I just read a great article called How to Do What You Love. It may sound cheesey, but the author put some good thought into it, and came up with some good insights as a result.

I’ve always considered myself fortunate because I didn’t have much trouble figuring out what I wanted to do, and in China it’s all very much economically feasible. It seems like my problem of “doing what I love” is all taken care of. Well, not exactly. I’m not fully into a career track yet, and I still have some possible pitfalls ahead of me. This article gave me a little more clarity for the road ahead.

Especially for young people, it’s a really good article to read. At almost 4,700 words it’s a little long, but it’s worth it. Here are some of my favorite quotes.

On parents’ roles:

The most dangerous liars can be the kids’ own parents. If you take a boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many people do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that work is boring. [2] Maybe it would be better for kids in this one case if parents were not so unselfish. A parent who set an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an expensive house. [3]

On the allure of prestige:

Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious.

Similarly, if you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what’s admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.

On deciding career paths too soon:

A friend of mine who is a quite successful doctor complains constantly about her job. When people applying to medical school ask her for advice, she wants to shake them and yell “Don’t do it!” (But she never does.) How did she get into this fix? In high school she already wanted to be a doctor. And she is so ambitious and determined that she overcame every obstacle along the way— including, unfortunately, not liking it.

Now she has a life chosen for her by a high-school kid.

Read the whole thing.