It's at most half done, and it's probably confusing to read.
It might be a good idea to come back later.
Alternatively, you can prod me to write it.
What Doesn't Seem Like Work? (But Is)
“What Doesn’t Seem Like Work? (But is)” is the first of the questions the career guide of 80000 hours asks you, courtesy of Paul Graham.
What doesn’t feel like work is learning something, and then applying something I learned. I could easily spend the rest of my life learning new things, and then applying them until I’m satisfied. Similarly, doing many of the things I’m not good at yet doesn’t really feel like work. (Even though the things I’m good at are the things I probably should do for work. So maybe my comparative advantage lies in “being consistently able to do things I’m not good at yet”? But I’m not so sure about to the extent that’s true either.) Case in point: I’m definitely only okay at writing so far, but I’m enjoying it relatively much?
What doesn’t feel like work is basically anything that get’s me into flow state. And the things that get me into flow state are a combination of:
- building things
- designing things
- writing
- thinking something through in a deep way
- no distractions
- moving as fast as my brain allows
And there are quite a few corollaries for this:
- building things -> a product job/high autonomy
- designing things -> a product job/high autonomy
- writing
- thinking something through in a deep way
- no distractions
- moving as fast as my brain allows (this implies a lot: Learning how to move faster in most of the cases, but also things like automating things, and building (lots of) tools)
As a corollary to this: What doesn’t feel like work is automating things.
What doesn’t feel like work is doing something challenging. Think: In moving-fast terms, in difficulty terms, or in something-new terms.
What doesn’t feel like work is empowering people to do good, and to do better. That’s a big part why I enjoy being at kids camps, and why I like explaining stuff to people. It just feels so good to enable someone to do something they haven’t been able to do before.
- empowering people to do good
- reading
- learning new stuff
- enabling people to achieve stuff the want
- writing
- modeling somthing nicely
- being a rationalist
- coding, I guess
- remembering things
- coming uo with good lessons
- coming up with good talks
- moving fast, fast feedback loops, being able to make decisions fast