Re:Do whatever you can't stop thinking about
by asdfman123 on Sunday March 08, 2020 @12:55PM
(#22519044)
This isn't advice so much as one person advertising his own professional status. But this article hits upon a good point:
> To the experts, what looks like hard work from the outside, is play from the inside.
People who are obsessed with "motivation" point to people like Elon Musk who work extreme hours, and recommend others do the same. But they have cause and effect backwards.
You start working insane hours when your own personal talents align with society's rewards, and you are blessed/cursed with ambition that demands to be satisfied.
Elon Musk didn't start off saying, "I'd rather spend time with my family and play video games, but I'm going to start working 80 hours a week to get rich." No, it started with a spark within him. How did it get there? I can't say.
They say talent is rare, but I don't think that's true. I believe what is rare is the intersection of talent and ambition.
I've been on both sides of this -- I've been very ambitious, and I've been not very ambitious in different parts of my life. It's hard to work your butt off when you don't feel particularly ambitious, and it's hard not to when you do.
> To the experts, what looks like hard work from the outside, is play from the inside.
People who are obsessed with "motivation" point to people like Elon Musk who work extreme hours, and recommend others do the same. But they have cause and effect backwards.
You start working insane hours when your own personal talents align with society's rewards, and you are blessed/cursed with ambition that demands to be satisfied.
Elon Musk didn't start off saying, "I'd rather spend time with my family and play video games, but I'm going to start working 80 hours a week to get rich." No, it started with a spark within him. How did it get there? I can't say.
They say talent is rare, but I don't think that's true. I believe what is rare is the intersection of talent and ambition.
I've been on both sides of this -- I've been very ambitious, and I've been not very ambitious in different parts of my life. It's hard to work your butt off when you don't feel particularly ambitious, and it's hard not to when you do.