15 ms·

The problem with ‘follow your dream’

128 points by zeristor 5y ago

toto444 5y ago
With time I have tend to realise that most of the time it can be a bad advice. I would personally people to develop a skill that makes them in demand on the job market and hence financially confortable so they can follow their dream in their free time (which can be a year without working). The freedom you have when you do something in your free time is underrated.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Dreams and motivation come and go. Most people and most things need stability.
- tartoran 5y ago
  Id say to follow your dream is not a bad advice if you follow realistically and don’t gamble everything on it. So I would append the word reaponsibly to this adage. The risk of suppressing that dream and compromising everything is realizing you have an unfulfilled life. So following your dream responsibly entails learning a skill that is lucrative but which opens the possibility to fulfill that dream.
  - xattt 5y ago
    So what you’re saying is that a balanced approach is key?
    - swader999 5y ago
      Reaching the highest level in many endeavors often takes an obsessive approach. So it depends what you are chasing.
      - agustif 5y ago
        Balanced obsession
    - tartoran 5y ago
      Ballanced approach does sound correct even though that may entail putting your dream on hold temporarily only to return to it with full force and enthusiasm or managing to incorporate part of it into your life and move that needle slowly while doing what’s responsible at the same time, eg. taking care of important matters such as family and self The luckiest people are on their path to fulfill their dreams early on in their lives and all the work and effort is alligned with their vocation, all work and effort becoming much easier to attain.
- geeB 5y ago
  I used to think like this, but I've come to realize it's highly dependent on what your dream is. For some things it's just not possible (or at least way harder than following your dreams in the first place)... the kind of things that require being part of something bigger and having a certain reputation and seniority among your peers. E.g. flying fighter jets or do underwater welding after a career in investment banking, or trying to enter a decade later an industry that was at its infancy in the first place. There are lots of dreams (probably the majority of them) for which I fully agree with you though.
- sfifs 5y ago
  I think the importance is having a risk mitigation mechanism in place before you pursue your high risk dream. This often takes the form of some form of wealth or capital. My wife has a childhood friend and a cousin who were both very talented in Indian classical music in their youth and regarded as potential stars. The friend came from a well to do family, the cousin from a lower income family. The friend didn't really need to pursue a college degree in a professional field and take up job to make ends meet and instead could devote the entirety of higher education and focus to music because even if she doesn't succeed monetarily, the family still owned several properties and the rental income and capital appreciation could give enough of a passive income for survival together with say teaching. No such luck for the cousin who now does music as a hobby when he can.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  A LOT of people have dreams that are beyond their capabilities ... Rock Star, astronaut, brain surgeon, New York Times Bestselling Author, Casonova ... People need to follow their loves... Dream of being a Rock Star? Play at your local bar. Write a novel.
  - godfreyantonell 5y ago
    A lot of people want to have done big things. Few want to do the pain in the butt work required to achieve them. More important, talent is a thing and one must have loads of it to reach those extra dreamy goals.
corobo 5y ago
> I should follow my dream, and if I didn't yet know what that was, I should live with career uncertainty until I figured it out Yyyyyuuuppp. I'm now 33 and still haven't figured out my 'dream' I have figured out I probably have ADHD though. Cheers for missing that, school.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  I was diagnosed with ADHD in my fifties ... lots and lots of people (including me) missed it.
  - corobo 5y ago
    Got my decider appointment on the 2nd! Tell you what, whether I have it or not learning of ADHD and using the techniques that work for it has helped immensely. I'll take that if nothing else! Yeah I completely missed it too. It'd be great if there was some way for schools to pick it up! Probably through seeing how certain students learn and providing differing education style as needed. It might even already be the case to be fair, it's been a minute since I was at school
    - topicseed 5y ago
      Off-topic but do you mind sharing some of those helpful techniques?
      - corobo 5y ago
        Essentially I watched every video from the YouTube channel HowToADHD I wish I could give a perfect headline technique as an example but it's more changing how you do things to work with the way your mind works instead of against it http://youtube.com/HowtoADHD http://youtube.com/HowtoADHD
    - swader999 5y ago
      Just going off your writing style I'd bet you lean that way. And I don't mean it in a bad way. It can be like a super power if you can tame it properly.
elicash 5y ago
The advice in the article -- find something you're both good at and also love, and recognize they aren't necessarily the same things -- is pretty much exactly the normal advice that people give. I think the implication of "follow your dream" is that if you love it, you'll be willing to work harder and therefore be better. It's worth noting some people are wired differently. If I loved acting, I'm not wired in a way where I could move to L.A. and spend a decade of my life to trying for and probably not getting various roles. I know myself, I'm risk-averse and need stability. But for somebody else, that's exactly what they should do. Any advice aimed at EVERYone is going to be wrong for some people.
- svantana 5y ago
  Even among just software developers, I've noticed that personalities differ a lot in this respect. I know a bunch of devs who don't seem to care too much what they're working on, they will churn through at a medium pace regardless. But for me, I'm probably 10x more productive if I work on something I'm passionate about. So I've decided to "follow my dream" in software, it just makes more sense for me.
  - swader999 5y ago
    That's one of the good things about this game. There are a lot of different paths and domains to explore within it. Anything that you do that develops skills should keep your options open to find satisfaction.
ryanackley 5y ago
This always seemed like common sense to me for various reasons. One good reason is that the people that typically give this type of advice (counselors and career advisors) are in such banal careers themselves. I doubt they are living "their dream". Their original dream was probably to be an international spy like James Bond or a professional athlete.
- logicchains 5y ago
  >One good reason is that the people that typically give this type of advice (counselors and career advisors) are in such banal careers themselves It might be poorly compensated but it's not a banal career. A good career advisor has the potential to make a huge difference in people's lives, more even than a teacher. As someone who grew up in a rural lower-class family (where good career advice was scarce), I'd have saved a couple mostly wasted years of my life if I'd met a good career advisor in high school.
- naveen99 5y ago
  That seems unnecessarily pessimistic. There is literally an mbti personality type called counselor “INFJ”. An INFJ is a born counselor. https://keirsey.com/temperament/idealist-counselor/ https://keirsey.com/temperament/idealist-counselor/ Example: Gandhi. I doubt he cared about being Bond. His ideal of non violence would interfere with a license to kill.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    That personality categorization stuff is unsubstantiated nonsense. Plenty of sources in criticism section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi... Although, one can easily see that we do not have the ability to perform good experiments with concepts as nebulous and ill defined as “personality types”.
    - naveen99 5y ago
      Here are the definitions by Carl Jung: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm https://www.reddit.com/r/Jung/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Jung/
barney54 5y ago
I had my dream job at 25, only to realize that it had some downsides. I really liked it, but it wasn’t a job I wanted for the rest of my life. I like the advice in this piece to find something you are good at and makes you happy 80% of the time. That’s good advice.
pansa2 5y ago
> It's nothing like my childhood dream. But I am happy—more than 80% of the time. Sounds like being a science writer fulfils the author’s current dreams, though. Perhaps it’s OK to follow your dreams, as long as you react when your dreams change.
thewizardofaus 5y ago
I think it's important to be realistic with your dreams and expectations for them. I am an 'elite athlete'. I compete in one of the oldest sports/events in history. I am top 3 in the country and top 60 in the world. My dream is to be a full-time athlete and represent my country at the 2024 Olympics and also many Major international competitions. Unfortunately, I will never make a 'living' from my sport. After sponsorship deals and prize money the Top 5 athletes in the world are making $100K USD (before flights/accommodation/manager fees) I am perfectly content with that and it has influenced my lifestyle greatly. I chose to get a good education and work from home and pursue X/Y/Z because it gives me more freedom to Train and pursue my "real-dreams".
- rosetremiere 5y ago
  > oldest sports/events in history. which one?
  - nxpnsv 5y ago
    I guess archery...
    - dopidopHN 5y ago
      Is he not referring to the Olympic?
  - everdrive 5y ago
    Prostitution.
    - swader999 5y ago
      I think this is only a demonstration event at the Olympics.
      - selimthegrim 5y ago
        I think Matthew Syed wrote the definitive article on the subject.
ExcavateGrandMa 5y ago
Usually a good job where you feeling good at doing it... "feeling good" is the happiness... Also my grand daddy always told me that the work is health! I agree with that... :)
emmap21 5y ago
What works for me is diversifying experience. Life is a box of chocolate, you will never know what you are gonna get.
- godfreyantonell 5y ago
  Sometimes what you get ain’t chocolate.
ne0flex 5y ago
