I feel targeted by this post. I was a tall teen who didn’t actually want to play basketball, and now after a decade of unpacking the academia career path (turns out I’m paid to be a cop, not a teacher) I’m starting a coffee business—but at least I have answers to the opening questions.
Great post, but I will add one critique. Many people, me included, will eventually have to choose between what they enjoy and what they are good at. I enjoy making music and can spend hours playing guitar. After 40 years of practice, I am almost good enough to play in the worst imaginable bar cover band. However, I am a fairly good professor and academic administrator, but it’s been a daily grind. My aptitudes and interests have never been a great match.
As an addendum to this (true) comment, it also seems that many people seem unable to understand that one might INTENSELY dislike doing some things one is good at.
There is that facile phrase: "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."
My addendum (which I've personally suffered from in many contexts/instances) is: "Do what you're good at and you will hate every moment of your existence."
There is a former pro baseball player, Anthony Rendon, who seems to just absolutely hate baseball. He played like an all-star, helped the Nationals win a World Series, and then signed a big contract with the L.A. Angels, at which point he completely stopped giving a shit and became a terrible player. The Angels have paid him $79 million over the last two seasons to not play for them.
The legendary Yankees centerfielder Bernie Williams was indifferent to baseball (preferring jazz guitar), but at least had the conscientiousness to try his hardest. (He has had a decent jazz guitar career since retiring from baseball. His music is SO BORING but I'm glad it makes him happy.)
Thanks for the critique. I was about to wholeheartedly agree with Adams post, but you added an important perspective. Depending on something you enjoy doing to pay your bills is a great way to learn to hate that very thing, which is a shame. Choosing something where you have no comparative advantage through sheer talent is also a great way to lead a miserable life, because you will always feel behind. Ideally we may find some line of work where we spend a meaningful amount of time each day with things that we have an aptitude for, feel somewhat meaningful to us, we do not intensly dislike and that pay reasonably well. That doesn't sound very romantic or aspirational, but it can nevertheless be the formula for a working life well spent.
Semi-agreed! Don't you also think once you've reached this practical, "un-romantic" alignment, you could keep pushing further? Gradually hone, shape, and narrow your work or expertise to align even more closely with your unique craziness. The tighter you align, the more distinct (and potentially valuable) your niche becomes, and the more intrinsically rewarding it feels. I suspect many people stop way short of pursuing such ideal alignment due to shortsightedness—especially around short-term risks and lower-hanging extrinsic rewards.
For some people, this will certainly be true. My own experience now that I am approaching retirement after a long career in higher education, is that only some people have that unique and crazy wiring for a niche where they will both excel and find alignment with what they find truly rewarding. I don't believe that there is any evidence that each person has the capacity for such an outcome. Others--like me--are wired more for the ordinary and necessary roles that make the world function. As I reflect on my career, my super power has been consistency--just showing up and getting the job done because that is what life requires of you. And yes, I am a follwer of the Stoics. ;-)
Both can be true, right? Some people's craziness is to hold down the fort while the crazy(-er) people go off doing their crazy things. And crazy people think enjoying holding the fort's a crazy idea.
At the same time, imagine you, with your exact wiring, lived 1 billion lives in parallel. Don't you think there'd be one where you'd stumble onto some life path that tapped into your craziness in an intrinsically and extrinsically rewarding way? I like to think that's true for everyone, in which case we can increase our odds if we try.
Also it doesn't need to a niche. I'm the weird one in my family that went into business and not academia -but listening to them - it seems like there is a lot of room to maneuver one's career on the margin. You could do more teaching if you prefer that, or focus on the research side of thing, or managing a team of researchers, or committee work, or supporting student groups, or community outreach. Probably most academics can shift around the percentages of where they spend their time. Maybe they discover that actually running a lab isn't about doing world class research oneself but writing grants and recruiting postdocs - but that doesn't mean there isn't some area of the job they end up liking more - be it teaching or something else.
My dad went into academia (physics) and does primarily teaching--even his research is about how to teach college classes effectively.
I considered going into academia because I enjoy designing, conducting, and analysing the results of experiments, but I decided I didn't want to write grant proposals all day and sold out to the man (software engineering). Now I spend all day debugging code and it's awesome.
These are great points, and the push and pull between doing something that feels meaningful and doing what pays me well is something I've been struggling with recently. What I love about this idea of unpacking is that is looks under the hood to the nitty gritty, and it has me wondering: are there aspects of the hobbies I love that overlap with a type of job I haven't considered? For myself, I tend to prefer more solitary hobbies like reading, writing, and painting, and now I want to try to unpack those: is it the attention to detail I like? The creative problem solving required in writing or painting? And then, what jobs involve those aspects in their most basic day to day functions?
I would love to know if you've gained any insight pondering those questions. Sincerely, someone who would love nothing more than to read, write, and paint all day.
This is a great idea! I have not yet gained any insight, but my quick and dirty answer usually involves running away to a small European town to have that exact coffee/bookstore that exists only in fantasy
Maybe it's worth "unpacking" everything you love doing (and why you love it), along with your proudest past accomplishments, quirkiest traits, and other dimensions of your unique "craziness." Then, you could feed that data into an LLM (or brainstorm with a VERY patient and insightful friend) to help creatively identify ways to package your unique wiring into something that's both intrinsically satisfying to you and valuable to others.
