happy they are when they go from 2 to | 100mbps (this is often in a field in the middle of nowhere). This | means they can talk to their families, actually do the work that | pays their bills, and just generally entertain themselves. | | It is very rewarding. And I know all these people as they are | essentially my neighbours. | bahumbug wrote: | I know some people who made millions working the Universal | Service Fee system, getting paid gobs of subsidies to provide | DSL / wifi to hillbillies in West Virginia. It's like digital | gold if you know how to really work the system. | gremlinsinc wrote: | I've thought of doing something like this in southern Utah ... | but we've got 1 gig fiber even in some smaller communities... | but there probably are certain places that don't have good | coverage.. | rubyist5eva wrote: | Congrats, if you don't mind me asking where do you get the | capital to do something like this? Other than "wage slave for a | decade and live like a student". | spaetzleesser wrote: | That's the nice thing about a lot of small businesses. The | fruit of your work is much more tangible than working at a | corporation. | civilized wrote: | What an awesome and fascinating thing you're doing! Could you | possibly explain at a high level what you had to do to start | the ISP and make it accessible in these areas? | rasengan wrote: | You might find this guide [1] useful as well as the | experiences of the poster. Also, I agree, what he does is | absolutely amazing. | | [1] https://startyourownisp.com/ | liketochill wrote: | Check out http://dslreports.com/forum/wisp | | It is a forum for wireless isps and they talk a lot about the | equipment and business of it | tomarr wrote: | Do you expect Starlink (or equivalent) to radically alter this | space? | barbazoo wrote: | That sounds extremely gratifying, congrats on finding a passion | that's so beneficial to the people around you. | Beldin wrote: | Have you managed to find decent employment in al of those areas? | If so, why worry? | | Why not try to accept you are who you are, and apparently this is | part of who you are currently. It seems to work out fine (if it | does), so no need to worry. | galacticaactual wrote: | Treat life like a gradient descent algorithm. Analyze your | current landscape, adjacencies, possibilities and try different | things. See what happens. You will get disinterested or fail 99% | of the time. But that 1% will lead you to the next iteration down | the gradient. Rinse and repeat. | moksly wrote: | It's very hard to answer for you because it's likely about | personal growth and realisation more than anything else. But I | can tell you what I did, or rather what happened to me. | | I started as a developer, because I was good, I gradually became | the lead enterprise architect (I've never hated anything more | than TOGAF by the way), and eventually "fell" into management. | While doing this I rode locally fame ladder in Danish public | sector digitalisation which means I've had a massive impact on | our overall national strategy for IT architecture but like 5 | people know who I am. I'm not sure I ever actually liked that | work, but it was thrilling to be part of something "important", | so I felt like I liked it. Eventually I had my first child, and 9 | months later I had a depression caused by stress so severe I | spent a night in a psychward. Long story short I was diagnosed | with ADHD at almost 40, and told that I needed to figure out how | I wanted to live my life. | | Turns out I like problem solving and that I hate project | management. So I quit the public sector and found a job in a | company where I could be a programmer again, I made sure to find | a company where I wouldn't have to deal with a whole lot of the | Atlassian sort bureaucracies surrounding programming and it's | frankly been a bliss. | | I've gone from not thinking I could ever work more than 30 hours | a week until my children left our house to back to full time. | | So chances are you probably already know what kind of work you | like, but it's just really hard to figure it out. One thing that | I thought I would miss was feeling "important" but the truth is | that I was never actually "important". If it hadn't been me | someone else would've done it. | | (For reference I'm Danish, having a break down here gets you 6 | months sick leave with pay and costs you basically nothing out of | your own pocket. This made things easier to say the least.) | oxplot wrote: | Working in a lot of fields and not sticking to one is in itself | valuable. You should capitalize on your need for novelty and | perhaps work at a higher level, a generalist who can connect the | dots across many areas and lead others. | crawfordcomeaux wrote: | I didn't truly love what I was doing until I found a personal | purpose for life that ties together all aspects of my life so | far. Essentially, I had to reflect enough on what I've gone | through to see what paths I'm on and where I want to go. | | I seek to help all beings collaboratively learn how to better | program their bodies and meet all needs while denying none, | through science, art, and love. | | Since then, I've rebuilt my identity a few times over. I've also | helped conceive and am nurturing a new person. Helping them | explore the world everyday is so exciting and challenges the | status quo of parenting in the area we live so hard, some people | literally get angry watching us, will take clandestine photos, | and call the police. | | I've also come to enjoy the process of exploring and healing from | traumas I've experienced. | | There's a finite list of human needs for surviving and thriving. | Learning about those gave me something to reflect on and pinpoint | needs I wanted to focus on helping others meet. | | Also, finding ways to integrate what I've learned from different | fields into what I'm doing may have helped me keep from feeling | boxed in. | lostlogin wrote: | > people literally get angry watching us, will take clandestine | photos, and call the police. | | What is it you are doing? | crawfordcomeaux wrote: | So far, it's when they're outside naked or in a diaper in the | cold or if we're playing near an intersection. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I like making things that people use. I have done systems and | infrastructure programming, but making frontend stuff is where I | really like to be. | | I consider it a craft, as opposed to a vocation. | rasengan wrote: | You might find benefit to writing down your thoughts about each | one of the previous occupations and see if there are any | recognizable patterns that you can identify and address. | justinlloyd wrote: | I love to write code, I love to ship products and I love to build | businesses. | | But what I really love, what drives me, is solving interesting | problems. That's my entire career. Solve interesting problems. | "We're building a web2.0 exercise tracking..." No! "We're | putting health records on the block..." Nein! "We're | improving how people buy insuran..." Non! "We're creating | a mobile app to submit expens..." Nee! "We're building a | SaaS to improve cable modem analy..." Nie! | "We're using computer vision to identify fossilized cat shit." Oh | hell yes! | | I've built websites and CRUD apps and mobile apps, out of | necessity, but they are universally boring endeavours with little | to give them any merit beyond a tiny sliver of an interesting | problem. Most of the work that is out there is just grunt work | that should be farmed out and then extensively code reviewed. | | At meetups people ask me, "what do you do?" | | And I respond, "Whatever the !@#$ I want to, it makes money, and | everyone goes home happy." | | I haven't worked a day in my life. I play, every day. And any | time I've come close to discovering "it's just another job" I go | and find something else to do. | | My response on LinkedIn or AngelList when approached by business | people and recruiters with their dreadful job opening is usually | along the lines of "Thanks for making me aware of this | opportunity. Sounds boring. Good luck in your continuing | candidate search." | TruthWillHurt wrote: | That's pretty much the tech scene in London right there.. | | "We're creating a new way for super-rich people to access their | swiss bank accounts!" | | Yey... | justinlloyd wrote: | Recruiter: "We're doing <solved problem> to <extract money> | from people by implementing <unnecessary subscription | service> that attaches <internet stuff> to <something that | doesn't need it>. Also, we'll have <creepy video technology> | installed in people's homes for <nothing bad ever happened | doing that>helping them live healthier, happier lives whilst | partially clothed</nothing bad ever happened doing that>. | We've raised <large amount of VC measured in hundreds of | millions> that guarantees <anybody with equity is so diluted | they'll never see a payout>, with that <equity on a stick | dangled out in front, we think we can convince you to take a | lower salary>." | | Paraphrasing from a recent recruiter pitch. | mrfusion wrote: | I'm sold. How do I achieve this? | loonster wrote: | Many ways to do it * Become really good at something * Live a | modest lifestyle * Have low debt * Have decent savings | mrfusion wrote: | How do you find problems to solve? | loonster wrote: | You need to get known for being really good at something, | then the problems will find you. | [deleted] | tppiotrowski wrote: | Web developer for many years. Lost interest in CRUD apps | because they're mostly the same architecture with different | content. | | I've been learning WebGL and using math more than I have since | college. It's very rewarding and what I feel my Computer | Science degree prepared me for. I spend a lot of time outdoors | and my project is a map simulation of terrain shadows. Every | time I'm outdoors and my model lines up with physical reality, | I have an almost spiritual moment of feeling like I can | comprehend the universe. :) | carlmr wrote: | >My response on LinkedIn or AngelList when approached by | business people and recruiters with their dreadful job opening | is usually along the lines of "Thanks for making me aware of | this opportunity. Sounds boring. Good luck in your continuing | candidate search." | | Thank you, this is what I always think with these job adverts. | It's almost impossible to think about anything less appealing | than a list of technologies they require without any motivation | why. | Nextgrid wrote: | The worst is when the company brags about their funding as if | it makes any difference to me. If anything, it makes their | shitty offer look even more shitty. If you're gonna brag | about millions, you better offer me a decent cut. | jerrygoyal wrote: | I built a fairly simple browser extension that users love to use. | Heck, people even paid for it (it's freemium but an open-source | project). Now and then, I get an appreciation email from a user, | a notification from the chrome web store that someone rated it | 5-star, or a new purchase notification from Stripe. Random doses | of serotonin make my day. In a nutshell, I love working on it | because people find it helpful and value it. | | https://gourav.io/notion-boost | technological wrote: | I love talking, so started my own podcast in my native language | (Telugu). Always wanted to talk on stage or do stream on YouTube | but never was confident but with podcast I can speak anything I | want and don't worry about anyone judging me. | | Even though I don't have very large number of subscribers but I | am satisfied with the few people who listen and like . I don't do | any post processing, just raw recording. | | Any interested listeners can check out it at - | | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vinandi-na-sodi-telugu... | | https://pnc.st/s/abhi-podcast | nurettin wrote: | >> worked in many different fields(web dev, analytics, product | management) | | I followed this approach: Find something that really excites you, | fake it 'till you make it, learn from your mistakes and never | stop improving. | leto_ii wrote: | The problem, as far as I can make it, is that the thing(s) you | love will probably not look like a corporate job. | | It's my strong feeling that people don't actually love jobs, they | love kinds of work, but only as long as they have agency. Once | the work becomes a job it tends to get subordinated to profit | motives, instead of your own creative drives. | | My best bet is that if you want to do something you love you have | to somehow end up working for yourself. | mrfusion wrote: | My problem is I get bored and lose motivation when working | alone. I'm thinking a job would be a good way to keep me moving | forward? | | I've tried teaming up with people on projects but it seems like | if it's not tied to a paycheck they flake out pretty quickly. | leto_ii wrote: | Working with others is definitely important for motivation | and for technical progress. | | > I've tried teaming up with people on projects but it seems | like if it's not tied to a paycheck they flake out pretty | quickly. | | Maybe something like contributing to an existing open source | project or doing some small projects of your own (e.g. | writing a blog about smth that your really like, without | aiming to monetize it) could help. | | The best case scenario would be to start a self-supporting | company or something of that sort. | Aulig wrote: | For me it was starting my own business. Just coding away is not | interesting to me - even though coding is the thing I enjoy most | about my work. | | To me it's important that I get to decide what I want to work on | and what direction I take with the business. A big part is also | that I own the code I write. | rdegges wrote: | I work as a manager of a Developer Relations team, but I'm also a | software engineer and writer. I've identified two things I "love" | to do in my life: writing software (usually automation-type | things that make my life or someone else's life easier), and | writing (articles, books, etc.). | | I discovered that I love writing software when I was a kid (maybe | 12 years old?) by writing automation bots for video games: it was | so incredibly fun to write a bot that would play the game, level | up your characters, and do things that would otherwise take | thousands of hours of human grinding to achieve. This passion | never left me, and now, more than 20 years later, I still spend a | good chunk of time building little scripts/tools/utilities/apps | that help me in various ways. | | The writing was something that I also got started on early. I | discovered my love of writing through IRC where I'd routinely | answer people's programming questions and eventually write blog | posts explaining answers in more depth than I could fit into a | short IRC conversation. | | I don't blog as much today (life gets busy), but I do spend a lot | of time writing at work, working on the occasional long-form blog | post, and ... journaling. | georgefrick wrote: | You can't find what you are passionate about, it's not something | that gets discovered. You pick it and hone it. Getting | experienced, acknowledged by peers, and executing from knowledge | all come with time and dedication and you become passionate as | you want to drive that thing forward. I've struggled with this | myself, and learned over time that I'm passionate about | delivering software - I love it. Now I look for the next | harder/larger project and see if I can make a difference for that | business. | beej71 wrote: | It must depend on the person. I discovered the things I love | (writing, teaching, programming, dualsport motorcycling, GIS) | by stumbling across them, then honed (a continuing process for | life) those skills because I love them. | | Did I choose those things? Or was the moment of discovery the | moment of choice? | ChuckMcM wrote: | Try something further afield? | | I have talked to lots of people who were trying to find their | passion and had limited themselves to looking in an area where | they felt they could be "well paid." This isn't too surprising | because surviving is first, passion is second. | | However, what they often don't consider is that compensation is | just a part of the picture. If you're making $X and living in New | York City you might only be able to rent a room, but making $X in | a small town in Minnesota and you can buy the best house in town. | Not that I'm advocating you move to Minnesota, rather that one's | "Quality of Life" is the complete circle of income/cost of | living/friends/opportunities. | | Now I have no idea what you're looking at so this might be | completely useless but oddly enough, reading people's biographies | can give you insights into other choices made and their impact | and effect. If you can imagine yourself in those other choices, | you can sometimes discover something you would like to try before | you've "wasted time" trying something you didn't like. Reading | non-fiction for exposure to other life experiences can be helpful | in other ways as well, it