Instead of ‘finding your passion,’ try developing it, Stanford scholars say

I've been programming as an adult for something like, 15 years, but I've always had a bit of a difficult balance with formalism and creativity (as well as personal opinion / preference). Have MSc in CS. But I've been hacking away at computers since since I was very young.

I lost something of myself through all my education and in work - namely - be creative. If you grow into that top .1% or whatever, everything becomes 'so serious' in maintaining that position because you effectively become an authority figure in it.

HN recently introduced me to INTERCAL and something just clicked where I was like, this can all be completely ridiculous, AND well done??? It was like all the rules of consistency, analysis relaxed, heavily. I don't have to have a mind that is perfectly structured for all things. I can balance a perspective that is diametrically opposite to all the rules and something can still be built really well.

There's something so serious about programming that has often kept me a neurotic mess about it, always keeping my sense of humor about it cleanly compartmentalized away from my code. I started working on a PhD and the pressure to make everything perfect got to me. I work as a software developer and the pressure to plan code everyone can learn and grow from turned me into an asshole!

There's always plenty of learning to be done but there's not always going to be someone whose going to be able to tell you how to get out of a 'passion rut' for you, and I'd imagine over a lifetime of passion you'd wind up experiencing plateus like that with a fair amount of frequency. Whether you find your passion early or late, maintaining interest for all that time you have can be really tough. It's something people sometimes have to help one another with and sometimes it is something one has to work hard for independently as well.

I really agree with the stress free aspect. My first solution to reduce stress was 'go really slow', tortoise versus the hare mentality. I found myself in a sort of social competition puzzle that wasn't fun and was draining me all of my brain resources automatically, as one side effect. Funny that INTERCAL is that bit of radical novelty dijkstra was talking about, for me. It's just all done the opposite, but for me - it's exactly what my mind and social life turn into when code has to be 'perfect'.

> Maybe is because "just hangout with someone" is not clearly defined. What is the point? what do we want to talk about? I don't socialize a lot outside of work.

I don't socialize much myself either, because sometimes it seems like there is supposed to be a point, but - nitpicking over that mentality in the way one might nitpick over code ... I think that's the wrong way to view relationships.

But there is already a group of people with a bias holding the purse strings. Their bias is towards profitability in every single undertaking they support. If they were replaced with planners - and let's leave aside the question of whether this is practically achievable - we could dispense with that bias. The planners would have their own biases, of course, but it is not clear to me that their biases are worse than the current ones. I suspect they might be better.

You seem to be using the phrase "no skin in the game" to mean "no exposure to financial risk". I would argue for a more expansive definition. A planner, as a member of society, does have skin in the game, as they have in interest in the overall proper functioning of that society and the happiness of its members.

And by "work out" you seem to mean "generate a desired level of financial return". I'm sure you can see how once you free yourself from that definition, the range of things it might seem worthwhile taking a punt on grows much larger. If Johnny wants to spend his life building pasta looms for preparing elaborate lasagnes, the potential upside is probably not very apparent, but the downside is small too and can be justified as an investment in making the society a more interesting place where people can pursue their niche interests.

In my highly subjective view artists are expecting to get paid for something that most of us have the capability to participate in with reasonable results given a similar investment of effort; in other words, most artists differ from the general population not in artistic aptitude, but rather in the desire to be an artist. I would love to sit around and play with ideas for a living, but it doesn't pay the bills in my occupation.

For statistic purpose, I have it at 8.8$ on .com from France (but in a french Caribbean island, so sometimes IP locations are messed up)

Most everyone would agree that it's not really a passion if you don't devote much time to it.