I had a professor in university that would often say, "follow your dream, keep following it into the convinience store because that's where you're going to end up." He was saying it in reference kids who would practice hip-hop dance and pursue it as though they'd all actually get somewhere with it. His advice was. "raise your bar up until it's stable and won't fall back down, then try to kick it up so that if it were to come back down, it'll stop where you left off but won't go lower." Or stabilize yourself first, then shoot for the stars that way even if you fail you can fall back to where you were before.
- Biganon 5y ago
  This Professor had a thing for needlessly complicated metaphors, it appears
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
pansa2 5y ago
> I should think about what I am good at and what makes me happy at least 80% of the time. Reminds me of the advice that the ideal situation is to find something that you love, that you are good at, that you can get paid for, and that the world needs. I’m currently “following my dream” because with enough work I hope it will satisfy the first three, and I’ve (selfishly?) decided that I should prioritise doing what I love over doing something the world needs.
TimPC 5y ago
Follow your dream is actually terrible advice because dreams change over time. It leads to people overcommitting to their current self in a fairly destructive way. It essentially maximizes career happiness at the expense of all other life goals. Figure out your life goals. Find jobs that meet them where you would be happy (or at least not unhappy). Pick from among those to maximize your life goals and happiness is a much better algorithm.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- swader999 5y ago
  Your life goals can change as much as your dreams do.
  - alexpetralia 5y ago
    This is what I refer to as "the postmodern critique." Nothing is unimpeachable, static, or objectively true: your dreams, goals, beliefs and so on. Everything changes, everything is relative. I agree with this critique. This view however suffers from what I call "the postmodern trap." If everything is relative - if there is no objective function to maximize - then how do you actually do anything? There exists no optimal decision - no rationally justifiable decision at all - because there is no direction upon which you can orient for any reasonable period of time. And so postmodernism, while logically sound, leads to abject paralysis. This is the trap of an entirely deconstructive and equally self-deconstructive philosophy. What remains then, in my opinion, is a more pragmatic outlook. You need to believe in some arbitrary, "objective" axis upon which you can orient your life, be it career, knowledge, family, health, and so on. This gives your life purpose, for now. But none of these rational purposes are truly unimpeachable - nothing is (see Gödel). And so, over time, things will change - life happens. You simply re-orient when it does, without being seduced by the false allure of "objective" goals, nor falling into the postmodernism abyss of nihilism.
    - swader999 5y ago
genedan 5y ago
I think it's okay. There are plenty of opportunities later in life to fall back on a middle class job if your dream doesn't work out. Lots of people don't enter my field (actuarial) until their late 30s/early 40s. You pass some exams and then start applying. The biggest group of older candidates are ex math teachers who couldn't pay the bills with that job, but you do run into an ex poker player every now and then.
naveen99 5y ago
Do people literally dream of what they want way in to the future ? My dreams usually follow me (closely). If I play tennis, I dream about my tennis serve that night.
- thomastjeffery 5y ago
  This is a common case where "dream" is used to mean "fantasy".
  - naveen99 5y ago
    Fantastic! That makes more sense. Especially since dreams are involuntary. But you can have lots of fantasies. They don’t even have to be logical or feasible. Feasable fantasies are just ideas. Most people have multiple ideas, and limited resources. I see lots of problems with fantasies of people following their fantasies.
riccardomc 5y ago
It's important to notice that the perspective change is related to switching midset from what you dream to be (marine biology professor) to what you dream to do (write about science). The former seems much more about extrinsic motivations: status, salary, prestige, title, etc. I am getting more and more convinced that to have a sustainable and fulfilling career you need to be honest with yourself and find out what you like to do not what you'd like to be. Trade-offs apply...
- amelius 5y ago
  "I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific." -- L. Tomlin
- fnord77 5y ago
  this is very true. I kinda realized this early on. I wanted to be a physician. When I did the volunteer time in a hospital, I realized for the most part I did not want to do what doctors did.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > I am getting more and more convinced that to have a sustainable and fulfilling career you need to be honest with yourself and find out what you like to do not what you'd like to be. I think the vast majority of people in the world do not have this luxury. They should be working backwards by figuring out what their goals are, prioritizing them, figuring out how much they cost, and then figuring out what they can sell (including type of labor) to make that requisite income happen with the highest probability. For example, do you want to write about science more than you want to have children and be able to purchase a home in a high end neighborhood? Do you want to be not working in the evenings and weekends and find and marry a spouse who also is not?
  - silvestrov 5y ago
    For most people "what their goals are" is just "high social status". So it's a dead end to start with this because you just end up with "earn a lot of money" without any more information about how to reach the goal. It also assumes that people are very good at career planning. If not, then it might be better to just follow the main stream.
alboaie 5y ago
Obviously, no advice fits all. But with wisdom, it makes sense for smart, hard working and motivated people. It is wiser to take life as a set of " experiences" and not as a war with yourself to get in your dreamland. However, folowing your dream is one of the important experiences...
monster_group 5y ago
I always wanted to be a physicist. I even got into a Physics program in a decent college. But my dad forced me to go the engineering route and I switched my major. Two decades later, I often wonder what my life would have been if I hadn't done what he told me. Physics is super hard and regardless of my passion and devotion I don't think I would have been very good at it (I can't even do dynamic programming problems asked in coding interviews - so unlikely I would have done any useful research in physics). I would have been languishing as a professor in some unknown college making significantly less money. But the dream hasn't died out though. I still fantasize about being a physicist working on black holes or cosmology. But I have accepted it will forever remain a dream.
- logicchains 5y ago
  >I can't even do dynamic programming problems asked in coding interviews - so unlikely I would have done any useful research in physics Solving dynamic programming problems on the spot is about as useful to physics (or software design) as reciting the alphabet backwards very quickly is to being a good author. A lot of those problems were originally solved as someone's thesis (i.e. not in 5 minutes). Most people who do well on such problems in interviews just spent a lot of time practising, and companies like candidates who are willing to spend a bunch of time grinding something monotonous because that's what most of the work will be if hired.
  - mathgenius 5y ago
    There are deep connections between dynamic programming (Bellman's equation) and the Hamilton-Jacobi wave equation...
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  I mean that sort of studying is useful for passing the qualifying exam but coming up with things to work on is a whole different ballgame
- mathgenius 5y ago
  > working on black holes or cosmology 99% of theoretical physics papers consist of torturous incremental research that no one gives a shit about, not even the authors. (I might be exaggerating slightly, but not much.)
unnouinceput 5y ago
The advice with going with what are you good at and makes you happy 80% of the time is a good one if you're not 100% passionate about something. If, on the other hand, you do find a passion on a profession then go with it 100% percent and "follow the dream". Even with this context "the dream" can change over time though. In the beginning I thought my dream was electronics since at 16 "the bug" hit me and started to devour tons of books and practice little circuits on garage. However once I failed to enter at my desired Uni and landed on an adjacent one the dream changed once I was face to face with a computer. Currently, having a 25+ years career in software development, I can also do electronics on the side. With IoT and hardware-software integration I am involved in both worlds but I consider myself a software developer first and secondly a "good enough" at electronics. I do realize I am one of the lucky few that got to "follow your dream" and land on a lucrative one at the same time, but for the first 10 years was not that easy in Europe to do that. EU market drop at beginning of 2000's combined with my "amazing" country's politicians made me struggle just above poor line at times. Only after 2005 onward I could say this career also allowed me to live good.
swader999 5y ago
If your dream is something that can be achieved by hard work rather than luck or being a statistical outlier then go for it, especially if it gives you a livelihood. Another idea is to time box it. Dedicate every fiber in you to it for a fixed amount of time and at the end of that truly evaluate your odds. This kind of dedicated application and focus does transfer into other areas. When it comes to sports, you are only young once and school and a vocation will always be there. But have an exit plan and a hard cutoff where you really evaluate your trajectory. If you have a dream and a well defined purpose that fills you with passion don't throw it away casually. It is a rare thing to know exactly what you want. Figure out a way if you can. For the rest that can't determine their dream, choose goals and paths that give you the most options at their end. Don't decide what you are going to be for the rest of your life, pick a place you want to be at in three to five years and shoot for this.
- godfreyantonell 5y ago
  If it ain’t happening in 5 years, it likely won’t ( not counting medicine or law of course). Something artistic like music or stand-up, 5 earnest years should yield at least a hint that you are not wasting your time. It’s also helpful to get brutally honest feedback, whether or not we want to hear it.