can help you understand others from a | perspective that isn't your own lived experience. | Artistry121 wrote: | Hello! Great question. | | The past year I've fallen in love with life. This has been a | combo of a few things - I found work as a consultant where I get | to share a unique perspective that when paired with the work of | others produces outsized results. | | I get paid moderately well by nearly a dozen clients but am the | lowest paid team member on each team on a monthly basis - so I | don't feel too much pressure to deliver exceptional results all | the time - and the number of clients I have means if I get 1 win | a year for all clients I can have a true win each month | professionally. | | These wins and experiences make me feel like I'm growing and | contributing. | | Aside from that I've developed open and honest relationships with | my lover and my friends and see them regularly and I live with | housemates so I get my extraversion solved through work and | natural interactions even in covid. The honest relationships with | my lover and number and depth of friendships has allowed me to | not hold any desires back from asking while having less pressure | to be the doer of everything. Teams and ideas naturally form over | time which has led to fun side projects and profit as well. | | I prefer now to give perspective rather than advice but I'd say | having a "deal centric" attitude and meeting a lot of people and | trying to start things with them - usually based on some process | that provides value so you have a process to lean on - seems | pretty solid. | | For instance building internal portals for small teams or | organizations and taking a small ongoing fee to do it could help | you. Instead of project based work with a time bound - low to | moderate monthly fees with a variety of people can allow you to | find creative energy where product management, analytics, etc can | help other peoples visions come true over years. | | You can see visions come to life without too much stress and | avoid a single point of failure. | | Happy Christmas and lmk if you'd like to work together on | something like this. | coffeefirst wrote: | Love to do? No. But I've found some things I'm good at that are | useful and I don't seem to get sick of, and after that what seems | to matter more is the people you work with. | | Ultimately even if you like a job it's still a job, and the | widely promoted notion of passion rarely holds up. | [deleted] | exdsq wrote: | It'll suck up much less if you know your real passion is | outside of work. Instead of stressing about getting a staff | engineering title, I enjoy senior and make some money to simply | support that passion :) | koksik202 wrote: | For me it is whatever keeps me excited I went from ops to | engineering to automation to data analytics and learning data | analytics as I do my job. I take advantage of internal transfers | and I am open about what my areas of improvement are when it | comes to tech knowledge it didn't stop managers from hiring me. | Be honest with what you can and can't do and don't be scared to | try new things and take opportunities within your own | organization (much easier to go back to your previous | responsibilities if things don't workout) | alfor wrote: | Take the test https://www.understandmyself.com (not free) | | If you are high in openness (likely) you will need change and | creativity to feel alive. On the other hand, most job will want | to keep you in the same place to extract the maximum value from | what you know. | | You might need to find something where that part of you can grow: | start a company, technical sales, consultancy, etc | wellthisisgreat wrote: | I have one thing that gives me a deep sense of fulfillment and a | feeling that I was not living those few hours of my life in vain. | That is writing fiction. | | paradoxically (or maybe not) it is not as rewarding process-wise | as writing software, which has the strongest instant | gratification loop after, maybe, video games. | | You can't really be a writer, however, unless you want to die in | poverty, etc. | empressplay wrote: | You can make a living as a writer but you need to crank out 4-5 | novels a year, which is more than I can do! | stazz1 wrote: | I reckon that would certainly affect the quality of the | compositions. Unless, of course, 4-5 is the natural output of | some monster writers. | throwaway6734 wrote: | Was doing web & mobile dev. Went back to school for an MS and was | able to score a more research oriented role after getting lucky | getting an internship and then busting my butt to prove myself. | strictfp wrote: | I got into gamedev in my thirties. The last few years was baptism | by fire but it's loads of fun. | steelstraw wrote: | What do you do for fun? Any hobbies? | renaldomagic wrote: | danurman wrote: | For me, what helped was paying attention to what I liked about my | work and leaning in a direction that emphasized those kinds of | tasks - though it was kind of just luck that I found a job that | let me do that. | | I got my start in web development because I had picked it up as a | hobby and (at least at the time) it was a good way to get | reasonable money without a degree. But my favorite parts were | learning new techniques/technologies (I started out without a | team to steer me toward best practices so I did a lot of | experimentation, self-teaching, and reinventing the wheel - | probably made my projects take longer but meant I learned a lot | more) and then using that expertise to help my colleagues (once I | did have a team, my deeper understanding meant that I was the one | to go to when something didn't work right in IE6 or something). | | At