Thank you for this comment! I value both Adam's perspectives and your comment. I don't see your comment as a critique at all.
There aren't many jobs that only capitalize on what you enjoy doing. A lot of jobs are a combination of what you enjoy doing, what you are good at, and some other unsexy things. To me, unpacking is a tool to try to align your job to what you are crazy about, as much as possible. You might find it easier to align your job to what you are good at (or have paid a tremendous amount of sunk cost).
If so, kudos to you, get that job and compound yourself. You intentionally choose to compound your skills over your interest/happiness - and that is okay. Even Ben Horowitz has advised many to NOT follow your passion.
Hendricks book “Why you can’t be anything you want to be” really speaks to seeing our God given design - and that will give us a sense or purpose even when we don’t like certain aspects of “the job”. But I love the unpacking - it helps de-romanticize the job and if you still get excited about it - that “hell yes” inside - is a winning clue.
What's funny is that I'm pretty sure, in an absolute sense, that I am "better" at a lot of creative endeavors like acting, composing and writing than I am at my actual job (civil engineering and highway design.) But the world needs a lot more people to design highways than it needs actors, so it pays me decently to do this. That's okay.
I also think that some people don’t understand the difference between a “hobby” and a job - I don’t want what I enjoy doing to become something I am paid to do - then it becomes transactional and no longer “fun”. But I think I CAN find something I’m good at and enjoy (mostly) and get paid to do it.
Ehh i was best at guitar after practicing the first 15years.. then.. started to get distracted.. now most people i think I'd play other instruments instead, but… all the people I know who are professionals. Know that they are because they gave up doing something else. Professionally, because it's taken that much of their lives. …
And then yes, they can make a pretty good living doing it, but it's still what they have instead of something else, which is always better frustrating. ….
If I ruled the world—a job I haven't unpacked yet—this essay would be turned into a required high school course. It reminds me of the time I told my psychotherapist I had decided to become a psychotherapist, and he asked, "Are you sure you want to listen to people's problems all day?"
That... sounds oddly appealing, actually. I have the soul of an engineer, and as a smartass once said, engineers like to solve problems, and if there are no problems readily at hand, they will create their own problems.
Haha! Your comment sparks a related question: If there were an all-knowing Ruler of the World, what role would they hire you for to best leverage your particular craziness?
The thing I have found that is quite funny is utter misunderstandings, downright stupidity and out of my entire box thinking have lead to much better results than my ideas. I have had people go in such a wrong direction that I thought I must forgotten how to use the English language who when pressed reveal the utter brilliance of their design compared to my constraints. Sure sometimes it's not even close to what I am looking for and it needs to be pointed out quickly before my mind and wallet are damaged but their are other times I have sat back and watched misinterpretation and alternative methods yield far better results than I could have expected. Methods so adjacent to your thoughts that look bizarre on first inspection might just be brilliance and compliance from another perspective and helps not only to have that perspective but to trust it. At least from time to time.
Love this. I'm a philosophical practitioner (every bit of which I love!) and I think 'unpacking' is most of what I do, though not always career-related. One thing I'm not quite sure about, though, is the idea that you shouldn't enter a career where you don't like doing the thing but you like having done the thing. I think a large part of some careers is doing things you don't like just for brief moments of the feeling of having done it. Writers may be the best examples of this, but I'm thinking it's not the only example? Professional athletes mostly train, and some hate it (I read somewhere that Muhammed Ali hated it), most actors have pretty miserable and penurious lives but feel it's worthwhile for the brief shining moments on stage or screen. And this may not be career-related, but SO many runners hate running but love having run. Is it really bonkers to do something you only like having done? I'm not sure...
This is true! I think in these cases the question would probably be, ‘do you like doing the thing so much that you’re willing to put up with the things you don’t like in order to do it?’ If your answer is yes then suffer for your moment of blazing glory, if not then probably reconsider!
Yes that's exactly it. My son loves sports but often hates the training, and I'm always suggesting to him that he needs to think about whether his hatred of training outweighs the glory of having trained and getting the benefits of it in that moment you describe. And it's interesting, this often helps him choose which sports to stick with. But he seems to have ended up with baseball, which is hilarious as the training is by far the least demanding :)
Yes - as a professional opera singer, I knew several colleagues who disliked rehearsing but loved performing. We're strange beasts, though.
I actually mostly preferred rehearsing to performing, with the exception of those nights when everything caught on fire. There's a sense of shaping something when rehearsing.
The practising (I.e. technique - different to rehearsing) is something that I had to learn to enjoy. I am so glad I did, though; now, I dance tango, and throw myself into the hard work of classes, knowing that they will pay off. What is even better is that the hit rate of great experiences whilst dancing is *much* higher than singing opera. Lucky me!
PS What does a philosophical practitioner do? Sounds like something I could have done with when I spiralled into major depression at university.
I LOVE this idea that in rehearsing, practising or training "there's a sense of shaping something". I totally relate to that. A philosophical practitioner or counsellor works with clients on things like clarifying values, unpacking beliefs and assumptions, questioning convention, and pushing thinking and perception out of its boring habits and into more interesting and more exploratory territory. Thanks for asking, Katy!
