How to be Happy: Always Produce
Aug 22nd, 2011 by Carlos
A friend of mine sent me a really long post called How to Do What You Love that’s a great conversation starter. It goes into all of the “big” questions my friends and I are always asking each other. Stuff like:
- Is it possible to find a job you’re passionate about?
- What about the money?
- Do jobs have to, by definition, suck?
Another test you can use is: always produce. For example, if you have a day job you don’t take seriously because you plan to be a novelist, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? As long as you’re producing, you’ll know you’re not merely using the hazy vision of the grand novel you plan to write one day as an opiate. The view of it will be obstructed by the all too palpably flawed one you’re actually writing.
“Always produce” is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you’re supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. “Always produce” will discover your life’s work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.
- I was writing page after page of fiction.
- I had note cards scattered everywhere with different ad campaigns and concepts I was putting together
- I was starting new sites and drafting content for them
Carlos,
Isn’t it funny that when you “Do what you love,” you don’t mind the long hours and you leave work with a smile on your face? At my old job, I earned a living, but I produced for someone else, and at the expense of my health and family life.
It came to the point that I had to make the decision to stay on the merry-go-round or ride the roller coaster, and I chose the latter. Its still new, and I sometimes think “What have I done??” But when I calm down, I don’t regret it at all and it gives me that much more motivation to succeed and fulfill my dream before I’m too old to do it! Thought provoking post and I really enjoyed it.