On the other hand, you might consider simply finding what you love, and letting the rest take care of itself. Yep, this works great for me. Because I'm never bored by what I love, never discouraged by what I love, never heedlessly irresponsible about what I love, never sick of what I love, never resentful of what I love, never scared to death of what I love. I'm never distracted by what I don't love, never seduced by…
Forget self improvement
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: Forget self improvement
#22Re: Forget self improvement
#23On the other hand, you might consider simply finding what you love, and letting the rest take care of itself. Yep, this works great for me. Because I'm never bored by what I love, never discouraged by what I love, never heedlessly irresponsible about what I love, never sick of what I love, never resentful of what I love, never scared to death of what I love. I'm never distracted by what I don't love, never seduced by…
Look at the bright side, at least there is something you love instead of trying to keep afloat in a sea of indifference and drifting lukewarm interests. Not everyone has it so good.
Re: Forget self improvement
#24Re: Forget self improvement
#25This is fucking bullshit. In the words of Jake, sucking at something is just the first step to being kinda good at something. Often when you are bad at something, you don't enjoy it, often when you are good at something you still don't enjoy it, but the ability to self-discipline, to get good at something despite not enjoying it, translates to power over oneself. If we all just gave up because we didn't enjoy shit in…
Re: Forget self improvement
#26On the other hand, you might consider simply finding what you love, and letting the rest take care of itself. Yep, this works great for me. Because I'm never bored by what I love, never discouraged by what I love, never heedlessly irresponsible about what I love, never sick of what I love, never resentful of what I love, never scared to death of what I love. I'm never distracted by what I don't love, never seduced by…
I'm debugging a double-free in a C library right now. I have basically no information to go on other than the failing test; ASAN/Valgrind was no help, and the liberal assertions sprinkled throughout the code aren't catching it. Many people would say that this is a pretty sucky task, but it is challenging and engrossing enough that I debated not writing this comment (I'll try and keep it short so I can return to my work soon ;-)).
That's why people usually use the metaphor of running. Running is hard work; it is hard on your joints, it is hard on your muscles, it gives you a hell of an aerobic workout and leaves you sweaty and out of breath afterwards. Yet many runners (not I) get a high from the process - not from having finished the race, nor from how fast they finished the race, but just from having run.
Re: Forget self improvement
#27"I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always have."- Andre Agassi What if the things you are good at are not the things you love? What about the opposite? It is too complex to boil down to 'do what you love'.
"Benoît Assou-Ekotto: 'I play for the money. Football's not my passion'"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/may/01/benoit-assou-...
"The footballers that don't really like football"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2007/apr/25/theknowledge....
Re: Forget self improvement
#28If the author can't be bothered, why should you? I realize 99% of blog posts are half-baked throwaway propositions like this one but that doesn't mean we have to validate them with serious rebuttals.
Re: Forget self improvement
#29"I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always have."- Andre Agassi What if the things you are good at are not the things you love? What about the opposite? It is too complex to boil down to 'do what you love'.
What is the point of doing something you are good at if it makes your life worse? Andre Agassi is one of the most interesting people, though.
Most people on earth are not defined by their jobs. They work because they have to. So he could be doing it for the money. Or the girls. Or the publicity. Or the lifestyle. Or the travel. He doesn't have to do it for the sport itself.
The "do something you love and you don't have to work a day in your life" is feel-good BS for relatively affluent or generally lucky in their life path people.
In any case, it only applies to "likable" jobs: a pilot, a manager, a doctor, an artist, a chef, a journalist, a teacher, a programmer etc. E.g jobs that a lot of people CAN find interesting and fulfilling.
But most of the world goes round by the non-likable jobs. Maybe some people like those jobs too --but they are bizarro outliers. The vast majority of people doing them do not like them.
E.g I don't think many people "love" flipping burgers at a McDonalds, washing dishes, or working 16 hour shifts in a mine, or cleaning the streets from garbage. But they do because they have to --until something better comes along. And a lot of them have kids and such dependent on them, they cannot leave it all behind and go chase some Hollywood dream or whatever.
Re: Forget self improvement
#30This is fucking bullshit. In the words of Jake, sucking at something is just the first step to being kinda good at something. Often when you are bad at something, you don't enjoy it, often when you are good at something you still don't enjoy it, but the ability to self-discipline, to get good at something despite not enjoying it, translates to power over oneself. If we all just gave up because we didn't enjoy shit in…
PS. I'm obsessed with Self Improvement and I've grown a lot using those techniques.