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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

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.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    That is lack of parental guidance. For example, if a kid has dreams about living in LA and becoming an actor, their guardians should show them the data about the chances of being able to afford various lifestyles. Not that there is anything wrong with that goal, but the kid’s expectations should be in line with reality. If they’re coming out of high school and their goal is “high social status”, something went wrong in the parenting. I would hope that does not apply to the majority, but I guess it’s not out of the realm of possibilities.
    - riccardomc 5y ago
      I think is more nuanced than this. Parental guidance is often the source of the issue: you convince yourself your dream is to be a good student to please or impress your parents, teachers, friends, bosses. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you build a satisfying life for yourself. But make sure that you live your own dream not your parents'. And to avoid that risk, you need to think long and hard how you want to fill your time. This means focusing on what you like to do instead of being miserable being someone you're not.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        > Parental guidance is often the source of the issue: you convince yourself your dream is to be a good student to please or impress your parents, teachers, friends, bosses. That sounds like a different issue. By parental guidance, I mean offering your experience and resources as a parent to the child to help them model their world. For example, if my kid came to me and said their goal is to make and sell clay art full time, then I would not dissuade them. I would, however, ask them if they have other goals like buying a nice house or living in a certain area or attracting a certain type of spouse, and let them know of the various probabilities of that. A parent is a cabinet member, the kid is still the president. > This means focusing on what you like to do instead of being miserable being someone you're not. The purpose of my original comment was to point out that most people do not have the luxury of not being miserable just because they do not want to be. A plumber does not spend time in crawl space because they like to. But the plumber has multiple goals, and compromises have to be made to accomplish various portions of various goals. Such as not being able to do what you like to do for x hours a week, but in exchange, you get a high probability of being able to feed and house your family to your acceptable standards. And then having a couple days a week where you do get to “be someone you want to be”.
unishark 5y ago
There is something to be said for the therapeutic value of failing miserably, when it comes to helping you move on and live without any more regrets about it. The problem with a dream like marine-biology-professor in particular is it can take so many years to find out you have failed due to the tantalizingly low rung of grad school admissions and postdoc jobs.
rationalData 5y ago
This doesn't work in the medical field. Physicians are the wealthy king's and every layer under asks for permission. A high school grad may be vaguely aware of this, but the reality is that many people choose to be a nurse and find out later the realities of the job. There's no research, there is little growth. You don't get to change your job. Your title is exactly what you do. Same story for the various lab techs.
carapace 5y ago
It's interesting that the perspective change seems to involve switching from a future projection (of what you want to be[come]) to in-the-moment (what makes you happy as you do it.)
alert0 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. This was a huge shift in mentality for me. I wanted to do exploit dev, I wanted to (and for a while, did) teach computer security online, and the list goes on. There was always this huge dissonance when I didn't do those things. Then I sat down and looked at what I did do. I program obsessively. I defined that as what I enjoyed doing, rather than conflating what I wanted to do or be with what I enjoyed doing. I don't reverse engineer or create content for 10 hours a day. I do sit down and work on problems I'm excited about though.
randomsearch 5y ago
I agree. This is the biggest misunderstanding about what “follow your passion” means. It doesn’t mean “I want to win Wimbledon so I should follow my tennis” It means “I love playing tennis. I should pursue that and make it my vocation.” The attacks on “follow your passion” really annoy me, because they’re based on a straw man that says - you need to blindly follow what you enjoy and ignore all other concerns. Which is stupid, and no one would ever advocate for that. We’re just saying - life is short, do what you love, and aim to make it your main vocation. All within reason, which shouldn’t need to be said. And now all these people are saying “don’t follow your passion follow the money” and it’s just the worst advice, because at least if you follow your passion you’ll enjoy what you do some of the time, even if that time is around a day job.
- 8bitsrule 5y ago
  It's a helluva lot easier to wake up and do something every day that has a lot of meaning/appeal for you. IF that something is really social status, OK. But that means nothing for a whole lot of people. (In my experience, it's the majority.) If what you really care about doing quickly eventually liberates you from laboring at it, you'll not stop - you'll have a lot more liberty to expand outward from that core and build on it. No matter how little most people appreciate it (set theory, for example) ... who cares? there will always be a least a few others.
TheRealNGenius 5y ago
So basically what you're saying is it's about the journey rather than the destination... I like it

