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Many successful people love what they do. So they work "insane" hours. For better or worse, these people choose "work" (in quotes because it doesn't feel like

by pud 13y ago

Many successful people love what they do. So they work "insane" hours. For better or worse, these people choose "work" (in quotes because it doesn't feel like work) over watching TV, taking vacations, and spending time with friends. When outsiders observe people like this, outsiders come to the conclusion that said people are successful because of the long hours. When in fact, they're successful because they're obsessed with making it successful. In other words, the takeaway should be "do something you love," rather than "work long hours." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...

kenko 13y ago
Being able to do, and get paid to do, something one loves is a luxury that very few people have. ("Do something you love" is actually quite impracticable as advice.) If you happen to love doing something remunerative, bully for you---but plenty of people have jobs they merely (if they're lucky!) like. It's also highly questionable that people who are successful are successful because they're obsessed with making it successful. Obsessives and workaholics love to play it as if that's what turns the trick, but it's really just as silly as a sports team attributing its success to having "wanted it more". What, like the other guys didn't want it?
- kenko 13y ago
  ... following up to myself (why not?), it's also important, I think, to resist the fallacious inference from "X loves his job" to "X would be happy to work all hours". It really does not hold up, but it's distressingly common in conversations like this to hear the proviso "well of course if you love your job you'll work the long hours and that's fine", but one could well love one's job and have other interests one also considers worth pursuing. Nothing to excess! (Plus holding the fallacious inference to be sound contributes to its pernicious contrapositive: "if you don't want to work all hours, you must dislike it here".)
- solistice 13y ago
  In the book "What I wish I knew when I was 20", the Author brings forth a similar point, stating that doing what you love as a standalone piece of advice isn't that helpful, but a widely held conception. What she advocates is to attempt to find the intersection of "what you love" and "what people are willing to pay you for". From another point of view, Robert Greene tries to mount the horse from the other side, in his book "The 50th Law", where he brings forth that the mastery of any skill at a sufficient level will make you love that skill (kinda like Intellectual Stockholm Syndrome). So there are arguments from the other side as well. If we are to follow Greene's train of thought, most work can be made enjoyable through an unhealthy dose of obsession. On the question whether people are sucessful because they are obsessed, I personally think that it's a contributing factor. The existence of people that are obsessed but not sucessful seems to prove that obsession does not lead directly to sucess, but most people I consider sucessful posess some element of obession. I actually tend to group people by obsession, for example Tim Feriss, Robert Greene, Neil Strauss, Cal Newport, Stephen Key,Perry Marshal etc. by their obsession for different kinds of Systems.
jasonlotito 13y ago
FTA: "I recommend that you do what you love because you love doing it. If that means long hours, fantastic. If that means leaving the office by 6pm every day for your underwater basket-weaving class, also fantastic."
tomasien 13y ago
But you don't HAVE to. Look at the Buffer guys, especially Joel. He works like 2 hours a day on Buffer, but extraordinarily efficiently, and they were profitable and growing before going back in the red to grow more (I'm not actually sure they're back in the red, but the way they're hiring I think they are).

by pud 13y ago

kenko 13y ago

Being able to do, and get paid to do, something one loves is a luxury that very few people have. ("Do something you love" is actually quite impracticable as advice.) If you happen to love doing something remunerative, bully for you---but plenty of people have jobs they merely (if they're lucky!) like. It's also highly questionable that people who are successful are successful because they're obsessed with making it successful. Obsessives and workaholics love to play it as if that's what turns the trick, but it's really just as silly as a sports team attributing its success to having "wanted it more". What, like the other guys didn't want it?

kenko 13y ago
... following up to myself (why not?), it's also important, I think, to resist the fallacious inference from "X loves his job" to "X would be happy to work all hours". It really does not hold up, but it's distressingly common in conversations like this to hear the proviso "well of course if you love your job you'll work the long hours and that's fine", but one could well love one's job and have other interests one also considers worth pursuing. Nothing to excess! (Plus holding the fallacious inference to be sound contributes to its pernicious contrapositive: "if you don't want to work all hours, you must dislike it here".)
solistice 13y ago
In the book "What I wish I knew when I was 20", the Author brings forth a similar point, stating that doing what you love as a standalone piece of advice isn't that helpful, but a widely held conception. What she advocates is to attempt to find the intersection of "what you love" and "what people are willing to pay you for". From another point of view, Robert Greene tries to mount the horse from the other side, in his book "The 50th Law", where he brings forth that the mastery of any skill at a sufficient level will make you love that skill (kinda like Intellectual Stockholm Syndrome). So there are arguments from the other side as well. If we are to follow Greene's train of thought, most work can be made enjoyable through an unhealthy dose of obsession. On the question whether people are sucessful because they are obsessed, I personally think that it's a contributing factor. The existence of people that are obsessed but not sucessful seems to prove that obsession does not lead directly to sucess, but most people I consider sucessful posess some element of obession. I actually tend to group people by obsession, for example Tim Feriss, Robert Greene, Neil Strauss, Cal Newport, Stephen Key,Perry Marshal etc. by their obsession for different kinds of Systems.

jasonlotito 13y ago

FTA: "I recommend that you do what you love because you love doing it. If that means long hours, fantastic. If that means leaving the office by 6pm every day for your underwater basket-weaving class, also fantastic."

tomasien 13y ago

But you don't HAVE to. Look at the Buffer guys, especially Joel. He works like 2 hours a day on Buffer, but extraordinarily efficiently, and they were profitable and growing before going back in the red to grow more (I'm not actually sure they're back in the red, but the way they're hiring I think they are).