one point, I was having dinner with a friend at his startup | and happened to meet one of their product support engineers. She | explained that the role involved becoming an expert in their | highly-technical, fast-growing product and then using that | expertise to help customers (internal and external ones). I | realized that was an entire job made of my favorite parts of my | previous job. I applied to join her team and I've happily worked | in product support for tech startups ever since. Before this | point I never would have considered product support, because I | just had a stereotypical vision of it as sitting in a phone | center reading from a script. The ideal field for you might be | out there without you realizing it exists. | | I still try to identify the things I like doing and spend more | time doing those things. Sometimes that means spending time | working with folks on other teams - not all companies are | flexible enough to allow this, but I think healthy ones will | because the added perspective usually will make you more valuable | to the company as well. Making sure to have these varied | experiences and keep learning new things has been a great way to | keep up my engagement over time. | exdsq wrote: | I enjoyed support when I used to do it - I'm pretty sure my | social skills suffered when I started working in isolation on | dev tasks | ssss11 wrote: | I've jumped around a bit, I've done many different tech roles in | end user companies (client side). | | I've found I love three things - designing tech solutions but | only what I'm passionate about, business (non-tech: finance, risk | mgmt, commercial etc) and am passionate about empowering people | rather than fleecing them (in a b2c context). | | I'm happy with what I'm currently doing as I'm working in the | business space now but ultimately think my place would be | bootstrapping a user enabling solution and I'm in the early | stages of making a side project to hopefully achieve that. | honkycat wrote: | I'm not obsessed about "working for my passion" or anything like | that. I have a good life outside of work, supported by my high | paying programmer job. | | I did a lot of job-hopping the past few years looking for the | right place to work, and I finally found it. I look for companies | that respect work-life balance, don't want me to work too hard, | and have excellent engineering culture that values high quality | work and has managed to retain their senior employees. I deliver | great work, they make money off of the code I ship, everybody is | happy. I can crunch every once in a while but we all understand | that it sucks and isn't a long-term strategy. | | My father was a funeral director & coroner. He would NEVER claim | he "loves what he does", but he used his career to build a life | for him and his family. I look at my career the same way. | | What do I ACTUALLY want to do? Develop video games, make music, | write fiction. But nobody is shelling out for that, and even if | they are, I'm not good enough at it to compete. I know if I | pursued any of my passions, I would have to work much harder for | much less pay, and be treated much more poorly by my employer. I | know my limits and I know that I cannot thrive in a situation | like that, I've done it before, no thanks. | | Part of growing older is mourning the person you could have been. | If I had a time machine, I would have stayed in better shape, | practiced guitar more, invested my time more wisely. But I can't, | and honestly my life has turned out pretty great by trusting my | instincts. | Dopameaner wrote: | Out of curiosity, how old are you if I may ask? I just entered | 30, but I do share some of my regrets and life perspectives | from this post. Thanks for sharing your perspective! | d23 wrote: | I'm really early thirties and it resonates with me. I've been | successful, but it's hard not to look at any of the other | paths I could have taken and wonder "what if." Or, more | precisely: what now? | falafelite wrote: | Thanks for writing this. I've been feeling mournful about | "giving up" and returning to a "normal" software engineering | job, but the things in quotes here are a matter of perspective. | Ain't nothing wrong with doing good work and using the fruits | of it to enjoy your life. Thanks for sharing your perspective. | d23 wrote: | "Part of growing older is mourning the person you could have | been." | | One of the wisest and most succinct things I've read on this | site. | MilnerRoute wrote: | Some highly intelligent people simply need new challenges. So | maybe you don't need to change yourself so much as embrace this | new-challenge-seeking behavior as one of your strengths. | | As to finding something you love, for a lot of people the problem | really isn't the finding. There is something they love, and the | hard part is finding a path to the doing of it -- to dropping | what they're currently doing, and finding an easy viable way to | do the other thing while paying their rent and other bills. And | honestly, this is usually made easier by money. If you could | stockpile a "stake" and then take some time off to explore only | things you're deeply interested in, that might help. Another | avenue toward that might be living someplace cheaper, so the | money piles up quicker, ultimately giving you more flexibility | and freedom to pursue things you love. | | Along with this, it's important to be honest with yourself. If | you can really get in touch with what you like and don't like | about the fields you've been in -- those are the truest clues for | what you'll want to do. (I mean, your only other option is to | talk to other people doing many different things, until