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.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  That is lack of parental guidance. For example, if a kid has dreams about living in LA and becoming an actor, their guardians should show them the data about the chances of being able to afford various lifestyles. Not that there is anything wrong with that goal, but the kid’s expectations should be in line with reality. If they’re coming out of high school and their goal is “high social status”, something went wrong in the parenting. I would hope that does not apply to the majority, but I guess it’s not out of the realm of possibilities.
  - riccardomc 5y ago
    I think is more nuanced than this. Parental guidance is often the source of the issue: you convince yourself your dream is to be a good student to please or impress your parents, teachers, friends, bosses. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you build a satisfying life for yourself. But make sure that you live your own dream not your parents'. And to avoid that risk, you need to think long and hard how you want to fill your time. This means focusing on what you like to do instead of being miserable being someone you're not.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      > Parental guidance is often the source of the issue: you convince yourself your dream is to be a good student to please or impress your parents, teachers, friends, bosses. That sounds like a different issue. By parental guidance, I mean offering your experience and resources as a parent to the child to help them model their world. For example, if my kid came to me and said their goal is to make and sell clay art full time, then I would not dissuade them. I would, however, ask them if they have other goals like buying a nice house or living in a certain area or attracting a certain type of spouse, and let them know of the various probabilities of that. A parent is a cabinet member, the kid is still the president. > This means focusing on what you like to do instead of being miserable being someone you're not. The purpose of my original comment was to point out that most people do not have the luxury of not being miserable just because they do not want to be. A plumber does not spend time in crawl space because they like to. But the plumber has multiple goals, and compromises have to be made to accomplish various portions of various goals. Such as not being able to do what you like to do for x hours a week, but in exchange, you get a high probability of being able to feed and house your family to your acceptable standards. And then having a couple days a week where you do get to “be someone you want to be”.

unishark 5y ago

There is something to be said for the therapeutic value of failing miserably, when it comes to helping you move on and live without any more regrets about it. The problem with a dream like marine-biology-professor in particular is it can take so many years to find out you have failed due to the tantalizingly low rung of grad school admissions and postdoc jobs.

rationalData 5y ago

This doesn't work in the medical field. Physicians are the wealthy king's and every layer under asks for permission. A high school grad may be vaguely aware of this, but the reality is that many people choose to be a nurse and find out later the realities of the job. There's no research, there is little growth. You don't get to change your job. Your title is exactly what you do. Same story for the various lab techs.

carapace 5y ago

It's interesting that the perspective change seems to involve switching from a future projection (of what you want to be[come]) to in-the-moment (what makes you happy as you do it.)

alert0 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. This was a huge shift in mentality for me. I wanted to do exploit dev, I wanted to (and for a while, did) teach computer security online, and the list goes on. There was always this huge dissonance when I didn't do those things. Then I sat down and looked at what I did do. I program obsessively. I defined that as what I enjoyed doing, rather than conflating what I wanted to do or be with what I enjoyed doing. I don't reverse engineer or create content for 10 hours a day. I do sit down and work on problems I'm excited about though.

randomsearch 5y ago

I agree. This is the biggest misunderstanding about what “follow your passion” means. It doesn’t mean “I want to win Wimbledon so I should follow my tennis” It means “I love playing tennis. I should pursue that and make it my vocation.” The attacks on “follow your passion” really annoy me, because they’re based on a straw man that says - you need to blindly follow what you enjoy and ignore all other concerns. Which is stupid, and no one would ever advocate for that. We’re just saying - life is short, do what you love, and aim to make it your main vocation. All within reason, which shouldn’t need to be said. And now all these people are saying “don’t follow your passion follow the money” and it’s just the worst advice, because at least if you follow your passion you’ll enjoy what you do some of the time, even if that time is around a day job.

8bitsrule 5y ago
It's a helluva lot easier to wake up and do something every day that has a lot of meaning/appeal for you. IF that something is really social status, OK. But that means nothing for a whole lot of people. (In my experience, it's the majority.) If what you really care about doing quickly eventually liberates you from laboring at it, you'll not stop - you'll have a lot more liberty to expand outward from that core and build on it. No matter how little most people appreciate it (set theory, for example) ... who cares? there will always be a least a few others.

TheRealNGenius 5y ago

So basically what you're saying is it's about the journey rather than the destination... I like it