Ask PG: What prompted you to write "How to Do What You Love"

[ThinkADRIAN]

I discovered Paul Graham and Y Combinator in 2010 when I Googled "do what you love". It prompted me to start a business called Do What You Love. Three years later I revisited my blog post about finding PG's article. I am just wondering what prompted PG to write it in the first place???

[jseliger]

I don't know how old you are, ThinkADRIAN, but my sense is "young." Pretty much everyone faces questions like the ones addressed in "How To Do What You Love" when they're growing up; those questions don't go away as you age, but you get enough context for them that they're not so hard to answer.

At that point, you start to notice that pretty much everyone younger than you has the same set of life stage problems and questions that you did. This is doubly true if you have a lot of exposure to high school students, college students, or recent grads, or if you write popular essays.

Rather than trying to answer the questions, and the thought behind the questions, piecemeal, it's easier to write one comprehensive answer and both direct people to it and let people find it on their own.

I can't guarantee that that was pg's line of reasoning, but I suspect it's reasonably close.

[ThinkADRIAN]

When I read that essay, I wondered why they don't teach this stuff in high school or college. Years beyond education, people are still not doing what they love. A lot people drag their feet going to jobs where they don't feel fulfilled until they finally retire.

I just wondered what inspired PG to write almost a manual on the subject. So I asked... "If you don't ask, you don't get."

[jseliger]

>I wondered why they don't teach this stuff in high school or college

I actually have assigned it and some of Paul Graham's other essays; many students, however, appear to reject his advice, or are not ready to listen to it.

[akproxy]

Well, he is going to delete his HN account on of these days. Everybody seems to get off the commode and fire a question to PG.

BTW, @pg: is possible to delete a HN a/c (by the user I mean)?

[ThinkADRIAN]

Yes. I asked him a question about an essay he wrote... Is that not worthy of this forum?

"If you don't ask, you don't get."