  - swader999 5y ago
    This is true but you can't really tell until your a couple years past puberty so it's important to last that long and give it your all after you finish growing. To many kids burn out before then. I went from a decent junior athlete to top ten in country in that amount of time to compete on world cup. Was really lucky. It was apparent by then that it'd be a continuous grind with little to show afterward. Left healthy and coached for a few years while completing university. I was the old kid in all my classes but way more focused than I would have been straight from high school.
    - godfreyantonell 5y ago
      Good point.
truth_ 5y ago
I hate the self-help industry with passion. But I liked Cal Newport's book So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love [0] exactly for this reason. He debunked the "passion hypothesis" and gave practical advices along with the stories of several successful people from real life. He is vehemently against "follow your passion" advice. He said in his book that if Steve Jobs focused on what he was passionate about, he would be a Zen monk in some monastery, and not a tech billionaire. I picked up his book because he is a CS PhD and Asst. Professor, and not another 'buy-my-book-because-I-am-successful-in-selling-this-book' guy. This is a short book and I highly recommend it. [0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-can-t-ignore-you https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-ca...
- Cybotron5000 5y ago
  “…if Steve Jobs focused on what he was passionate about, he would be a Zen monk in some monastery…” - sounds like bunk to me - you won’t be surprised to hear I didn’t know the guy personally, but everything I’ve read about him and heard him say in interviews etc. suggests he was deeply passionate about both design and technology? Zen might have informed aspects of his aesthetic sensibilities (is that really Zen though?) and maybe his spiritual life, who knows, but I wouldn’t have thought becoming a monk was exactly his ‘thing’? I also have an instinctive loathing of the self-help industry (and ‘personal brand’-ers even more) and I agree that you need skills and hard work to back up your passions and dreams - when you get a chance, or create one, you need to be able to capitalise on it (a mistake I definitely made in my life when self-promotion outclassed capacity to deliver), but why not have a ‘dream’ and allow yourself to think differently some of the time? Especially if you can visualise some sort of tangible path to achieving your goals and break them into doable steps… Much good in the world has been created by people with a bit of imagination, a dream if you like, of how the world might be made better (and arguably much ill also)… People are blessed with the capacity to experiment - to try things out and do something different if they fail... I’d like to see a world were people were more able to do that and survive to fight another day - without worrying about being deported, or made homeless, or getting into debt, or needing food aid, or even not being able to afford a family… Maybe there’s some sort of balance to be aimed at that lies between long term dreams and goals and short term pragmatic compromise, between experimentation and practicality… Life might be better with some art alongside the accountancy you know?/pure theoretical and sometimes unproductive scientific research alongside hard-nosed capitalisation andy marketing makes both stronger and gives both the ability to continue to flourish in the long term?
scanr 5y ago
I think follow your dreams (or perhaps find what you’re passionate about) is ok but only part of the advice. The rest is: - Understand what the job really entails. Speak to people who currently do it, try get work experience doing it etc. - look at supply and demand, if only 0.01% of the people who are doing it are making any money, that’s a tough market to do well in. - look for barriers to entry that you can overcome that limits supply. See what’s involved in building a moat. Passion helps with this. - work to address the bias towards jobs that sound interesting to everyone eg YouTube celebrity, game designer, footballer etc, although these also fail at the supply and demand stage. Actively look for jobs that are less obvious that have the properties you like. - consider you’re career holistically e.g. does it fit with the lifestyle you’d like, is it populated by the kinds of people you’d like to work with, how likely is a stable income. - think long term, dreams change, how hard would it be to pivot etc.
- kazen44 5y ago
  another piece of advice i would like to advise is that you should figure at what kind of work you are good at, regardless of the career. Are you someone who gets energy from working with other people? Helping other people and solving social problems? or are you happy when you solve technical or discrete problems? figuring this kind of stuff out is far better then "following your dreams in job X".
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    And what do you do when you’re not particularly good at anything? At least anything considered valuable.
- raobit 5y ago
  yeah some good amount of honest self-questioning, introspection for the above questions is really needed
dopidopHN 5y ago
My dream was to do something loosely related to science and be able to sustain myself. ( un-employment was really, really high and made scary by the media where I grew up. ) Mission accomplished! Joke aside, I grew up with a undertone of “whatever you do, think about the fact that you will have to pay the bill son” A experience that is wildly different from my US wife. Bless her heart.
kissgyorgy 5y ago
Err, seem like the exact same thing just phrased realistically instead of romantically. Being a Software Developer IS really my dream job, I enjoy it almost all the time, but there are always parts which I hate. I don't think there are a lot of jobs if any, where you enjoy it 100% of the time. I think it's true for life in general that you should aim for 100% in everything but expect to never reach it. This way, you won't disappoint, but you still try everything to make it happen.
- kazen44 5y ago
  > I don't think there are a lot of jobs if any, where you enjoy it 100% of the time. even in life, enjoying it 100% of the time is an unrealistic expectation, in any aspect. school, relationships, work etc. people should be realistic about the "shitty parts" of life and decide what is acceptable for them. This is different for different people.
einpoklum 5y ago
> I should think about what I am good at and what makes me happy at least 80% of the time. Even if you had a "job" following your dream, it is quite unlikely to make you happy 80% of the time. If you've found something to do that makes you happy 80% of the time, _that_ is your dream. > in grad school I saw how applying for grants is a constant source of worry for many professors. I realized I did not want to be responsible for the salaries of my hypothetical lab members. If that's all you needed to worry about being a Professor of Marine Biology, then your life would indeed be dreamy. Other pursuits = other things to worry about and other hassles, often much more worries than the bureaucracy of leading a research group. Being a grown-up sucks that way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPi2s1K_pgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPi2s1K_pgU There's another problem with research positions though: There aren't any. I mean, there are a few, but a very small few with tenure, and in the non-tenure-track ones you often have to research stuff you don't care much about. Academia is massively underfunded IMHO. > My writing got noticed, eventually by people at my institution, and I was given opportunities to write press releases and stories for the university's news bureau. That seems like a pretty bad job. Especially since one keeps being faced by what one's former colleagues have managed to do, with one only getting to report on it. IMHO anyway. > After 3 years of writing, I was offered a position as a science writer. Now that's much nicer, but - scientific writing is a small niche. I believe a lot of graduate researchers share most/all of your sentiments. I would not suggest they aim for that kind of position. Teaching, which was mentioned in the article, is relevant. But that is again quite likely to make you happy less of the time than research. --------- Now let's be a little more general... We live in a Capitalist and hierarchical society, where resources are rarely made available to you without large amounts of money, which the vast majority of people don't have. To follow most (?) non-trivial dreams, much effort by people with different skills is necessary. You would need to locate and convince such people to help you. Again, this is facilitated by being super rich, which you aren't. You could seek funding, but then you're essentially selling your dream to a bunch of investors. Regardless of social structures, humans' overall time and resources are insufficient to realize everyone's life dream. So even under ideal conditions you would have to compromise for a joint-dream of some sort. But - this is not necessarily a bad thing. There is absolutely no reason why your childhood life-dream would be the same as your teenage life-dream, or the same as your university life-dream etc: Our dreams and interests change with experience. So it is quite possible that if you go do something new which expands your horizons, you'll develop different dreams, or a different take on your dream. If that process also involves interacting with others - a group of friends, a community, maybe that can help the lot of you agree on some common dream, and then pool your abilities and resources and pursue it together.
Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago
