What. How. Why. Pic two but not the first.

NOTE: This is one is probably better read on Medium.com - it's mirrored here too for archival purposes.

TOC:

1. TL;DR (abstract) — for the impatient
2. Problem statement & the “do what you love” fallacy
3. A better way to do it (proposed solution)
4. The “starting with the how” or “engineer’s way” fallacy
5. When stars align — the why-s that can also be what-s

1. TL;DR (abstract) — for the impatient

There’s no easy way to summarize this in less than 1000 words. A picture is worth 1000 words. So here you go (better read on and come back to the diagram later though):

2. Problem statement & the “do what you love” fallacy

(how I also used to live my life for a while…)

We live in an age of abundance. Probably like 90% of people reading this live in an area of the world where this abundance is fully manifested!

And this also manifests as an abundance of choices and freedoms. Despite the restrictions we so painfully perceive when they’re laid upon us (by work, school, family etc.), we still have so many:

• options when choosing what to do — small and short term stuff like what task to start work with, what leisure activity to pick for this vacation day, big and long term stuff like what career to choose, which person to spend more of your life with, what business idea to develop
• ways to choose from how to do something — should I give this particular thing my best effort, or just do it halfheartedly while daydreaming of something else? should I work hardest to make this project into a “portfolio highlight” that will showcase the best of my abilities and talents, or just do the minimum necessary and focus on getting as many things done instead? should I show off my artistic creativity and/or out-of the box thinking, or my technical ability and knowledge of ways to mitigate any risks for the customer? should this business be growth-hacked and dressed up like an unicorn to shine bright in the eyes of potential investors, or should cultivating customer trust and never promising more that can be done be its mantra?
• reasons why we can do something, or purposes / goals we can choose to pursue

We are spoiled with choices.

And we are grazing on advice on how to do the best thing! “Find meaning in what you do!”… “It’s important to love what you do!” … “It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you enjoy doing it!”…

And just like the hidden sugars or trans-fats in some foods, these “good in the eyes of the giver” advice have hidden ambiguities in them.

Even the so-dooh-you’d-never-question advice of “Choose a career that you will enjoy!” is like this.

They all seem to give you two pieces of incredibly misleading implicit advice:

1. You must start by choosing what you’ll do.
2. You must love what you do.

This is how it usually plays:

1. You choose doing “what you (think, at the moment) you love (doing)”.
2. After that “what” choice is fixed, cau-fucking-sality dictates what the destination will be. Doing something has consequences determined mostly by what is the thing you’re doing (and only in a lesser way by how you’re doing it). Causality pushes you further on some road to some destination.
3. {…repeat (2) many many times in life…}
4. You rationalize that destination (which seems unavoidable/unchangeable by now) as being you “purpose”, “goal” or “why you’re doing it”… Humans are hungry for meanings, and they make up meaning and purpose even when what they’re doing doesn’t really have a clear one. And, this is what people call the “end-point of they actions”, right? “Goal”, “purpose”, “target”, “aspiration”, “the why” etc. And you “gotta have a goal in life in order to succeed”, right?
5. Stuck between a “what” that seemed cool when you started doing it (but it’s now boring or annoying as hell 99% of the time), and a “why” that you’ve labeled as your “goal” (but is in reality dictated by simple implacable causality), you find ways to squeeze some enjoyment from life by choosing how you do the things you do.
6. {…you grow up, advance the career ladder, the choices in life become fewer and fewer…} (This may seem counter-intuitive for younger people, but think it like this: would you, as a business owner, let the high-skilled senior employee which you’re paying a huge salary, choose to work on what he/she wants instead of assigning him to the project that generates most profit for the company when done right, even if that project is soul-suckingly boring and nerve-wreckingly stressful? Obviously, no. But at the same time you’ll let the junior intern mostly free to pick the project he/she joins.)
7. At some point you realize that the road you took in life is nothing like what you’ve ever wanted, the places you’ve reached are not where you’ve ever wanted to go, and that 90+% of the time you’ve never enjoyed what you’ve done… but that’s not even the worse: that you’re stuck where you are because you’ve never developed the skills that will allow you to reach the places you now realize you would like to be in!

