‘Find Your Passion’ Is Awful Advice
<i>“Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” is another college-counseling standby of unknown provenance.</i><p>That is probably the biggest load of crap foisted on pop culture in a while. I love what I do, and I work every day. This morning&#x27;s task is reviewing a help file for accuracy. Hol-ee shite, that&#x27;s not why I got into programming computers when I was 12. But it needs to be done, and I&#x27;m one of the ones that can knowledgeably review it. I really should write that test plan, but I keep putting it off for obvious reasons. Oh, sure, I get to play Puzzle Solver by shuffling some bits around, and it&#x27;s what I spend most of my days doing, but it ain&#x27;t all fun and games.<p>And that&#x27;s just Working for The Man(tm). Gonna start a brewpub? Maybe an online SaaS business? Oh, my friend, your crap work has just begun; so much so, you might have to leave the fun stuff to your employees. You will work every day, and hard.<p>Don&#x27;t get the wrong idea, I look forward to going to work most days, and I&#x27;ve been doing this for a long while. But there&#x27;s a reason they call it &quot;work&quot;, and there&#x27;s a reason they pay you. Enjoy the hell out of the enjoyable parts, and when the less enjoyable work comes, remember that you are (if of the average HN demographic) paid handsomely for it.