you hear | about something that also sounds interesting to you.) | | I guess the last bit of advice is have hope. Because that's where | it starts. | 0atman wrote: | For me, it was producing a scifi/mental-health podcast which | blended my three great passions of music, programming, and love | of my own voice^H^H^H writing fiction. | | The experience has been life changing! | | More people should try podcasts: They're almost as simple as a | blog to produce, but allow you to present your story or | information in a much more evocative and personal medium: Voice, | sound, and music. Additionally, and unlike something like Youtube | or Spotify, you retain total control. All you need, essentially, | is a website to host MP3s, and an XML file that tells people | where those MP3s are. There are plenty of services that will do | this for you for a few dollars a month (I use Spreaker), but | that's what it boils down to: No gatekeepers, no monopolies, no | algorithms. | | I wrote a step by step guide to getting into this, based on my | own experience of writing and publishing 6 seasons (so far!) on | my blog, here: http://www.0atman.com/articles/21/make-fiction- | podcast | rg111 wrote: | In this regard, you might want to read _" So Good They Can't | Ignore You"_ by Cal Newport. | | I know. The title is cheesy and melodramatic. But this book was | really helpful in shaping some of my worldview. | | This book goes vehemently against the "discovery" of "passion", | and instead provides some practical insights on how to do work | that you will love. Or how to reach there. | pjm331 wrote: | This book is in a genre I call "once you've read the title | you've read the book" | | Definitely aligned with the idea but if you already agree with | the title you can save some time and skip the read | rg111 wrote: | > _This book is in a genre I call "once you've read the title | you've read the book"_ | | Hard disagree. Have you actually read it? | | It offers much more than the title. | vaylian wrote: | No. One important aspect of the book that doesn't appear in | the title is: People who get really good at something useful, | also enjoy their work a lot more. The public view is often | that passion leads to success. But the book argues that in | many cases it is actually the other way around. | therealasdf wrote: | Nice. Now i dont need to read the book | TruthWillHurt wrote: | That's a big part of my problem - as a generalist I know | many things, but am not an expert on anything specific. | | Taking on a focused role leads to disappointment and loss | of self esteem. | Overtonwindow wrote: | Follow the Dopamine. I listen to my brain very carefully, and | when it shows the slightest interest in anything, I pursue that | interest. I have bad ADHD, and it's the only thing that has ever | really helped. | SilasX wrote: | Yes, whatever microcorruption.com is. Linked from here, product | of tptacek. | wenbin wrote: | My two cents - | | Don't feel too bad if you can't find something you love to do for | a long period of time. Many many people don't know what they love | to do their entire life. And that's totally okay. | | We've been exploring... We might like doing A for 1 year or 2, | then switch to love doing B for a few months, then switch to C | for another 3 years... It's normal. | | How about thinking in this way - What you don't like to do? Just | avoid things you don't like to do as much as possible, then | you'll be happier. | knob wrote: | Not sure it will "solve it"... yet following Adam's (Douglas?) | suggestion to become top-25% in three fields. Then merge those | fields. | | That has worked awesome for me. I merged technolgy (software | dev/sys adm) with motor sports and with management. Love it so | far. Good luck and Merry Christmas!! | dmoy wrote: | Too bad there's no good payable intersection of software dev, | video games, and three position bullseye rifle. Hah :( | rzzzt wrote: | Sounds like VR is the answer! | needSomeCoffee wrote: | Actually there is. When my daughters were on the Airgun 10 | meter team (recent national champs), I spent some time | investigating how to create a low-cost SCATT system using a | relatively inexpensive laser with 3D-printed mount, USB | connected cameras, and OpenCV. Something kids could use in a | hallway at home vs. the range. The solution was very feasible | as I got to the point of mocking it up and testing it. | Daughters decided to drop shooting, and other side-dev | projects took over. But you sound like you might love doing | this. Cheers. | Cycl0ps wrote: | Got curious, and it looks like it was _Scott_ Adams, at least | the source I found | https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/car... | dillondoyle wrote: | Maybe look outside of work? | | People who are truly passionate about their work are lucky. | | But IMHO it's more realistic to find a job that isn't stressful & | that one enjoys a bit (if one still needs to pay the bills). | | There's a ton of happiness and fulfillment to be found outside of | your career. | | But you need to have the time and mental capacity to get there. | | Works sucks up all of those resources for a lot of people. | [deleted] | sokoloff wrote: | Lots of good advice here about paying attention to the patterns | of what you like versus dislike. | | For me, I love being able to sit down and concentrate for 5 hours | and make progress on a coding activity. (Advent of Code is almost | catnip for me; I'll save up a week's worth of them and blow a | half a Saturday on them.) Other people thrive on social aspects | of team/project work. | | Naturally, I picked a job that gives me virtually none of that | focused coding time, so there's that... | barbazoo