Now, this is definitely not a “7 steps to success” recipe. More like “7 steps to hell”… And you’re most likely dragging everyone around you to this hell with you!

3. A better way to do it (proposed solution)

First we must realize that there is a contradiction hidden in the way we interpret most “wise advice for a good life”:
You can’t choose both:

• a “purposeful life”, like in “start with the why” (btw, the business version of this is best explained by Simon Sinek here), and
• to “do what you love” (but you can end up loving what you do, mostly by choosing to do things the way you love, and by doing things for a meaningful purpose: read on to learn how…)

If you start with “doing what you love”, the purpose, your why will be dictated by what that “what” actually is. If you chose the road (“what”), the destination is where the road leads to!

You can’t pick Hwy. 80 and expect to be able to drive to Hong Kong. If that’s your goal, should pick a damn flight instead! (Geography note: reference is to a highway in USA, while Hong Kong is in Asia, an ocean away, and if you’re in Europe, driving to HK is still somewhere between stupid and suicidal.)

The better way is to instead:

1. Choose you “why” or destination — only by purposely choosing your destinations does it become a true goal or purpose for your life!
2. The “what” will then either become obvious, or you’ll have a clear way to figure it out (hint: when stuck just ask “what to I do to get X?” …you’ll get enough good answers to get going).
3. Choose how to do what needs to be done in a way that both “represents” you and brings you closer yo your goals — you’ll find these constrains liberating! Just as great art arises in the face of great constraints. And you will just know what’s “your way of doing things”, and this will empower you to “leave your mark on the world” even before reaching your goals! (and you’ll not hurt that much if you change them along the way or never reach them fully).

If you like self-help buzzwords, these are the “3 steps to success” that can replace the “7 steps to hell” described above.

When you have a destination, and you choose doing things that lead towards it, you will not be unpleasantly surprised by “where you end up” in life. You’ll end up closer to your goals, most of the time. When not, you’ll know how to “recalculate your trajectory” and switch to a better path, because you know the destination you want to reach.

When the “how” is no longer “the only means of squeezing some temporary pleasure out of a hellish life”, it can be a source of “expression” and of “leaving your mark on the world” (by being creative, prolific, efficient, inspiring — your choice!). You might pick a painful but meaningful “how” one time, and an easier and more “recharging” one some other time — it will be your choice!

Also, if you’re not living in an “island of abundance” (hint: 70+% of people on Earth aren’t!), or if your life is constrained by sickness (your own or you loved ones’) or by some other misfortunes, or by the consequences of the sub-optimal life choices you’ve made so far, you’ll still have full control of HOW you choose to do the things that lead you closer to WHERE you want to get closer to! Instead of being stuck at choosing the “best” “what” from a selection of all bad things to do, you’ll instead pick a “why” / goal / direction, start doing what needs to be done (no matter how unpleasant what needs to be done is, because it will at least have meaning!) to get closer to you goal or further in your chose direction, and choose to do it “your way” and even enjoy the process some part of the time.

4. The “starting with the how” or “engineer’s way” fallacy

(Now this is one bad path I’ve walked a great length on…)

[ This really deserves a whole separate article. I’ll write it when I have some more time. For now, the essence of it is distilled the last third of the picture at the top of this article anyway. ]

5. When stars align — the why-s that can also be what-s

(…this happens rarely, so when it does be sure to take full advantage of it!)

[ Again, this will be a separate article. ]


Feedback requested: I’m really new to all this writing stuff, I’m used to giving advice by word-of-mouth to people and writing down stuff only in very obscured form and for my own use. Also, let me know if the subjects mentioned at [4] and [5] above seem interesting to you.