Do What You Love, For Its Own Sake

February 19, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

Finding work in today’s economy is not easy. The recession has had lingering effects, and many people have been put out of work by globalization and automation. Some of those jobs are never coming back.

Retraining programs are available to help people start new careers. Many workers are skeptical about the long-term benefit, though. Getting certified to operate a manufacturing robot, for instance, wouldn’t be much use if the robot became obsolete soon afterward. Rapidly advancing technology has created the specter of a nightmarish future where workers routinely get laid off every few years as their occupations vanish.

Modern technology also has created great wealth for those in the right place at the right time. So it’s not surprising to see people changing careers in the belief they’ll find more success pursuing their dreams. “Do what you love, and the money will follow,” is a common adage nowadays. It often goes along with the New Age notion that visualizing success creates good vibes and thus naturally attracts the desired success.

We all filter our reality through the narratives we use to describe it. When we frame our circumstances in more positive terms, we’re likely to believe that more is within our reach. Visualization can be an effective tool for self-hypnosis and focusing the subconscious mind on a goal. The subconscious doesn’t distinguish between fantasy and reality as the conscious mind does.

To that extent at least, we do attract what we imagine, simply because we pay more attention to events that fit the storyline. We are more likely to overlook things when they don’t match what we expect to find. Some of that is just confirmation bias; but visualization also has a dress-rehearsal effect, making us more aware of the necessary details.

Regardless of what opinions one might have about attracting success with good vibes, I think it’s helpful to consider just what success is. Today’s culture encourages finding ways to “monetize” whatever we do. Until very recently, that usage of the word wasn’t even in the dictionary; monetization was something that governments did when they printed money and managed the public debt. But nowadays, there is a widespread belief that anyone who loves something ought to make a career out of selling it.

Of course, not everyone feels that way. The Information Age also has brought about a huge explosion in free creative content, such as open-source software, wikis, Creative Commons, and so forth. Free access is very important to these communities. Their philosophy can be summed up as “Do what you love, for its own sake.”

Although these two very different approaches to “Do what you love” may seem to be diametrically opposed, I see a lot of practical overlap. Putting time and effort into a hobby can improve an existing career. For example, when a software developer spends his evenings writing open-source code, he may end up getting a better job as a result of keeping his skills sharp. Hobbies and volunteer work also can provide valuable networking opportunities. And even if a hobby is completely unrelated to a person’s real-life career, developing a new skill has general positive effects such as feeling more capable and confident, which can lead to more success on the job.

Starting a new career based on one’s passion may seem a tempting idea. Anyone seriously thinking about it needs to be aware, however, that passion often is not the determining factor in whether a new venture succeeds or fails. Having a great love of gardening, for instance, does not ensure that a new landscaping company will be a success. The owner also must have enough business savvy to find clients, keep the corporate paperwork in order, manage the employees, and so forth.

Even if a small business owner does everything perfectly, the business may fail if the economy turns sour. Many companies went bankrupt during the recession because some of their clients went out of business or placed smaller orders, and the banks didn’t have credit available to cover the cash-flow shortfall.

That said, a business venture that doesn’t work out should be viewed as a temporary setback, not as a lifelong failure. Much can be learned from trying new things, whether or not they make money. As to both hobbies and career changes, when we do what we love, something good is likely to follow. It’s not necessarily going to be money, though, and we need to frame our expectations accordingly.

Falling Birthrates Won’t Make Humans Extinct

January 21, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

Sometimes I see articles discussing how far the birthrate has fallen in many countries and pointing out that this is a worldwide trend. Families are much smaller than they were in the past, and many young adults are opting not to have children at all. The authors often make dire predictions as to what will happen if this trend continues for another millennium or so, leaving a tiny human population on the brink of extinction.

There aren’t enough reasons to want children in today’s society, they say. In past generations, large families had economic value because children worked on the family farm. As they grew older, they took care of their aging parents, who might otherwise be left destitute upon becoming unable to work. But nowadays, a child is just an expensive, time-consuming luxury item. Even in countries where the government provides good child care and pays generous stipends to parents, birthrates remain low. Simply put, modern-day humans have many other things they’d rather be doing than raising families.

