Comment by Lerc
6 months ago
In 1997 Kurt Vonnegut did not write
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
I'm not sure if Mary Schmich (who did write it) takes pride in her words being frequently credited to an esteemed writer, or if it rankles. Later Baz Luhrmann made the words into a #1.
Anyway, I agree. You don't need to know where to go next, just be curious and find things as you investigate. Sometimes a project will call to you. Don't be concerned if it hasn't yet.
Your project does not have to be a business. If you wanted to embark on a Dwarf Fortress kind of project you could happily work at it for the rest of your life without needing it to be a money making venture. Your Dwarf Fortress might be A database of the world's cheese or a castle built entirely from synthetic diamonds you produce one at a time from your own machine. It doesn't have to be easy or even possible to complete. I don't think you can decide on something and go do it. I think your thing will tell you when it is ready.
Thanks for writing this. It reminds me of Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford.
> Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Until it killed him (ignoring doctors advice on cancer)
He had an inoperable cancer and wanted to spend his remaining time doing what he wanted rather than sitting in a hospital getting ultimately fruitless treatments. Pancreatic cancer doesn't fuck around. It's not like he died of pneumonia because he loved sleeping outdoors in the rain.
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Agreed, but it’s remarkable how well this approach worked for him till then. No approach can solve every problem. I wonder if this one, on balance, was the right one for him, or for others.
Lol, yeah, there is that...
You can connect the dots easy when winning the lottery or being Steve Jobs. But for the majority will not magically connect.
In short this is called survivorship bias.