This sort of pessimistic attitude is, in my opinion, the reason why we have economic stagflation. The entire history of humanity can be summarized with: "People arrogant and self-confident enough to think they'd be the one and they could do no wrong and who'd hold little to no regards for the status quo and the concept of opportunity cost" The self-confidence of people is dropping at an ever increasing rate ever since the turn of the millennium, concurrently the awareness of the concept of opportunity cost is skyrocketing. People blamed the Financial Crisis but I think it's the other way around. The financial crisis happened because people self-confidence and risk-taking suddenly collapsed (it's not going fast that kills you, becoming immediately stationary does). Economists claim that the biggest 'tragedy of the commons' are taxation or the taking care of the environment or public parks. In reality the biggest 'tragedy of the commons' is people not having the confidence to try out whatever crazy idea they have in mind with regards to the natural world or the entrepreneurial world or the industrial world etc. It's like we know it's a tragedy of the commons because we encourage (or at least we did) people to follow their dreams, but in the dark of our office with the curtains closed we play it safe . We need to try a lot of crazy ideas, some of them will stick and we could go back at having 10% YoY real growth...but we are afraid to do so ourselves because we don't want to try and fail, we want to try and win! And get the accolades and status which goes with it. At the same time who knows if other people are trying themselves or they are playing it safe? Maybe in the dark of their office with the curtains closed, just relentlessly buying the S&P and index funds in awe of their preacher John Boogle....the similarities with tax avoidance/climate/public good care is again there to be seen. I think it's a known problem outside of academia. Ray Dalio mentions it very often [1] and Sergey Brin [2] dedicated a couple of minutes to this problem in a talk he gave at Davos (I guess if you follow your dream long enough that's where you end up!) and thinks the Internet is at fault for this pessimistic attitude The internet might have complicated things even further, people were already becoming more and more risk averse, now they have a projection of all the things which could go wrong as well as rapid access to the info about the #1 person in that domain so they can compare themselves against their accomplishments. They become stuck in a "play it safe" and "analysis paralysis" mode for a very long time before actually experimenting. Other than the internet I guess the only other reason could be the ever diminishing levels of testosterone in the median male (of all age groups and ethnicity). Testosterone has been declining and nobody knows why. It makes sense in theory, Testosterone is correlated with risk-taking, might also explain societal changes and the constant level of stress which is put nowadays on security, safety, financial stability. In one word Stasis. Might also be the reason why a President like Trump is not acceptable whereas John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson who were exactly the same personality and all around the same persona were elevated as heroes (initially by the left but also nationally) There is some hopes though, people who take shots have a much less crowded trade so to speak. There is also the reason why I should remember myself that a guy like Musk extracting his richest man in the world wealth and status from Tesla before the company is even out of the woods of bankruptcy and insolvency would have earned him the title of scam artist and fraudster a while ago. Today people are so adamant and desire to see somebody take a shot that would elevate him and praise him, because in a world where nobody tries , he does. [1] https://youtu.be/XTKXrojiCrA?t=235 https://youtu.be/XTKXrojiCrA?t=235 [2] https://youtu.be/ffvu6Mr1SVc?t=1630 https://youtu.be/ffvu6Mr1SVc?t=1630
fuzzfactor 5y ago
You need to have realistic dreams to be worth following. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the most realistic dreams can be the most ominous by far. And you need to recognize the nightmares early and run the other way.
acdanger 5y ago
"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."
ivanmontillam 5y ago
Following your dreams also has other problems: What you want to do might not be "marketable" (not everyone might be willing to pay you for it). Whatever you do and you're good at must also match a market requirement, otherwise you will starve.
dmerks 5y ago
I have been following my dreams for... perhaps the past 16 years, since late adolescence. It's always been a part of my makeup to chase after what seems most desirable while being somewhat risk averse. It's been a tumultuous ride. I've made plenty of mistakes, of poor decisions, I've tried many ways of living, I've been lucky and unlucky, I've learned a lot, I've suffered a lot, I've changed a lot. I've sacrificed health and relationships, spent resources aplenty... for mixed results. I can confidently say what make me happiest are my partner of eight years and my two daughters. I feel like I (we) built something nice to continue living carefully with passion. E.g. I decided about two years ago to transition from Education (I was a special ed teacher in the private sector), where I hoped to develop useful tech for learning, to the world of Tech with the same goal in mind. I have always had an affinity for programming-- I have fond memories of making games (e.g. snake), bots, harmless trojans, etc. with the mIRC scripting language--, and an interest in solving problems related to the contents of our minds. I completed a few contracts in web development related to Wordpress (html, css, js, php, mysql) to get myself going, before deciding to learn a stack that would enable me to find better work opportunities or develop a learning product. I settled on React/Apollo/Express/Prisma/Postgres and have been working part-time on a flashcard web app eversince. I'm inspired by the likes of Duolingo, Anki and Quizlet, though I have a special appreciation for Lichess, among others. I wish to make it easier to choose/manage/share what one knows. I would like to generate revenue with this enterprise, but I'm unsure whether I will succeed. If I don't, I wonder how difficult it would be to find work related to what I've learned.
motohagiography 5y ago
Your dreams are mostly envy, I wouldn't put too much stake in them. Knowing this will save you at least a few years. (You're welcome!) Do what you enjoy, understand and appreciate what it means to be among the best at it, and then learn to do it very well.
- godfreyantonell 5y ago
  Yes. Being a frustrated musician gave me a great appreciation for just how special the greats really are.
iainctduncan 5y ago
That's a great article. I too an earning money doing something I never thought I'd be doing. But I got here just following the scent of what people appreciated me the most for, and most of the time, it's a good job. All of the time, it's a high paying job. And half of my time, I'm not at it. :-) Peter Drucker says in one his seminal business books "look for the easy wins", even when they aren't where you think you should be looking. Because they point you at what you can do really well at. Best business advice I think I could give anyone.
Hermel 5y ago
In my experience, it is much easier to love what you do than to do what you love. I think I could develop a passion for a vast spectrum of goals.
- kurthr 5y ago
  I agree, but I would expand that to love what you're good at doing... or at least good at learning to do.
whydoyoucare 5y ago
In my experience, the only way to be happy most of the time with what you do is possible iff you are intrinsically motivated to do it. If you make money doing it, that is the best case scenario. Else you can make it a hobby, and still be happy. There are no black and white answers, unfortunately, and tradeoffs always apply.
carapace 5y ago
It's "follow your bliss" and it's metaphysical advice you should be hearing from your guru not something you should be hearing from your career adviser!
sershe 5y ago
Why would one expect following their dream would correlate in any way to success in life? If anything, given that people think (and dream) alike, it would lead to supply glut in specific fields. That is probably a part of the explanation of the low salaries in e.g. education, or working with animals. I can think of other reasons, for an average person, to absolutely not in any way try to follow their dream as a source of livelihood; what are the arguments FOR it, though? How did this idea even come about; is it related to the "self esteem" fad in education?
disambiguation 5y ago
I think the "maslows hierarchy" model applies here. Dreams would be at the top, the mistakes people make is chasing the top without fulfilling their needs first.
jollybean 5y ago
I laughed out loud because all of the girls I grew up with wanted to be 'Marine Biologists' as young kids, which is pretty difficult given how very, very few jobs there are in that field. We should also reference the fact that people coming up through the academic system generally have very little exposure to anything else - it's natural for them to believe that 'professorship' is somehow this great and noble thing, because the system they are in effectively enforces that psychologically. Which is why I believe internships should be a part of the process for almost everyone. Also almost never referenced in these talks: many people have an inherent, communitarian instinct. Their 'dream' isn't that important, rather what they want to do is 'their duty' - which is to say 'be useful to the community'. Personally my communitarian instinct is much stronger than individual aspirational instinct, and so literally 'my dream' is something like 'to do my job very well'. I would be considerably 'more proud' to have effectively created a 'good company' that 'employs people' and 'creates work for others' - than having written a really good album. Those with such a communitarian instict may look at those 'pursuing their dreams' as being selfish. I believe that if you were to ask the questions properly, you'd find that maybe more than 1/2 of the population is like this. For example, raising children is 'exhausting, draining' and generally not considered an aspiration, and yet for many it's possibly the most fulfilling thing they've done in their lives. I wish we would teach children about the fulfillment they get from doing useful things and being of service to others, as much as we taught the aspirational elements.
- sjg007 5y ago
  I think marine biology is a thing because it is generally introduced in middle school science class. Providing jobs and even providing for your family is very noble.
bawana 5y ago
I can make you hate what you love by making you do it too much and too fast. No matter what you love to do, if you put yourself in a situation where someone else’s job depends on your performance - where you have responsibility but not authority-you will come to hate it.
8bitsrule 5y ago
Finding The Oasis can be difficult. Being good at something that has no meaning for you is a heartless time sink. Here the path of discovery is interesting: college, then career panel, then advisor ... only then personal experience. "finding overlap between what I like and what I'm good at was not easy.... I don't like repeating the same content every year.... I love telling stories about science.... loved the freedom to choose what to write about ... My writing got noticed ... I was given opportunities " When you find a good fit, you radiate. Ananya was the only one who -knew the particulars- s/he needed.

