Ask HN: Have you found something you love to do? If yes how?

It must depend on the person. I discovered the things I love (writing, teaching, programming, dualsport motorcycling, GIS) by stumbling across them, then honed (a continuing process for life) those skills because I love them.

Did I choose those things? Or was the moment of discovery the moment of choice?

You can do all those things meaningfully: I think it's really about the end product (physical or not) - if you are making something you don't believe is useful to society, or don't have control over how your efforts are being used downstream, then it can easily become inherently meaningless.

There are basic needs: clean water, clean air, infrastructure, transportation, logistics, etc., etc. And also "non-tangible ones". You can get much more authentic social respect if you work on products/services that people unambiguously like and need.

I recommend, for example: - Biomedical: signals, images, ... (I've done a bit) - Anything GIS, urban/transportation planning, geo-spatial analytics, cities, etc. (my chosen specialty, very fulfilling).

There's lots of number crunching, but also human-entry string processing (fuzzy matching, etc.). Actually, very versatile programmatically. And then there is fast graphics (OpenGL, etc.) - not my favourite part, actually, but you can outsource it partly.

You get to work in very multi-disciplinary groups, so you can really assess where you want to go long-term. I was surrounded by people with very similar training to mine - technologically it was pretty good, but topic-wise it was a bit of an echo-chamber.

For me the key is intuition. I do what feels right. If you come across something that you like, do it.

Try something further afield?

I have talked to lots of people who were trying to find their passion and had limited themselves to looking in an area where they felt they could be "well paid." This isn't too surprising because surviving is first, passion is second.

However, what they often don't consider is that compensation is just a part of the picture. If you're making $X and living in New York City you might only be able to rent a room, but making $X in a small town in Minnesota and you can buy the best house in town. Not that I'm advocating you move to Minnesota, rather that one's "Quality of Life" is the complete circle of income/cost of living/friends/opportunities.

Now I have no idea what you're looking at so this might be completely useless but oddly enough, reading people's biographies can give you insights into other choices made and their impact and effect. If you can imagine yourself in those other choices, you can sometimes discover something you would like to try before you've "wasted time" trying something you didn't like. Reading non-fiction for exposure to other life experiences can be helpful in other ways as well, it can help you understand others from a perspective that isn't your own lived experience.

My two cents -

Don't feel too bad if you can't find something you love to do for a long period of time. Many many people don't know what they love to do their entire life. And that's totally okay.

We've been exploring... We might like doing A for 1 year or 2, then switch to love doing B for a few months, then switch to C for another 3 years... It's normal.

How about thinking in this way - What you don't like to do? Just avoid things you don't like to do as much as possible, then you'll be happier.