Insightful comment and thread. Maybe a useful heuristic here is to unpack not just the job or task, but yourself—deeply enough to articulate your specific "craziness" (your unique mix of values, talents, personality, etc.). Then the uncomfortable or tedious parts become purposeful "shaping work," intentionally designing a life around that authentic core. My sense is that this purposeful shaping reduces the feeling of suffering, maybe even transforming it into enjoyment as your brain learns to connect the effort directly with your deeper narrative.
Decently proficient Biathlete here to shed some enlightenment on this. Runners hate running in the way some people hate laundry. They don't hate having good clothes, they don't hate the idea of maintaining the clothes. Most runners, at least from I see love stretching working out and being physically fit. Why they hate running is that they could have done it better and it hurts. Shooting a gun in biathlon is fun but what isn't is putting downrange 50 bullets and realizing your breathing is off and you just missed the side of a barn door, tour all the metal targets to hell and now have too look at your coach saying or thinking "WTF man." Skiing is fun, shooting but when it comes down to it you have to admit it is a performance and many athletes have a hard time getting you fall to your level of training not your pie in the sky P.R on Joey's downhill turn & strava segment.
That's where the hate is, the pain the lack of perceived growth the frustration of perceived or real stagnation or even worse the feeling of being "behind" on your growth.
As an athlete your oversell and undersell yourself because who we think we are is great and how we perform isn't based on our ego but our training
Oof. A lot of this sounds like people with a talent coupled with an addiction to dopamine in search of the next hit. I get that. But I do not think writing is a good example, and this is backed up by (admittedly anecdotal) evidence of many successful writers who argue against the desire to be an author as a good reason to pursue a career in writing. If you don't love searching for language to tell stories, in other words, if you don't love writing you will be miserable. The money sucks. It's incredibly time consuming, and it's almost impossible to create that time without another source of income, like a spouse with a practical job or a trust fund. This is especially true for parents. I don't want to be pessimistic, but I turn 51 this summer after 20 years as a non-TT lecturer in academia, most of them with a child and without the financial support a person needs in order to have the time to devote to practicing the craft and pumping out books. Many of my childhood friends think my life has been interesting, but at this point, given a choice I would take financially rewarding and stable over interesting without hesitation. Interesting can wait until retirement.
I completely agree that writing only because you want to be a writer is not a great idea. I guess what I’m describing is a little different. I think with writing there can be a kind of love/hate thing, where there are all sorts of things that make it feel awful - mainly things on the order of intense self-doubt - but at the same time when you do find words for something that feels vital, there’s a kind of triumph that nothing else in life can replace. And maybe the best way to distinguish this from just wanting to be a writer is that maybe the latter just wants to have written a book, whereas the lover/hater of writing feels that reward in the very moment of having found the words. Every time.
Unfortunately people keep bundling the things I love (taking meeting notes, solving information organisation and task breakdown / assignment problems, explaining complicated systems to people) with things I hate (being responsible for people's job performance and emotional wellbeing, working long hours, dealing with the whims of upper management).
Currently I'm an individual contributor software developer who takes on a bunch of planning stuff whenever someone will let me. Plus I volunteer as a secretary for a policy working group and an organizer for a large larp event.
> because this is how you will spend your days as a cafe owner. You will not be sitting droopy-lidded in an easy chair, sipping a latte and greeting your regulars as you page through Anna Karenina.
Owners of small European cafes doing exactly the latter beg to differ. Of course they hardly make big bucks (beyond having their basic costs and met), but they do mostly greet the regulars, play some backgammon or cards, and sit all day. Helps when the wife and/or kids also work there, the waiter is just some cousin or fellow from the village, and the regulars wont complain if the coffee takes 15 minutes instead of 5 because they do "have got all day".
As much as I cannot deny that unpacking *is*, in fact, "easy and free" I would happily pay good money for a thoughtfully-designed Unpacking Guide. Sometimes it feels like I've hidden all my valuables underneath all the junk, so to speak.
That’s actually a great idea for a book. If it was well put together and well marketed, it would sell millions of copies at Christmas time. Families would have long conversations debating whether the unpacking of this or that job was accurate.
It's funny, this is something that comes naturally to me. I'm always thinking about different jobs and hobbies and looking under the hood at the realities of that particular endeavor. Adam's coffee shop questions were easy for me to answer, even though (or, more accurately, because) I don't want to run a coffee shop!
I'm a proofreader, and this reminds me of when an acquaintance fresh out of college with an education degree asked if she should be a proofreader. I said, "Are you neurotic? No? Then you shouldn't be a proofreader."
That comma is known as an Oxford comma, and it’s entirely a matter of style whether it’s omitted or not. US English tends to use it, whereas in British English (which is what I was taught) it’s usually omitted.
You might be thinking of an Oxford comma, and it’s entirely a matter of style whether it’s omitted or not. US English tends to use it, whereas in British English (which is what I was taught) it’s usually omitted. In general, though, you don’t always need a comma before “and” - look it up. ;)
Sorry, just being flippant. Isn’t it just great that there are still some places where one can engage over quotidian trivia. Thankyou, and kind regards.
