I used to hear that phrase “Do what you love,” and think, “That’s a lot of woo-woo hippie-ish BS,” about loving everything, always being happy, The Secret, etc.
“Life’s not like that,” I’d counter, “sometimes it throws a lot of suck your way.”
Now, though, I agree with that phrase wholeheartedly, but maybe in a slightly different way: “Do what you love, because you’re going to have to put up with a lot of suck along the way, and something is going to need to carry you through those times. May as well be love.”
I first got the self-employment bug in 1999 while at Procorp, the Hong Kong office of the company I worked for at the time. It was a very specific moment, and I remember thinking, “I love what I do, more than anything else, but I don’t want to do it for someone else.”
It was about 3 years between that moment and my first self-employed economic activity (that Branch Benders container from China that I mentioned last week), and there were, before that and since, many things that would have me slapping my forehead and saying, “I’m such a putz, what was I thinking?!” I’ve driven myself into the land of suck more times than I care to admit.
In my 25 years of self employment, I’ve learned many things, but the main one is this: Despite my best efforts to learn and research and avoid shooting airballs, 80% of the things I am doing at any given time will come to absolutely nothing.
Which means that 80% of the things I spend my precious energy on today will be complete wastes of time, and five years from now, I’m going to look at my day today, slap my forehead and say, “I’m such a putz, what was I thinking?!”
(Read Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money if you haven’t already, he will bear me out on this, I’m not the only one who thinks this way, I swear.)
That brings me to the second biggest thing I’ve had to learn over the years, and that is that almost every single day you’re going to have to kill off something you thought was brilliant just a couple years ago, that killing the remnants of the idea you thought was so brilliant just a few years ago is the only way you will make room for what needs to come next. On that theme is this podcast episode…
If this subject of killing off the things that are dear to you resonates, here’s a bonus: One of my favorite interviews ever. The interviewee is Ira Glass, a big-time radio host in the US (the Americans on this list will recognize the name in a second):
https://recipientlabs.com/ira-glass-interviews/
He talks about this idea, of killing stuff, in the second video. And yes, these are pirated videos, but I know almost everyone on this list, and I think I am safe from the copyright lawyers, at least for now. Besides, his comments are pure gold, and easily worth the risk. (Ask me if I still feel like it was worth it when I am reliving a scene from The Shawshank Redemption.)