128 points by zeristor 5y ago

With time I have tend to realise that most of the time it can be a bad advice. I would personally people to develop a skill that makes them in demand on the job market and hence financially confortable so they can follow their dream in their free time (which can be a year without working). The freedom you have when you do something in your free time is underrated.

agumonkey 5y ago
Dreams and motivation come and go. Most people and most things need stability.
tartoran 5y ago
Id say to follow your dream is not a bad advice if you follow realistically and don’t gamble everything on it. So I would append the word reaponsibly to this adage. The risk of suppressing that dream and compromising everything is realizing you have an unfulfilled life. So following your dream responsibly entails learning a skill that is lucrative but which opens the possibility to fulfill that dream.
- xattt 5y ago
  So what you’re saying is that a balanced approach is key?
  - swader999 5y ago
    Reaching the highest level in many endeavors often takes an obsessive approach. So it depends what you are chasing.
    - agustif 5y ago
      Balanced obsession
  - tartoran 5y ago
    Ballanced approach does sound correct even though that may entail putting your dream on hold temporarily only to return to it with full force and enthusiasm or managing to incorporate part of it into your life and move that needle slowly while doing what’s responsible at the same time, eg. taking care of important matters such as family and self The luckiest people are on their path to fulfill their dreams early on in their lives and all the work and effort is alligned with their vocation, all work and effort becoming much easier to attain.
geeB 5y ago
I used to think like this, but I've come to realize it's highly dependent on what your dream is. For some things it's just not possible (or at least way harder than following your dreams in the first place)... the kind of things that require being part of something bigger and having a certain reputation and seniority among your peers. E.g. flying fighter jets or do underwater welding after a career in investment banking, or trying to enter a decade later an industry that was at its infancy in the first place. There are lots of dreams (probably the majority of them) for which I fully agree with you though.
sfifs 5y ago
I think the importance is having a risk mitigation mechanism in place before you pursue your high risk dream. This often takes the form of some form of wealth or capital. My wife has a childhood friend and a cousin who were both very talented in Indian classical music in their youth and regarded as potential stars. The friend came from a well to do family, the cousin from a lower income family. The friend didn't really need to pursue a college degree in a professional field and take up job to make ends meet and instead could devote the entirety of higher education and focus to music because even if she doesn't succeed monetarily, the family still owned several properties and the rental income and capital appreciation could give enough of a passive income for survival together with say teaching. No such luck for the cousin who now does music as a hobby when he can.
Ensorceled 5y ago
A LOT of people have dreams that are beyond their capabilities ... Rock Star, astronaut, brain surgeon, New York Times Bestselling Author, Casonova ... People need to follow their loves... Dream of being a Rock Star? Play at your local bar. Write a novel.
- godfreyantonell 5y ago
  A lot of people want to have done big things. Few want to do the pain in the butt work required to achieve them. More important, talent is a thing and one must have loads of it to reach those extra dreamy goals.

corobo 5y ago

> I should follow my dream, and if I didn't yet know what that was, I should live with career uncertainty until I figured it out Yyyyyuuuppp. I'm now 33 and still haven't figured out my 'dream' I have figured out I probably have ADHD though. Cheers for missing that, school.

Ensorceled 5y ago
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my fifties ... lots and lots of people (including me) missed it.
- corobo 5y ago
  Got my decider appointment on the 2nd! Tell you what, whether I have it or not learning of ADHD and using the techniques that work for it has helped immensely. I'll take that if nothing else! Yeah I completely missed it too. It'd be great if there was some way for schools to pick it up! Probably through seeing how certain students learn and providing differing education style as needed. It might even already be the case to be fair, it's been a minute since I was at school
  - topicseed 5y ago
    Off-topic but do you mind sharing some of those helpful techniques?
    - corobo 5y ago
      Essentially I watched every video from the YouTube channel HowToADHD I wish I could give a perfect headline technique as an example but it's more changing how you do things to work with the way your mind works instead of against it http://youtube.com/HowtoADHD http://youtube.com/HowtoADHD
  - swader999 5y ago
    Just going off your writing style I'd bet you lean that way. And I don't mean it in a bad way. It can be like a super power if you can tame it properly.

elicash 5y ago

The advice in the article -- find something you're both good at and also love, and recognize they aren't necessarily the same things -- is pretty much exactly the normal advice that people give. I think the implication of "follow your dream" is that if you love it, you'll be willing to work harder and therefore be better. It's worth noting some people are wired differently. If I loved acting, I'm not wired in a way where I could move to L.A. and spend a decade of my life to trying for and probably not getting various roles. I know myself, I'm risk-averse and need stability. But for somebody else, that's exactly what they should do. Any advice aimed at EVERYone is going to be wrong for some people.

svantana 5y ago
Even among just software developers, I've noticed that personalities differ a lot in this respect. I know a bunch of devs who don't seem to care too much what they're working on, they will churn through at a medium pace regardless. But for me, I'm probably 10x more productive if I work on something I'm passionate about. So I've decided to "follow my dream" in software, it just makes more sense for me.
- swader999 5y ago
  That's one of the good things about this game. There are a lot of different paths and domains to explore within it. Anything that you do that develops skills should keep your options open to find satisfaction.

ryanackley 5y ago

This always seemed like common sense to me for various reasons. One good reason is that the people that typically give this type of advice (counselors and career advisors) are in such banal careers themselves. I doubt they are living "their dream". Their original dream was probably to be an international spy like James Bond or a professional athlete.

logicchains 5y ago
>One good reason is that the people that typically give this type of advice (counselors and career advisors) are in such banal careers themselves It might be poorly compensated but it's not a banal career. A good career advisor has the potential to make a huge difference in people's lives, more even than a teacher. As someone who grew up in a rural lower-class family (where good career advice was scarce), I'd have saved a couple mostly wasted years of my life if I'd met a good career advisor in high school.
naveen99 5y ago
That seems unnecessarily pessimistic. There is literally an mbti personality type called counselor “INFJ”. An INFJ is a born counselor. https://keirsey.com/temperament/idealist-counselor/ https://keirsey.com/temperament/idealist-counselor/ Example: Gandhi. I doubt he cared about being Bond. His ideal of non violence would interfere with a license to kill.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  That personality categorization stuff is unsubstantiated nonsense. Plenty of sources in criticism section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi... Although, one can easily see that we do not have the ability to perform good experiments with concepts as nebulous and ill defined as “personality types”.
  - naveen99 5y ago
    Here are the definitions by Carl Jung: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm https://www.reddit.com/r/Jung/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Jung/

barney54 5y ago

I had my dream job at 25, only to realize that it had some downsides. I really liked it, but it wasn’t a job I wanted for the rest of my life. I like the advice in this piece to find something you are good at and makes you happy 80% of the time. That’s good advice.

pansa2 5y ago

> It's nothing like my childhood dream. But I am happy—more than 80% of the time. Sounds like being a science writer fulfils the author’s current dreams, though. Perhaps it’s OK to follow your dreams, as long as you react when your dreams change.

thewizardofaus 5y ago

I think it's important to be realistic with your dreams and expectations for them. I am an 'elite athlete'. I compete in one of the oldest sports/events in history. I am top 3 in the country and top 60 in the world. My dream is to be a full-time athlete and represent my country at the 2024 Olympics and also many Major international competitions. Unfortunately, I will never make a 'living' from my sport. After sponsorship deals and prize money the Top 5 athletes in the world are making $100K USD (before flights/accommodation/manager fees) I am perfectly content with that and it has influenced my lifestyle greatly. I chose to get a good education and work from home and pursue X/Y/Z because it gives me more freedom to Train and pursue my "real-dreams".

rosetremiere 5y ago
> oldest sports/events in history. which one?
- nxpnsv 5y ago
  I guess archery...
  - dopidopHN 5y ago
    Is he not referring to the Olympic?
- everdrive 5y ago
  Prostitution.
  - swader999 5y ago
    I think this is only a demonstration event at the Olympics.
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      I think Matthew Syed wrote the definitive article on the subject.