wrote: | I gave up trying to find a job that I "love". Don't get me wrong | I absolutely enjoy programming, I love many aspects of it, there | are just too many things out of my control. I found hobbies like | home improvement, home automation, pet projects around | development a lot more "lovable" and easier to stick to. | baby wrote: | You need to be bored. Long period of boredom. | kradeelav wrote: | I'm a corporate design manager (happily so), so my industry is | slightly different than yours, but I see this question pop up | enough in my circles it felt relevant to say the below ... | | One of the greatest mistakes I see fellow designers do is try to | make their 'passion' into their job - expecting their moonshot | webcomic idea to be the bread+butter income, artisanal print | hobby to pay the same as a corporate career without a sizeable | investment or insane time sunk into marketing, you get the | picture. | | Early on I made a point to do short contract/internship stints to | find our what I "didn't" like to do corporate-wise (packaging, | digital design, print design), and narrow down to the parts that | left me vaguely looking forward to the next day (experiential | design, a team that's enjoyable to work with, autonomy, | management). Note that the happy bits are almost as much team | dynamics is it is the work itself, if not moreso. | derekp7 wrote: | For me, I started computers at around age 13. Didn't know at the | time that most computer jobs were highly specialized, so I | absorbed knowledge and developed skills in a wide variety of | areas. Ended up as a SysAdmin simply because that was the | majority of my responsibilities at my first computer related job. | But I also program, design/architect solutions, do low level | hardware, etc. That means I can have a job in one area, and use | the other skills to make me more valuable in that role than I | otherwise would be. So that is my passion, impressing others and | being a highly prized asset due to bringing in multiple other | skills into my primary role. | | The other passion I have (that really is very similar to my | primary skill) is woodworking. Anytime I need a particular | furniture piece, I design it, buy the materials, cut it up / | drill holes, and make my own flat-pack kits for final assembly. | This hobby got a lot more fun when I finally realized that I | could actually make straight cuts if I properly squared off the | saw blade, and started using higher quality wood (instead of | standard-grade construction lumber). | barcoder wrote: | The Art's Way by Julia Cameron | [deleted] | jensneuse wrote: | Five or so years ago I started to "implement" GraphQL, the Query | language from scratch. Lexing, parsing, designing an AST. I had | to rewrite everything multiple times, added validation and an | execution engine. At some point I realized what I've actually | built, the foundation to create an npm-like system for APIs, | using GraphQL as the universal integration language for any kind | of API. Since I understood how powerful this concept is I'm | unable to stop working on it. I'm now turning this into a | product/company, it's called WunderGraph: | https://wundergraph.com/ Btw. the engine and everything is open | source, it's written in Go: https://github.com/jensneuse/graphql- | go-tools | mwidell wrote: | After some burnout after building a tech company, I saved up | money and left my job, and decided to take 2 years just doing | whatever I feel like doing each day, until I find something I | really, truly love, that I can build a new career from. I tried | some different things, and in the end I found my new calling. I | think the key is to free up time so you can experiment with | different things with no pressure to make money immediately. In | this video my whole story | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfHvh87gm7M | falafelite wrote: | If book suggestions are helpful, I found "Designing Your Life" by | Bill Burnett and Dave Evans to provide a helpful framework on how | to think/act/prototype your way to what works for ya. Not sure if | it's everyone's cup of tea but I found it useful. | dutchblacksmith wrote: | What did you like to do when you were about 8 years old? | seb_urban_plan wrote: | You can do all those things meaningfully: I think it's really | about the end product (physical or not) - if you are making | something you don't believe is useful to society, or don't have | control over how your efforts are being used downstream, then it | can easily become inherently meaningless. | | There are basic needs: clean water, clean air, infrastructure, | transportation, logistics, etc., etc. And also "non-tangible | ones". You can get much more authentic social respect if you work | on products/services that people unambiguously like and need. | | I recommend, for example: - Biomedical: signals, images, ... | (I've done a bit) - Anything GIS, urban/transportation planning, | geo-spatial analytics, cities, etc. (my chosen specialty, very | fulfilling). | | There's lots of number crunching, but also human-entry string | processing (fuzzy matching, etc.). Actually, very versatile | programmatically. And then there is fast graphics (OpenGL, etc.) | - not my favourite part, actually, but you can outsource it | partly. | | You get to work in very multi-disciplinary groups, so you can | really assess where you want to go long-term. I was surrounded by | people with very similar training to mine - technologically it | was pretty good, but topic-wise it was a bit of an echo-chamber. | laurent92 wrote: | I love building Web products. Being a Product Owner. | | How: By quitting every company after doing my maximum. I'm deeply | sour, because