I love grammar and have thought about getting into proofreading, but it looks really hard to get into. Also I’ve wondered if AI has almost made proofreading obsolete.
Yes - I wish politicians and others would stop telling people to "become a coder"! There are already way too many people who are in the field but don't like it or have an aptitude for it. I spent a fun five years living and dying in five microseconds (200kHz loop).
I guess I pass the test. Now that I don't work for money I continue to do what I enjoyed for thirty-five years: designing and building electronic hardware and developing software. I'm a better engineer now than when I was employed.
Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life—Samuel Johnson
I wonder if more people need to start unpacking how (not that) hard it can be un-engage from a particular way of life. I know a professional development coach who says that half of her clients end up unpacking what their next step entails, what it would do to their current way of life etc etc and they then decide the current job is actually not that bad and in the end they are now 10x less miserable.
“It turns out that people vote for the name that they recognize, and it doesn’t really matter why they recognize it.”
There’s actually a solid amount of empirical evidence for this. It’s called the mere-exposure effect, and it’s basically the idea that the more times we’re subconsciously exposed to something, the more we tend to like it. This holds true for how attractive we find faces, how much we like the sound of various words, and how much we like various politicians (assuming we hear their names in a neutral/positive context, rather than a very negative one).
In my opinion, the most interesting application of this is how we tend to like our own reflections more than our real images, while we tend to like other people’s real images more than their reflections. This happens because we are used to seeing our mirrored self, but we’re used to seeing others’ true selves.
Great post. Makes me think of how hard people find it to empathize nowadays but doing the unpacking could lead to lots more of that too. If I realized how “crazy” people had to be to do so many of the jobs that keep the society machine operating I’d probably value them a lot more.
I used your post as inspiration and asked GenAI to unpack a number of popular and prestigious jobs for me. The results were as insightful as they were depressing. In reality, there is a lot of "suck" in most jobs and the game is to find out, with which kind of "suck" you are most willing to put up with in the long run, or even perversely relish it.
Great use of AI, Simon. Another twist to try: flip it around and unpack yourself. Feed in your personality traits, values, strengths, skills, life narrative, likes/dislikes, achievements/failures, etc. Then ask the AI to pattern-match and suggest vocations that not only minimize "the suck," but ideally energize you increasingly over the long run.
One thing about history - there's a lot of it, and you can dive into a lot of things in great detail.
I probably should find an overview of Chinese history to read sometime; I've learned a lot about European history and civilization through school and other sources, but Asia and China in particular has just as much history and I haven't picked up nearly as much of it.
I laughed at that line too, because one time I asked my son, who was then fifteen, what he was listening to. “The Twelve Byzantine Emperors podcast,” he replied, as though it were the most natural answer in the world. He went on to major in history and now works as a research assistant at a law firm, with a side-hustle as a researcher for books about recent history.
It is not the promised 94-part Byzantine Empire, but I do rec The History of Rome podcast. I am closing in on episode 100 and I think it is only halfway done.
I get this concept completely. I was told that I'd be a great teacher even through I didn't really want to be one but spent years of my life trying to get certified anyway. Anyway my 'shortest distance between two points' mentality bumped up against reality in the form of the NYC Board of Ed losing my certification paperwork three years running. I moved to librarianship in 2001 and have been here ever since. The cool part is that I still get to teach, but I also get to deal with books, computers coding and so on.
Another great concept, Adam! It's so useful to learn what a job/project/thing actually entails—not just the public perception and "what comes to mind in 3 seconds when I think of this." This could save a lot of people a lot of struggle. Match your unique craziness to a crazy vocation. Brilliant.
I feel targeted by this post. I was a tall teen who didn’t actually want to play basketball, and now after a decade of unpacking the academia career path (turns out I’m paid to be a cop, not a teacher) I’m starting a coffee business—but at least I have answers to the opening questions.
Best of luck! I hope you never have to figure out the answer to the last one 🙂
Hold up can you unpack how you're paid to be a cop in academia a bit?
Better explanation than I can offer here: https://open.substack.com/pub/experimentalhistory/p/i-wanted-to-be-a-teacher-but-they?r=qx0i&utm_medium=ios
Yes! I hate grading! Have you heard of ungrading? If not, I highly recommend the book edited by Susan D. Blum
I will look for that. Thanks!
Hah! At least you got answers. Good luck on the coffee business. :)
Great post, but I will add one critique. Many people, me included, will eventually have to choose between what they enjoy and what they are good at. I enjoy making music and can spend hours playing guitar. After 40 years of practice, I am almost good enough to play in the worst imaginable bar cover band. However, I am a fairly good professor and academic administrator, but it’s been a daily grind. My aptitudes and interests have never been a great match.
As an addendum to this (true) comment, it also seems that many people seem unable to understand that one might INTENSELY dislike doing some things one is good at.
Yeah, completely agreed.
There is that facile phrase: "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."
My addendum (which I've personally suffered from in many contexts/instances) is: "Do what you're good at and you will hate every moment of your existence."
