How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go
You may want to not waste time reading this but instead use that time to read pg's essay on similar ideas, "How to Do What You Love" (<a href="http://paulgraham.com/love.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/love.html</a>), which, if I had the power, I would have millions of copies printed and have every kid in the world read it. It explains (at least) two simple ideas very effectively:<p>1. The work versus fun dichotomy is taught very early:<p>"The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun."<p>2. To compare two activities, you have to compare the area under their utility/fun vs. time curves.<p>"But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.<p>Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something."