ExcavateGrandMa 5y ago

Usually a good job where you feeling good at doing it... "feeling good" is the happiness... Also my grand daddy always told me that the work is health! I agree with that... :)

emmap21 5y ago

What works for me is diversifying experience. Life is a box of chocolate, you will never know what you are gonna get.

godfreyantonell 5y ago
Sometimes what you get ain’t chocolate.

ne0flex 5y ago

I had a professor in university that would often say, "follow your dream, keep following it into the convinience store because that's where you're going to end up." He was saying it in reference kids who would practice hip-hop dance and pursue it as though they'd all actually get somewhere with it. His advice was. "raise your bar up until it's stable and won't fall back down, then try to kick it up so that if it were to come back down, it'll stop where you left off but won't go lower." Or stabilize yourself first, then shoot for the stars that way even if you fail you can fall back to where you were before.

Biganon 5y ago
This Professor had a thing for needlessly complicated metaphors, it appears
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

pansa2 5y ago

> I should think about what I am good at and what makes me happy at least 80% of the time. Reminds me of the advice that the ideal situation is to find something that you love, that you are good at, that you can get paid for, and that the world needs. I’m currently “following my dream” because with enough work I hope it will satisfy the first three, and I’ve (selfishly?) decided that I should prioritise doing what I love over doing something the world needs.

TimPC 5y ago

Follow your dream is actually terrible advice because dreams change over time. It leads to people overcommitting to their current self in a fairly destructive way. It essentially maximizes career happiness at the expense of all other life goals. Figure out your life goals. Find jobs that meet them where you would be happy (or at least not unhappy). Pick from among those to maximize your life goals and happiness is a much better algorithm.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
swader999 5y ago
Your life goals can change as much as your dreams do.
- alexpetralia 5y ago
  This is what I refer to as "the postmodern critique." Nothing is unimpeachable, static, or objectively true: your dreams, goals, beliefs and so on. Everything changes, everything is relative. I agree with this critique. This view however suffers from what I call "the postmodern trap." If everything is relative - if there is no objective function to maximize - then how do you actually do anything? There exists no optimal decision - no rationally justifiable decision at all - because there is no direction upon which you can orient for any reasonable period of time. And so postmodernism, while logically sound, leads to abject paralysis. This is the trap of an entirely deconstructive and equally self-deconstructive philosophy. What remains then, in my opinion, is a more pragmatic outlook. You need to believe in some arbitrary, "objective" axis upon which you can orient your life, be it career, knowledge, family, health, and so on. This gives your life purpose, for now. But none of these rational purposes are truly unimpeachable - nothing is (see Gödel). And so, over time, things will change - life happens. You simply re-orient when it does, without being seduced by the false allure of "objective" goals, nor falling into the postmodernism abyss of nihilism.
  - swader999 5y ago

genedan 5y ago

I think it's okay. There are plenty of opportunities later in life to fall back on a middle class job if your dream doesn't work out. Lots of people don't enter my field (actuarial) until their late 30s/early 40s. You pass some exams and then start applying. The biggest group of older candidates are ex math teachers who couldn't pay the bills with that job, but you do run into an ex poker player every now and then.

naveen99 5y ago

Do people literally dream of what they want way in to the future ? My dreams usually follow me (closely). If I play tennis, I dream about my tennis serve that night.

thomastjeffery 5y ago
This is a common case where "dream" is used to mean "fantasy".
- naveen99 5y ago
  Fantastic! That makes more sense. Especially since dreams are involuntary. But you can have lots of fantasies. They don’t even have to be logical or feasible. Feasable fantasies are just ideas. Most people have multiple ideas, and limited resources. I see lots of problems with fantasies of people following their fantasies.

riccardomc 5y ago

It's important to notice that the perspective change is related to switching midset from what you dream to be (marine biology professor) to what you dream to do (write about science). The former seems much more about extrinsic motivations: status, salary, prestige, title, etc. I am getting more and more convinced that to have a sustainable and fulfilling career you need to be honest with yourself and find out what you like to do not what you'd like to be. Trade-offs apply...

amelius 5y ago
"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific." -- L. Tomlin
fnord77 5y ago
this is very true. I kinda realized this early on. I wanted to be a physician. When I did the volunteer time in a hospital, I realized for the most part I did not want to do what doctors did.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> I am getting more and more convinced that to have a sustainable and fulfilling career you need to be honest with yourself and find out what you like to do not what you'd like to be. I think the vast majority of people in the world do not have this luxury. They should be working backwards by figuring out what their goals are, prioritizing them, figuring out how much they cost, and then figuring out what they can sell (including type of labor) to make that requisite income happen with the highest probability. For example, do you want to write about science more than you want to have children and be able to purchase a home in a high end neighborhood? Do you want to be not working in the evenings and weekends and find and marry a spouse who also is not?
- silvestrov 5y ago
  For most people "what their goals are" is just "high social status". So it's a dead end to start with this because you just end up with "earn a lot of money" without any more information about how to reach the goal. It also assumes that people are very good at career planning. If not, then it might be better to just follow the main stream.

alboaie 5y ago

Obviously, no advice fits all. But with wisdom, it makes sense for smart, hard working and motivated people. It is wiser to take life as a set of " experiences" and not as a war with yourself to get in your dreamland. However, folowing your dream is one of the important experiences...

monster_group 5y ago

I always wanted to be a physicist. I even got into a Physics program in a decent college. But my dad forced me to go the engineering route and I switched my major. Two decades later, I often wonder what my life would have been if I hadn't done what he told me. Physics is super hard and regardless of my passion and devotion I don't think I would have been very good at it (I can't even do dynamic programming problems asked in coding interviews - so unlikely I would have done any useful research in physics). I would have been languishing as a professor in some unknown college making significantly less money. But the dream hasn't died out though. I still fantasize about being a physicist working on black holes or cosmology. But I have accepted it will forever remain a dream.

logicchains 5y ago
>I can't even do dynamic programming problems asked in coding interviews - so unlikely I would have done any useful research in physics Solving dynamic programming problems on the spot is about as useful to physics (or software design) as reciting the alphabet backwards very quickly is to being a good author. A lot of those problems were originally solved as someone's thesis (i.e. not in 5 minutes). Most people who do well on such problems in interviews just spent a lot of time practising, and companies like candidates who are willing to spend a bunch of time grinding something monotonous because that's what most of the work will be if hired.
- mathgenius 5y ago
  There are deep connections between dynamic programming (Bellman's equation) and the Hamilton-Jacobi wave equation...
selimthegrim 5y ago
I mean that sort of studying is useful for passing the qualifying exam but coming up with things to work on is a whole different ballgame
mathgenius 5y ago
> working on black holes or cosmology 99% of theoretical physics papers consist of torturous incremental research that no one gives a shit about, not even the authors. (I might be exaggerating slightly, but not much.)

unnouinceput 5y ago

The advice with going with what are you good at and makes you happy 80% of the time is a good one if you're not 100% passionate about something. If, on the other hand, you do find a passion on a profession then go with it 100% percent and "follow the dream". Even with this context "the dream" can change over time though. In the beginning I thought my dream was electronics since at 16 "the bug" hit me and started to devour tons of books and practice little circuits on garage. However once I failed to enter at my desired Uni and landed on an adjacent one the dream changed once I was face to face with a computer. Currently, having a 25+ years career in software development, I can also do electronics on the side. With IoT and hardware-software integration I am involved in both worlds but I consider myself a software developer first and secondly a "good enough" at electronics. I do realize I am one of the lucky few that got to "follow your dream" and land on a lucrative one at the same time, but for the first 10 years was not that easy in Europe to do that. EU market drop at beginning of 2000's combined with my "amazing" country's politicians made me struggle just above poor line at times. Only after 2005 onward I could say this career also allowed me to live good.

swader999 5y ago

If your dream is something that can be achieved by hard work rather than luck or being a statistical outlier then go for it, especially if it gives you a livelihood. Another idea is to time box it. Dedicate every fiber in you to it for a fixed amount of time and at the end of that truly evaluate your odds. This kind of dedicated application and focus does transfer into other areas. When it comes to sports, you are only young once and school and a vocation will always be there. But have an exit plan and a hard cutoff where you really evaluate your trajectory. If you have a dream and a well defined purpose that fills you with passion don't throw it away casually. It is a rare thing to know exactly what you want. Figure out a way if you can. For the rest that can't determine their dream, choose goals and paths that give you the most options at their end. Don't decide what you are going to be for the rest of your life, pick a place you want to be at in three to five years and shoot for this.

godfreyantonell 5y ago
If it ain’t happening in 5 years, it likely won’t ( not counting medicine or law of course). Something artistic like music or stand-up, 5 earnest years should yield at least a hint that you are not wasting your time. It’s also helpful to get brutally honest feedback, whether or not we want to hear it.
- swader999 5y ago
  This is true but you can't really tell until your a couple years past puberty so it's important to last that long and give it your all after you finish growing. To many kids burn out before then. I went from a decent junior athlete to top ten in country in that amount of time to compete on world cup. Was really lucky. It was apparent by then that it'd be a continuous grind with little to show afterward. Left healthy and coached for a few years while completing university. I was the old kid in all my classes but way more focused than I would have been straight from high school.
  - godfreyantonell 5y ago
    Good point.

truth_ 5y ago

I hate the self-help industry with passion. But I liked Cal Newport's book So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love [0] exactly for this reason. He debunked the "passion hypothesis" and gave practical advices along with the stories of several successful people from real life. He is vehemently against "follow your passion" advice. He said in his book that if Steve Jobs focused on what he was passionate about, he would be a Zen monk in some monastery, and not a tech billionaire. I picked up his book because he is a CS PhD and Asst. Professor, and not another 'buy-my-book-because-I-am-successful-in-selling-this-book' guy. This is a short book and I highly recommend it. [0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-can-t-ignore-you https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-ca...