There is a former pro baseball player, Anthony Rendon, who seems to just absolutely hate baseball. He played like an all-star, helped the Nationals win a World Series, and then signed a big contract with the L.A. Angels, at which point he completely stopped giving a shit and became a terrible player. The Angels have paid him $79 million over the last two seasons to not play for them.
The legendary Yankees centerfielder Bernie Williams was indifferent to baseball (preferring jazz guitar), but at least had the conscientiousness to try his hardest. (He has had a decent jazz guitar career since retiring from baseball. His music is SO BORING but I'm glad it makes him happy.)
Many great authors despise the act of writing.
Thanks for the critique. I was about to wholeheartedly agree with Adams post, but you added an important perspective. Depending on something you enjoy doing to pay your bills is a great way to learn to hate that very thing, which is a shame. Choosing something where you have no comparative advantage through sheer talent is also a great way to lead a miserable life, because you will always feel behind. Ideally we may find some line of work where we spend a meaningful amount of time each day with things that we have an aptitude for, feel somewhat meaningful to us, we do not intensly dislike and that pay reasonably well. That doesn't sound very romantic or aspirational, but it can nevertheless be the formula for a working life well spent.
Semi-agreed! Don't you also think once you've reached this practical, "un-romantic" alignment, you could keep pushing further? Gradually hone, shape, and narrow your work or expertise to align even more closely with your unique craziness. The tighter you align, the more distinct (and potentially valuable) your niche becomes, and the more intrinsically rewarding it feels. I suspect many people stop way short of pursuing such ideal alignment due to shortsightedness—especially around short-term risks and lower-hanging extrinsic rewards.
For some people, this will certainly be true. My own experience now that I am approaching retirement after a long career in higher education, is that only some people have that unique and crazy wiring for a niche where they will both excel and find alignment with what they find truly rewarding. I don't believe that there is any evidence that each person has the capacity for such an outcome. Others--like me--are wired more for the ordinary and necessary roles that make the world function. As I reflect on my career, my super power has been consistency--just showing up and getting the job done because that is what life requires of you. And yes, I am a follwer of the Stoics. ;-)
Both can be true, right? Some people's craziness is to hold down the fort while the crazy(-er) people go off doing their crazy things. And crazy people think enjoying holding the fort's a crazy idea.
At the same time, imagine you, with your exact wiring, lived 1 billion lives in parallel. Don't you think there'd be one where you'd stumble onto some life path that tapped into your craziness in an intrinsically and extrinsically rewarding way? I like to think that's true for everyone, in which case we can increase our odds if we try.
Also it doesn't need to a niche. I'm the weird one in my family that went into business and not academia -but listening to them - it seems like there is a lot of room to maneuver one's career on the margin. You could do more teaching if you prefer that, or focus on the research side of thing, or managing a team of researchers, or committee work, or supporting student groups, or community outreach. Probably most academics can shift around the percentages of where they spend their time. Maybe they discover that actually running a lab isn't about doing world class research oneself but writing grants and recruiting postdocs - but that doesn't mean there isn't some area of the job they end up liking more - be it teaching or something else.
My dad went into academia (physics) and does primarily teaching--even his research is about how to teach college classes effectively.
I considered going into academia because I enjoy designing, conducting, and analysing the results of experiments, but I decided I didn't want to write grant proposals all day and sold out to the man (software engineering). Now I spend all day debugging code and it's awesome.
Agreed
These are great points, and the push and pull between doing something that feels meaningful and doing what pays me well is something I've been struggling with recently. What I love about this idea of unpacking is that is looks under the hood to the nitty gritty, and it has me wondering: are there aspects of the hobbies I love that overlap with a type of job I haven't considered? For myself, I tend to prefer more solitary hobbies like reading, writing, and painting, and now I want to try to unpack those: is it the attention to detail I like? The creative problem solving required in writing or painting? And then, what jobs involve those aspects in their most basic day to day functions?
I would love to know if you've gained any insight pondering those questions. Sincerely, someone who would love nothing more than to read, write, and paint all day.
This is a great idea! I have not yet gained any insight, but my quick and dirty answer usually involves running away to a small European town to have that exact coffee/bookstore that exists only in fantasy
Maybe it's worth "unpacking" everything you love doing (and why you love it), along with your proudest past accomplishments, quirkiest traits, and other dimensions of your unique "craziness." Then, you could feed that data into an LLM (or brainstorm with a VERY patient and insightful friend) to help creatively identify ways to package your unique wiring into something that's both intrinsically satisfying to you and valuable to others.
Thank you for this comment! I value both Adam's perspectives and your comment. I don't see your comment as a critique at all.
There aren't many jobs that only capitalize on what you enjoy doing. A lot of jobs are a combination of what you enjoy doing, what you are good at, and some other unsexy things. To me, unpacking is a tool to try to align your job to what you are crazy about, as much as possible. You might find it easier to align your job to what you are good at (or have paid a tremendous amount of sunk cost).
If so, kudos to you, get that job and compound yourself. You intentionally choose to compound your skills over your interest/happiness - and that is okay. Even Ben Horowitz has advised many to NOT follow your passion.
Hendricks book “Why you can’t be anything you want to be” really speaks to seeing our God given design - and that will give us a sense or purpose even when we don’t like certain aspects of “the job”. But I love the unpacking - it helps de-romanticize the job and if you still get excited about it - that “hell yes” inside - is a winning clue.