many people around me succeeded younger at being | recognized, generally because of ethnic or gender reason, but I | had to walk away and I have succeeded in establishing my company | and I'm the PO. I'm also the laundry guy, the accountant and the | principal engineer with my 2-5 employees, but I'm still making | half a million dollars, so it does seem that I was discriminated | in companies compared to my abilities. | | I wish I hadn't a million dollars a year and I had a sense of | belonging instead, and wasn't sour, but such is life. I feel like | Donald Duck. | sokoloff wrote: | Striking out on your own and being successful at it is | impressive and congratulations for that. It doesn't seem to be | evidence to me in any direction about whether you were | discriminated against in prior companies. The outcomes, whether | good or bad, are concentrated when you own the company. | jcun4128 wrote: | I did, when I was younger. It was from the environment (lived in | Anchorage, lots of bush planes, got into model airplanes). I | spent about 8+ years doing it... in 2008 or so would get lost in | it. At that time I was in high school, didn't have much money but | I built all my planes from scratch with foam. Those were times I | felt truly happy/in the moment just being in the sun alone | flying. I can do it now sure, have money now but I lost it that | drive/happiness to do it. Finding real passion can be hard vs. | external factors eg. money. It's like you could say you want to | figure out GAI but if you're doing it for money/fame vs. truly | pursing it out of personal passion, I don't know if it'll happen | (aside from being hard). | | I like writing code now, it's like a tool, can build things in | that space. Don't think it's a passion though. I didn't come from | it, I barely used a computer when I was younger. I say I want to | pursue robotics but I'm not pouring myself into it either. Been | spending a lot of time consuming as someone else mentioned | (tv/social media). Anyway I hope I get it back, true drive vs. | drive from sharing/points online. Generally I like creation | though, solving things. | | Part of the younger days probably just because no responsibility | other than doing homework/passing tests. | anamax wrote: | Civilization relies mostly on people doing things that they don't | love. | | Plumbers may like to plumb, but they don't like doing it in bad | conditions or as many hours as they do. Same for farmers, | construction workers, garbagemen, and so on. | mlcrypto wrote: | errantmind wrote: | First, be wary of general advice. | | That said, do you find yourself spending most your time making or | consuming? At some point I just started making stuff for the | majority of my time and this was a tipping point for starting to | improve my skills in particular areas and narrow my focus. | derekp7 wrote: | Regarding Making vs Consuming, I realized why I never got | consumed by gaming. I can only sit down and play a game for a | short while, before my brain starts wandering and thinking how | I could build something myself. | analog31 wrote: | I fell in love with developing measurement equipment. It started | in grad school, realizing that I really wasn't cut out for a | basic research career (in a massively overcrowded academic job | market), but that I got a lot of satisfaction from being able to | solve hard technical problems. | | Today, measurement systems combine many of my hobbies, including | electronics and programming. I would get bored with becoming a | specialist in a narrow tech field. This is also an area where I | feel that I can genuinely help people, not just with immediate | business problems, but also where I can credibly justify a | socially redeeming purpose. | | I like the fact that the ultimate judge of my success is mother | nature, who doesn't tolerate bullshit. | | Advice: Can you work on something that you actually believe in? I | read a lot of comments (HN and elsewhere) from people for whom | "work" is just an empty cash transaction, and who respect no | distinction between good and bad work. (For instance threads on | doing little or no actual work without getting caught). | | Or, can you completely detach yourself from your day job, satisfy | yourself with the empty cash transaction, and get your personal | satisfaction in some other way? | yoyohello13 wrote: | Developing measurement equipment sounds really intriguing to | me. Do you have any stories about particularly fun/challenging | projects you've done? | russelltran wrote: | Hey, are you interested in climate change at all? Would you be | interested in developing new measuring equipment for methane | emissions in rice paddies? This is a completely white space. | https://www.ricemethane.org/ Let me know, thanks! | Shared404 wrote: | Those last two paragraphs feel like the trick to me. Either | work on something you're invested in, and if you can't, pick | something outside of work. | | I personally like D&D. Spending time with good friends wroting | stories together is one of my favorite ways to spend time, and | the excitement for it has gotten me through more than one hard | week. | User23 wrote: | > For instance threads on doing little or no actual work | without getting caught | | I imagine there are exceptions, but I think a lot of this is | people doing jobs that are fundamentally pointless to begin | with. When what you're doing is of no practical value to | anyone, it's difficult to remain motivated. | akeck wrote: | I've always done flat art (painting, drawing, etc.). I'm now | getting into handmade books. I'm looking forward to making books | of my art by hand. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-25 23:00 UTC)