Cybotron5000 5y ago
“…if Steve Jobs focused on what he was passionate about, he would be a Zen monk in some monastery…” - sounds like bunk to me - you won’t be surprised to hear I didn’t know the guy personally, but everything I’ve read about him and heard him say in interviews etc. suggests he was deeply passionate about both design and technology? Zen might have informed aspects of his aesthetic sensibilities (is that really Zen though?) and maybe his spiritual life, who knows, but I wouldn’t have thought becoming a monk was exactly his ‘thing’? I also have an instinctive loathing of the self-help industry (and ‘personal brand’-ers even more) and I agree that you need skills and hard work to back up your passions and dreams - when you get a chance, or create one, you need to be able to capitalise on it (a mistake I definitely made in my life when self-promotion outclassed capacity to deliver), but why not have a ‘dream’ and allow yourself to think differently some of the time? Especially if you can visualise some sort of tangible path to achieving your goals and break them into doable steps… Much good in the world has been created by people with a bit of imagination, a dream if you like, of how the world might be made better (and arguably much ill also)… People are blessed with the capacity to experiment - to try things out and do something different if they fail... I’d like to see a world were people were more able to do that and survive to fight another day - without worrying about being deported, or made homeless, or getting into debt, or needing food aid, or even not being able to afford a family… Maybe there’s some sort of balance to be aimed at that lies between long term dreams and goals and short term pragmatic compromise, between experimentation and practicality… Life might be better with some art alongside the accountancy you know?/pure theoretical and sometimes unproductive scientific research alongside hard-nosed capitalisation andy marketing makes both stronger and gives both the ability to continue to flourish in the long term?

scanr 5y ago

I think follow your dreams (or perhaps find what you’re passionate about) is ok but only part of the advice. The rest is: - Understand what the job really entails. Speak to people who currently do it, try get work experience doing it etc. - look at supply and demand, if only 0.01% of the people who are doing it are making any money, that’s a tough market to do well in. - look for barriers to entry that you can overcome that limits supply. See what’s involved in building a moat. Passion helps with this. - work to address the bias towards jobs that sound interesting to everyone eg YouTube celebrity, game designer, footballer etc, although these also fail at the supply and demand stage. Actively look for jobs that are less obvious that have the properties you like. - consider you’re career holistically e.g. does it fit with the lifestyle you’d like, is it populated by the kinds of people you’d like to work with, how likely is a stable income. - think long term, dreams change, how hard would it be to pivot etc.

kazen44 5y ago
another piece of advice i would like to advise is that you should figure at what kind of work you are good at, regardless of the career. Are you someone who gets energy from working with other people? Helping other people and solving social problems? or are you happy when you solve technical or discrete problems? figuring this kind of stuff out is far better then "following your dreams in job X".
- the_only_law 5y ago
  And what do you do when you’re not particularly good at anything? At least anything considered valuable.
raobit 5y ago
yeah some good amount of honest self-questioning, introspection for the above questions is really needed

dopidopHN 5y ago

My dream was to do something loosely related to science and be able to sustain myself. ( un-employment was really, really high and made scary by the media where I grew up. ) Mission accomplished! Joke aside, I grew up with a undertone of “whatever you do, think about the fact that you will have to pay the bill son” A experience that is wildly different from my US wife. Bless her heart.

kissgyorgy 5y ago

Err, seem like the exact same thing just phrased realistically instead of romantically. Being a Software Developer IS really my dream job, I enjoy it almost all the time, but there are always parts which I hate. I don't think there are a lot of jobs if any, where you enjoy it 100% of the time. I think it's true for life in general that you should aim for 100% in everything but expect to never reach it. This way, you won't disappoint, but you still try everything to make it happen.

kazen44 5y ago
> I don't think there are a lot of jobs if any, where you enjoy it 100% of the time. even in life, enjoying it 100% of the time is an unrealistic expectation, in any aspect. school, relationships, work etc. people should be realistic about the "shitty parts" of life and decide what is acceptable for them. This is different for different people.

einpoklum 5y ago

> I should think about what I am good at and what makes me happy at least 80% of the time. Even if you had a "job" following your dream, it is quite unlikely to make you happy 80% of the time. If you've found something to do that makes you happy 80% of the time, _that_ is your dream. > in grad school I saw how applying for grants is a constant source of worry for many professors. I realized I did not want to be responsible for the salaries of my hypothetical lab members. If that's all you needed to worry about being a Professor of Marine Biology, then your life would indeed be dreamy. Other pursuits = other things to worry about and other hassles, often much more worries than the bureaucracy of leading a research group. Being a grown-up sucks that way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPi2s1K_pgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPi2s1K_pgU There's another problem with research positions though: There aren't any. I mean, there are a few, but a very small few with tenure, and in the non-tenure-track ones you often have to research stuff you don't care much about. Academia is massively underfunded IMHO. > My writing got noticed, eventually by people at my institution, and I was given opportunities to write press releases and stories for the university's news bureau. That seems like a pretty bad job. Especially since one keeps being faced by what one's former colleagues have managed to do, with one only getting to report on it. IMHO anyway. > After 3 years of writing, I was offered a position as a science writer. Now that's much nicer, but - scientific writing is a small niche. I believe a lot of graduate researchers share most/all of your sentiments. I would not suggest they aim for that kind of position. Teaching, which was mentioned in the article, is relevant. But that is again quite likely to make you happy less of the time than research. --------- Now let's be a little more general... We live in a Capitalist and hierarchical society, where resources are rarely made available to you without large amounts of money, which the vast majority of people don't have. To follow most (?) non-trivial dreams, much effort by people with different skills is necessary. You would need to locate and convince such people to help you. Again, this is facilitated by being super rich, which you aren't. You could seek funding, but then you're essentially selling your dream to a bunch of investors. Regardless of social structures, humans' overall time and resources are insufficient to realize everyone's life dream. So even under ideal conditions you would have to compromise for a joint-dream of some sort. But - this is not necessarily a bad thing. There is absolutely no reason why your childhood life-dream would be the same as your teenage life-dream, or the same as your university life-dream etc: Our dreams and interests change with experience. So it is quite possible that if you go do something new which expands your horizons, you'll develop different dreams, or a different take on your dream. If that process also involves interacting with others - a group of friends, a community, maybe that can help the lot of you agree on some common dream, and then pool your abilities and resources and pursue it together.

Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago

This sort of pessimistic attitude is, in my opinion, the reason why we have economic stagflation. The entire history of humanity can be summarized with: "People arrogant and self-confident enough to think they'd be the one and they could do no wrong and who'd hold little to no regards for the status quo and the concept of opportunity cost" The self-confidence of people is dropping at an ever increasing rate ever since the turn of the millennium, concurrently the awareness of the concept of opportunity cost is skyrocketing. People blamed the Financial Crisis but I think it's the other way around. The financial crisis happened because people self-confidence and risk-taking suddenly collapsed (it's not going fast that kills you, becoming immediately stationary does). Economists claim that the biggest 'tragedy of the commons' are taxation or the taking care of the environment or public parks. In reality the biggest 'tragedy of the commons' is people not having the confidence to try out whatever crazy idea they have in mind with regards to the natural world or the entrepreneurial world or the industrial world etc. It's like we know it's a tragedy of the commons because we encourage (or at least we did) people to follow their dreams, but in the dark of our office with the curtains closed we play it safe . We need to try a lot of crazy ideas, some of them will stick and we could go back at having 10% YoY real growth...but we are afraid to do so ourselves because we don't want to try and fail, we want to try and win! And get the accolades and status which goes with it. At the same time who knows if other people are trying themselves or they are playing it safe? Maybe in the dark of their office with the curtains closed, just relentlessly buying the S&P and index funds in awe of their preacher John Boogle....the similarities with tax avoidance/climate/public good care is again there to be seen. I think it's a known problem outside of academia. Ray Dalio mentions it very often [1] and Sergey Brin [2] dedicated a couple of minutes to this problem in a talk he gave at Davos (I guess if you follow your dream long enough that's where you end up!) and thinks the Internet is at fault for this pessimistic attitude The internet might have complicated things even further, people were already becoming more and more risk averse, now they have a projection of all the things which could go wrong as well as rapid access to the info about the #1 person in that domain so they can compare themselves against their accomplishments. They become stuck in a "play it safe" and "analysis paralysis" mode for a very long time before actually experimenting. Other than the internet I guess the only other reason could be the ever diminishing levels of testosterone in the median male (of all age groups and ethnicity). Testosterone has been declining and nobody knows why. It makes sense in theory, Testosterone is correlated with risk-taking, might also explain societal changes and the constant level of stress which is put nowadays on security, safety, financial stability. In one word Stasis. Might also be the reason why a President like Trump is not acceptable whereas John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson who were exactly the same personality and all around the same persona were elevated as heroes (initially by the left but also nationally) There is some hopes though, people who take shots have a much less crowded trade so to speak. There is also the reason why I should remember myself that a guy like Musk extracting his richest man in the world wealth and status from Tesla before the company is even out of the woods of bankruptcy and insolvency would have earned him the title of scam artist and fraudster a while ago. Today people are so adamant and desire to see somebody take a shot that would elevate him and praise him, because in a world where nobody tries , he does. [1] https://youtu.be/XTKXrojiCrA?t=235 https://youtu.be/XTKXrojiCrA?t=235 [2] https://youtu.be/ffvu6Mr1SVc?t=1630 https://youtu.be/ffvu6Mr1SVc?t=1630

fuzzfactor 5y ago

You need to have realistic dreams to be worth following. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the most realistic dreams can be the most ominous by far. And you need to recognize the nightmares early and run the other way.

acdanger 5y ago

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

ivanmontillam 5y ago

Following your dreams also has other problems: What you want to do might not be "marketable" (not everyone might be willing to pay you for it). Whatever you do and you're good at must also match a market requirement, otherwise you will starve.

dmerks 5y ago

I have been following my dreams for... perhaps the past 16 years, since late adolescence. It's always been a part of my makeup to chase after what seems most desirable while being somewhat risk averse. It's been a tumultuous ride. I've made plenty of mistakes, of poor decisions, I've tried many ways of living, I've been lucky and unlucky, I've learned a lot, I've suffered a lot, I've changed a lot. I've sacrificed health and relationships, spent resources aplenty... for mixed results. I can confidently say what make me happiest are my partner of eight years and my two daughters. I feel like I (we) built something nice to continue living carefully with passion. E.g. I decided about two years ago to transition from Education (I was a special ed teacher in the private sector), where I hoped to develop useful tech for learning, to the world of Tech with the same goal in mind. I have always had an affinity for programming-- I have fond memories of making games (e.g. snake), bots, harmless trojans, etc. with the mIRC scripting language--, and an interest in solving problems related to the contents of our minds. I completed a few contracts in web development related to Wordpress (html, css, js, php, mysql) to get myself going, before deciding to learn a stack that would enable me to find better work opportunities or develop a learning product. I settled on React/Apollo/Express/Prisma/Postgres and have been working part-time on a flashcard web app eversince. I'm inspired by the likes of Duolingo, Anki and Quizlet, though I have a special appreciation for Lichess, among others. I wish to make it easier to choose/manage/share what one knows. I would like to generate revenue with this enterprise, but I'm unsure whether I will succeed. If I don't, I wonder how difficult it would be to find work related to what I've learned.

motohagiography 5y ago

Your dreams are mostly envy, I wouldn't put too much stake in them. Knowing this will save you at least a few years. (You're welcome!) Do what you enjoy, understand and appreciate what it means to be among the best at it, and then learn to do it very well.

godfreyantonell 5y ago
Yes. Being a frustrated musician gave me a great appreciation for just how special the greats really are.

iainctduncan 5y ago

That's a great article. I too an earning money doing something I never thought I'd be doing. But I got here just following the scent of what people appreciated me the most for, and most of the time, it's a good job. All of the time, it's a high paying job. And half of my time, I'm not at it. :-) Peter Drucker says in one his seminal business books "look for the easy wins", even when they aren't where you think you should be looking. Because they point you at what you can do really well at. Best business advice I think I could give anyone.

Hermel 5y ago

In my experience, it is much easier to love what you do than to do what you love. I think I could develop a passion for a vast spectrum of goals.

kurthr 5y ago
I agree, but I would expand that to love what you're good at doing... or at least good at learning to do.

whydoyoucare 5y ago

In my experience, the only way to be happy most of the time with what you do is possible iff you are intrinsically motivated to do it. If you make money doing it, that is the best case scenario. Else you can make it a hobby, and still be happy. There are no black and white answers, unfortunately, and tradeoffs always apply.

carapace 5y ago

It's "follow your bliss" and it's metaphysical advice you should be hearing from your guru not something you should be hearing from your career adviser!

sershe 5y ago

Why would one expect following their dream would correlate in any way to success in life? If anything, given that people think (and dream) alike, it would lead to supply glut in specific fields. That is probably a part of the explanation of the low salaries in e.g. education, or working with animals. I can think of other reasons, for an average person, to absolutely not in any way try to follow their dream as a source of livelihood; what are the arguments FOR it, though? How did this idea even come about; is it related to the "self esteem" fad in education?

disambiguation 5y ago

I think the "maslows hierarchy" model applies here. Dreams would be at the top, the mistakes people make is chasing the top without fulfilling their needs first.

jollybean 5y ago

I laughed out loud because all of the girls I grew up with wanted to be 'Marine Biologists' as young kids, which is pretty difficult given how very, very few jobs there are in that field. We should also reference the fact that people coming up through the academic system generally have very little exposure to anything else - it's natural for them to believe that 'professorship' is somehow this great and noble thing, because the system they are in effectively enforces that psychologically. Which is why I believe internships should be a part of the process for almost everyone. Also almost never referenced in these talks: many people have an inherent, communitarian instinct. Their 'dream' isn't that important, rather what they want to do is 'their duty' - which is to say 'be useful to the community'. Personally my communitarian instinct is much stronger than individual aspirational instinct, and so literally 'my dream' is something like 'to do my job very well'. I would be considerably 'more proud' to have effectively created a 'good company' that 'employs people' and 'creates work for others' - than having written a really good album. Those with such a communitarian instict may look at those 'pursuing their dreams' as being selfish. I believe that if you were to ask the questions properly, you'd find that maybe more than 1/2 of the population is like this. For example, raising children is 'exhausting, draining' and generally not considered an aspiration, and yet for many it's possibly the most fulfilling thing they've done in their lives. I wish we would teach children about the fulfillment they get from doing useful things and being of service to others, as much as we taught the aspirational elements.

sjg007 5y ago
I think marine biology is a thing because it is generally introduced in middle school science class. Providing jobs and even providing for your family is very noble.

bawana 5y ago

I can make you hate what you love by making you do it too much and too fast. No matter what you love to do, if you put yourself in a situation where someone else’s job depends on your performance - where you have responsibility but not authority-you will come to hate it.

8bitsrule 5y ago

Finding The Oasis can be difficult. Being good at something that has no meaning for you is a heartless time sink. Here the path of discovery is interesting: college, then career panel, then advisor ... only then personal experience. "finding overlap between what I like and what I'm good at was not easy.... I don't like repeating the same content every year.... I love telling stories about science.... loved the freedom to choose what to write about ... My writing got noticed ... I was given opportunities " When you find a good fit, you radiate. Ananya was the only one who -knew the particulars- s/he needed.