Balance is key, I suppose. Searching for the ‘perfect’ occupation can be a trap in and of itself.
What's funny is that I'm pretty sure, in an absolute sense, that I am "better" at a lot of creative endeavors like acting, composing and writing than I am at my actual job (civil engineering and highway design.) But the world needs a lot more people to design highways than it needs actors, so it pays me decently to do this. That's okay.
I also think that some people don’t understand the difference between a “hobby” and a job - I don’t want what I enjoy doing to become something I am paid to do - then it becomes transactional and no longer “fun”. But I think I CAN find something I’m good at and enjoy (mostly) and get paid to do it.
I wonder if there's someone who needs/would pay you for the weird way you play guitar.
Not a chance. There are lots of bad guitar players that will play for free.
is there anything u do particularly badly/weirdly
Ehh i was best at guitar after practicing the first 15years.. then.. started to get distracted.. now most people i think I'd play other instruments instead, but… all the people I know who are professionals. Know that they are because they gave up doing something else. Professionally, because it's taken that much of their lives. …
And then yes, they can make a pretty good living doing it, but it's still what they have instead of something else, which is always better frustrating. ….
We are legion
If I ruled the world—a job I haven't unpacked yet—this essay would be turned into a required high school course. It reminds me of the time I told my psychotherapist I had decided to become a psychotherapist, and he asked, "Are you sure you want to listen to people's problems all day?"
That's freaking hilarious. I want that therapist's number.
That... sounds oddly appealing, actually. I have the soul of an engineer, and as a smartass once said, engineers like to solve problems, and if there are no problems readily at hand, they will create their own problems.
Well that smartass statement actually explains a lot of my life. Dang
Haha! Your comment sparks a related question: If there were an all-knowing Ruler of the World, what role would they hire you for to best leverage your particular craziness?
Feed the ruler insane ideas, half of which would be good ideas.
Interesting idea ;)
The thing I have found that is quite funny is utter misunderstandings, downright stupidity and out of my entire box thinking have lead to much better results than my ideas. I have had people go in such a wrong direction that I thought I must forgotten how to use the English language who when pressed reveal the utter brilliance of their design compared to my constraints. Sure sometimes it's not even close to what I am looking for and it needs to be pointed out quickly before my mind and wallet are damaged but their are other times I have sat back and watched misinterpretation and alternative methods yield far better results than I could have expected. Methods so adjacent to your thoughts that look bizarre on first inspection might just be brilliance and compliance from another perspective and helps not only to have that perspective but to trust it. At least from time to time.
Love this. I'm a philosophical practitioner (every bit of which I love!) and I think 'unpacking' is most of what I do, though not always career-related. One thing I'm not quite sure about, though, is the idea that you shouldn't enter a career where you don't like doing the thing but you like having done the thing. I think a large part of some careers is doing things you don't like just for brief moments of the feeling of having done it. Writers may be the best examples of this, but I'm thinking it's not the only example? Professional athletes mostly train, and some hate it (I read somewhere that Muhammed Ali hated it), most actors have pretty miserable and penurious lives but feel it's worthwhile for the brief shining moments on stage or screen. And this may not be career-related, but SO many runners hate running but love having run. Is it really bonkers to do something you only like having done? I'm not sure...
I've got another post in the works on this exact thing!
This is true! I think in these cases the question would probably be, ‘do you like doing the thing so much that you’re willing to put up with the things you don’t like in order to do it?’ If your answer is yes then suffer for your moment of blazing glory, if not then probably reconsider!
Yes that's exactly it. My son loves sports but often hates the training, and I'm always suggesting to him that he needs to think about whether his hatred of training outweighs the glory of having trained and getting the benefits of it in that moment you describe. And it's interesting, this often helps him choose which sports to stick with. But he seems to have ended up with baseball, which is hilarious as the training is by far the least demanding :)
Yes - as a professional opera singer, I knew several colleagues who disliked rehearsing but loved performing. We're strange beasts, though.
I actually mostly preferred rehearsing to performing, with the exception of those nights when everything caught on fire. There's a sense of shaping something when rehearsing.
The practising (I.e. technique - different to rehearsing) is something that I had to learn to enjoy. I am so glad I did, though; now, I dance tango, and throw myself into the hard work of classes, knowing that they will pay off. What is even better is that the hit rate of great experiences whilst dancing is *much* higher than singing opera. Lucky me!
PS What does a philosophical practitioner do? Sounds like something I could have done with when I spiralled into major depression at university.
I LOVE this idea that in rehearsing, practising or training "there's a sense of shaping something". I totally relate to that. A philosophical practitioner or counsellor works with clients on things like clarifying values, unpacking beliefs and assumptions, questioning convention, and pushing thinking and perception out of its boring habits and into more interesting and more exploratory territory. Thanks for asking, Katy!
Wow, Jo sounds like something I would be interested in
Insightful comment and thread. Maybe a useful heuristic here is to unpack not just the job or task, but yourself—deeply enough to articulate your specific "craziness" (your unique mix of values, talents, personality, etc.). Then the uncomfortable or tedious parts become purposeful "shaping work," intentionally designing a life around that authentic core. My sense is that this purposeful shaping reduces the feeling of suffering, maybe even transforming it into enjoyment as your brain learns to connect the effort directly with your deeper narrative.