While I agree with the short-term prediction that the world’s population will soon reach its peak and then begin falling, I don’t see this as a cause for alarm. As I see it, the resulting labor shortage and high salaries will be very good for wage-earners. Raising a family on one parent’s salary, while the other parent stays home with the children, will be an affordable choice. Lost career opportunities won’t be as much of a concern because the average lifespan will continue to increase. A parent who stays home raising a large family until age 50 might reasonably expect to have a productive career until age 100, or perhaps even longer. Employment discrimination will be much less of a problem because of the labor shortage. Because the young adults of the future will not have to face today’s social and economic constraints with regard to families, their choices may turn out to be very different from what we’re seeing now.

When I wrote this post, my main purpose wasn’t to reassure worried readers that humans are not heading toward extinction. Nor am I suggesting that all children would be better off with a parent who does not work outside the home. Rather, this post is meant to illustrate how current trends often become absurd when they’re extrapolated out too far. We lack a sufficient frame of reference to predict what will happen in the long term because our baseline assumptions soon become outdated. Thus, although a calm, well-reasoned focus on solving present-day problems may not get as much attention as shrieking about a coming apocalypse, the former approach generally results in wiser policy decisions.

Do What’s Needed

July 7, 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

Because our society has become so competitive, we’re often advised to focus on doing our best, rather than worrying about whether we have accomplished as much as others. Many people find this advice helpful because it frees them from the stress of always comparing themselves to others and falling short in some way. In a world of more than seven billion human beings, interconnected by modern technology, we are bound to find others who have accomplished more in almost any endeavor. Striving to outdo everyone is likely to be an impossible goal. Even those who manage to set a world record, through great effort, often find that someone else surpasses it in a matter of months.

In general, I agree that it makes good sense not to be overly concerned about measuring up to others’ accomplishments. But there is also a perfectionist trap in “do your best” because no matter what we do, there is probably something we could have done better. By definition, our best can’t be sustained as a long-term steady state. When we’re having a good day, we can do our best; but there will be other days when we’re distracted, or we didn’t get enough sleep, or we haven’t adequately processed a complex task and don’t feel able to deal with everything it involves. That happens to all of us, and we shouldn’t feel guilty because we’re not doing our best at a particular moment.

My preference, rather than always striving to do my best, is simply to do what needs to be done. By nature I’m picky anyway; in my writing, I often change a lot of words until it’s flowing just the way I want it. I don’t need the additional stress of always worrying about whether I’m doing the best possible work. Instead of obsessing all day about the small details, it’s generally more useful just to get the task finished and move on to something else.

Of course, that does not mean rushing through things with only the bare minimum of effort. Doing what needs to be done requires allowing enough time to do it properly. That way, if a task isn’t going well for whatever reason, we can just set it aside for a while and come back to it later, when we’re feeling more focused. And then if we’re still having problems with it, we have enough time to ask for help. Our hyper-competitive modern culture has left some people feeling that they always have to do everything by themselves, or else they’ll be incompetent failures; but in fact, there’s no shame in asking for help when we need it, and we may discover that those we ask are glad to help.

I’ve learned from participating in online creative writing groups that everyone has different perspectives on what makes good work, and usually they’re not shy about sharing their opinions. Of course, what one person prefers is not necessarily going to suit someone else; but if we can get past our defensiveness about being told that there’s room for improvement in our work, we are likely to find others’ views at least somewhat useful.

A corollary of the observation that everyone has different perspectives is that when we try to do our best, it’s not a clearly defined goal. What is our best, anyway? Do we really know? All of us have had the experience of being proud of an accomplishment, only to realize later that we made an embarrassing mistake. As we go through life and learn more about our world, we see many things differently. What we consider our best work at age 50 is not what we thought at age 25, for instance. And by that I don’t just mean we develop more skills; we also gain more insight into the social context and consequences of our acts. Are we at our best when we outperform our coworkers, or when we take a little time that might have gone into our work and help them to improve theirs? When we put huge amounts of effort into accomplishing a very ambitious task, at the cost of stressing ourselves out and spending very little time with family and friends, is that our best? Does the highest salary automatically equate to the best career choice, and if not, what other factors are important to consider?

Although striving to put our best efforts into everything we do may sound like a noble goal, in practice it’s highly likely to cause us to suboptimize—that is, to accomplish things that look good in themselves, but that actually detract from our well-being because we haven’t fully understood how they fit into the big picture. Instead of feeling obligated to work as hard as we can on each particular task, we should consider how the task fits into our long-term goals, and then set our priorities accordingly.

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