{"id":12490,"date":"2024-10-02T11:07:24","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T15:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=12490"},"modified":"2024-10-02T11:07:24","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T15:07:24","slug":"should-you-do-what-you-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=12490","title":{"rendered":"Should You Do What You Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nPaul Graham has another great post up. This time <a href=\"https:\/\/paulgraham.com\/when.html\">it&rsquo;s about whether you should chose to work on what interests you<\/a>. To a first approximation, it seems like a no-brainer: of course you should. But what if you want, or need, to earn a lot of money?\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIf what you&rsquo;re really interested in is 12<sup>th<\/sup> century poetry, you can follow that dream but you will almost certainly have to live on a pittance. On the other hand, if you choose work that maximizes your income, you could end up spending a miserable life doing something you hate. Lots of people pick one of those choices.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe real desiderata it seems to me\u2014and, I think, to Graham\u2014is what&rsquo;s going to make you happiest. It may be lots of money or it may be 12<sup>th<\/sup> century poetry. Of course, the decision is not quite that facile. It&rsquo;s hard to strike the right balance.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSometimes there&rsquo;s no conflict. As Graham says, if you want to make a lot of money and you&rsquo;re good at, say, football, the decision is easy. Realistically, most of us aren&rsquo;t going to be professional athletes even if it&rsquo;s what we really want to do so it&rsquo;s almost always a balancing act.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nGraham has a few suggestions to help you find the right career. It&rsquo;s hard to navigate through this conundrum but it really boils down to whether you love 12<sup>th<\/sup> century enough to live in poverty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Graham has another great post up. This time it&rsquo;s about whether you should chose to work on what interests you. To a first approximation, it seems like a no-brainer: of course you should. But what if you want, or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=12490\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-12490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12491,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12490\/revisions\/12491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}