Yes I completely agree that this notion of one’s own unique craziness is a very helpful guiding principle!
I concur. I didn't enjoy reading this comment but I'm glad I did.
Decently proficient Biathlete here to shed some enlightenment on this. Runners hate running in the way some people hate laundry. They don't hate having good clothes, they don't hate the idea of maintaining the clothes. Most runners, at least from I see love stretching working out and being physically fit. Why they hate running is that they could have done it better and it hurts. Shooting a gun in biathlon is fun but what isn't is putting downrange 50 bullets and realizing your breathing is off and you just missed the side of a barn door, tour all the metal targets to hell and now have too look at your coach saying or thinking "WTF man." Skiing is fun, shooting but when it comes down to it you have to admit it is a performance and many athletes have a hard time getting you fall to your level of training not your pie in the sky P.R on Joey's downhill turn & strava segment.
That's where the hate is, the pain the lack of perceived growth the frustration of perceived or real stagnation or even worse the feeling of being "behind" on your growth.
As an athlete your oversell and undersell yourself because who we think we are is great and how we perform isn't based on our ego but our training
Oof. A lot of this sounds like people with a talent coupled with an addiction to dopamine in search of the next hit. I get that. But I do not think writing is a good example, and this is backed up by (admittedly anecdotal) evidence of many successful writers who argue against the desire to be an author as a good reason to pursue a career in writing. If you don't love searching for language to tell stories, in other words, if you don't love writing you will be miserable. The money sucks. It's incredibly time consuming, and it's almost impossible to create that time without another source of income, like a spouse with a practical job or a trust fund. This is especially true for parents. I don't want to be pessimistic, but I turn 51 this summer after 20 years as a non-TT lecturer in academia, most of them with a child and without the financial support a person needs in order to have the time to devote to practicing the craft and pumping out books. Many of my childhood friends think my life has been interesting, but at this point, given a choice I would take financially rewarding and stable over interesting without hesitation. Interesting can wait until retirement.
I completely agree that writing only because you want to be a writer is not a great idea. I guess what I’m describing is a little different. I think with writing there can be a kind of love/hate thing, where there are all sorts of things that make it feel awful - mainly things on the order of intense self-doubt - but at the same time when you do find words for something that feels vital, there’s a kind of triumph that nothing else in life can replace. And maybe the best way to distinguish this from just wanting to be a writer is that maybe the latter just wants to have written a book, whereas the lover/hater of writing feels that reward in the very moment of having found the words. Every time.
Unfortunately people keep bundling the things I love (taking meeting notes, solving information organisation and task breakdown / assignment problems, explaining complicated systems to people) with things I hate (being responsible for people's job performance and emotional wellbeing, working long hours, dealing with the whims of upper management).
"I just want to be responsible for doling out tasks, not actually dealing with the consequences!"
As an engineer, you should know: the best design projects are the ones that are never constructed.
Unfortunately, I learned that lesson as a construction engineer…
What do you do?
Currently I'm an individual contributor software developer who takes on a bunch of planning stuff whenever someone will let me. Plus I volunteer as a secretary for a policy working group and an organizer for a large larp event.
> because this is how you will spend your days as a cafe owner. You will not be sitting droopy-lidded in an easy chair, sipping a latte and greeting your regulars as you page through Anna Karenina.
Owners of small European cafes doing exactly the latter beg to differ. Of course they hardly make big bucks (beyond having their basic costs and met), but they do mostly greet the regulars, play some backgammon or cards, and sit all day. Helps when the wife and/or kids also work there, the waiter is just some cousin or fellow from the village, and the regulars wont complain if the coffee takes 15 minutes instead of 5 because they do "have got all day".
A different kind of crazinesss!
As much as I cannot deny that unpacking *is*, in fact, "easy and free" I would happily pay good money for a thoughtfully-designed Unpacking Guide. Sometimes it feels like I've hidden all my valuables underneath all the junk, so to speak.
(Great post)
That’s actually a great idea for a book. If it was well put together and well marketed, it would sell millions of copies at Christmas time. Families would have long conversations debating whether the unpacking of this or that job was accurate.
A book is a great idea, but I bet this concept would do well as a game.
It's funny, this is something that comes naturally to me. I'm always thinking about different jobs and hobbies and looking under the hood at the realities of that particular endeavor. Adam's coffee shop questions were easy for me to answer, even though (or, more accurately, because) I don't want to run a coffee shop!
I'm a proofreader, and this reminds me of when an acquaintance fresh out of college with an education degree asked if she should be a proofreader. I said, "Are you neurotic? No? Then you shouldn't be a proofreader."
Ha, I am actually neurotic (about things like grammar and spelling) and have often wondered if I should be a proofreader.
If you’re going to notice it anyway, might as well get paid for it!
I agree. Btw, a comma before using the word 'and' is generally appropriate ;)
That comma is known as an Oxford comma, and it’s entirely a matter of style whether it’s omitted or not. US English tends to use it, whereas in British English (which is what I was taught) it’s usually omitted.
You might be thinking of an Oxford comma, and it’s entirely a matter of style whether it’s omitted or not. US English tends to use it, whereas in British English (which is what I was taught) it’s usually omitted. In general, though, you don’t always need a comma before “and” - look it up. ;)
Sorry, just being flippant. Isn’t it just great that there are still some places where one can engage over quotidian trivia. Thankyou, and kind regards.
Absolutely! :)
I love grammar and have thought about getting into proofreading, but it looks really hard to get into. Also I’ve wondered if AI has almost made proofreading obsolete.
Very good stuff.
I feel like few people are the right kind of crazy to be software developers. Here is a typical day:
Step 1: Be productive for an hour, then get stuck on some weird bug.
Step 2: Bang your head against the wall for six hours, repeatedly trying and failing.
Step 3. Finally fix the bug, feel amazing relief / frustration that it took so long.
Step 4: Go to step 1.
Yes - I wish politicians and others would stop telling people to "become a coder"! There are already way too many people who are in the field but don't like it or have an aptitude for it. I spent a fun five years living and dying in five microseconds (200kHz loop).
I guess I pass the test. Now that I don't work for money I continue to do what I enjoyed for thirty-five years: designing and building electronic hardware and developing software. I'm a better engineer now than when I was employed.
Sounds perfect, if only you didn't have to be productive for that first hour!
Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life—Samuel Johnson
Sounds like medical school
I wonder if more people need to start unpacking how (not that) hard it can be un-engage from a particular way of life. I know a professional development coach who says that half of her clients end up unpacking what their next step entails, what it would do to their current way of life etc etc and they then decide the current job is actually not that bad and in the end they are now 10x less miserable.
Great quote, Kit. Thankfully, nowadays we can grab a one-way ticket home from just about any remote place on Earth.
Side thought: I believe Darwin hated life at sea, too.
“It turns out that people vote for the name that they recognize, and it doesn’t really matter why they recognize it.”
There’s actually a solid amount of empirical evidence for this. It’s called the mere-exposure effect, and it’s basically the idea that the more times we’re subconsciously exposed to something, the more we tend to like it. This holds true for how attractive we find faces, how much we like the sound of various words, and how much we like various politicians (assuming we hear their names in a neutral/positive context, rather than a very negative one).
In my opinion, the most interesting application of this is how we tend to like our own reflections more than our real images, while we tend to like other people’s real images more than their reflections. This happens because we are used to seeing our mirrored self, but we’re used to seeing others’ true selves.
I still think George W Bush won because everyone thought he was his dad and they heard the name for so long.
Great post. Makes me think of how hard people find it to empathize nowadays but doing the unpacking could lead to lots more of that too. If I realized how “crazy” people had to be to do so many of the jobs that keep the society machine operating I’d probably value them a lot more.
I used your post as inspiration and asked GenAI to unpack a number of popular and prestigious jobs for me. The results were as insightful as they were depressing. In reality, there is a lot of "suck" in most jobs and the game is to find out, with which kind of "suck" you are most willing to put up with in the long run, or even perversely relish it.
Great use of AI, Simon. Another twist to try: flip it around and unpack yourself. Feed in your personality traits, values, strengths, skills, life narrative, likes/dislikes, achievements/failures, etc. Then ask the AI to pattern-match and suggest vocations that not only minimize "the suck," but ideally energize you increasingly over the long run.
Great post and excellent timing for those of us contemplating a retirement career.
Somewhat disappointed there was not a link to the 94-part series on the Byzantine Empire.
It's actually...331 episodes and counting?? https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/
One thing about history - there's a lot of it, and you can dive into a lot of things in great detail.
I probably should find an overview of Chinese history to read sometime; I've learned a lot about European history and civilization through school and other sources, but Asia and China in particular has just as much history and I haven't picked up nearly as much of it.
David Roman’s A History of Mankind covers a good amount of Chinese history, right here on Substack. Seems like a decent place to start.
Ah, another thing to suck me in for days! Thanks!
I laughed at that line too, because one time I asked my son, who was then fifteen, what he was listening to. “The Twelve Byzantine Emperors podcast,” he replied, as though it were the most natural answer in the world. He went on to major in history and now works as a research assistant at a law firm, with a side-hustle as a researcher for books about recent history.
It is not the promised 94-part Byzantine Empire, but I do rec The History of Rome podcast. I am closing in on episode 100 and I think it is only halfway done.
Yes! My son loved that podcast!
I love the History of Rome! I am currently on episode 161 right and whenever I explain this fact to friends or family, they think I’m nuts!
I get this concept completely. I was told that I'd be a great teacher even through I didn't really want to be one but spent years of my life trying to get certified anyway. Anyway my 'shortest distance between two points' mentality bumped up against reality in the form of the NYC Board of Ed losing my certification paperwork three years running. I moved to librarianship in 2001 and have been here ever since. The cool part is that I still get to teach, but I also get to deal with books, computers coding and so on.
Another great concept, Adam! It's so useful to learn what a job/project/thing actually entails—not just the public perception and "what comes to mind in 3 seconds when I think of this." This could save a lot of people a lot of struggle. Match your unique craziness to a crazy vocation. Brilliant.