Email: About doing what society wants you to do

Hello Sean,

Long time reader, well over 3 years at this point wow! I don’t want to waste too much of your time but first wanted to say that even though you focus mainly on video games, I’ve taken far more value from your posts on life experience and especially business. Please post more!
But anyway, you mention how it is far more important to do what society wants you to do rather than what you want to do, however, this seems to contradict some of the opinions echoed in your other posts. For example, few years back you posted that video of Steve Jobs’ stanford commencement speech and how critical it is to find what you love in life. You also expressed tons of respect for that hardcore diablo player who records himself playing on youfube(dont remember his name). This entire time you seem to advocate for finding ones passion in their career, have you changed your mind on this?

In my case I did originally go to college to be a mechanical engineer for the exact reasons you stated in your post. Society needs engineers, but not english majors, but that inevitably blew up in my face as I was miserable. Now I am working at a tech startup and trying to start my own business as well as do freelance copywriting. I’m much happier now because of this (still in college btw). Some greater clarification on your point would be nice.

You may not believe me when i say this but some of your posts have actually shaped and influenced my life, especially your pieces on the diminishing value of the college degree. Keep up the good work, and keep talkin business

The reason why people say to ‘follow your passion’ is because you will be productive doing something you love.

For men, our lives start off playing with toys and doing hobbies. If a boy collects tadpoles in jars and looks at strange biological warts, he might be destined to become a doctor. If a boy discovers he is good at manipulating people’s emotions in school and good at distorting his face to whatever the moment needs, he might be destined to become a politician. If someone enjoys programming computer games in one’s youth, that person may be destined to become a programmer for his career.

As a man, your job is like a ‘game’. However, we are cursed with playing the same game everyday all the time. Being a firefighter may sound like fun, but doing it everyday, all the time? Certainly it would be nice to try something different. But society won’t easily allow us to ‘switch’ and try something different.

Steve Jobs illustrates it that near the end of your life, you look back and you see the crazy decisions you did and realize how they were all dots that helped lead you to where you are now. For example, Steve Jobs said that the class he dropped in on at Reed College with fonts was why the Macintosh had all those fonts (which Microsoft copied). Had Steve Jobs not crashed that class, computers wouldn’t have these beautiful fonts that they do today. However, Steve Jobs was also a college dropout with no money sleeping in friends’ dorms.

There is a difference between following one’s passion and narcissism. No one differentiates the two anymore. Almost everyone who says they are following their ‘passion’ is really just following their vanity.

Take writers. Why do we have all these goddamned writers? Do we NEED more bloggers? I never had any intention of this site to generate revenue even at the beginning. My goal was to interact in public of news in order to learn business. Has anyone made a decent living by blogging? Yet, millions are trying.

Let me use Day[9] for example, the famous Starcraft 2 commentator. I like the guy so don’t interpret this as any slam against him. People say “STEM degrees are the best. Yay STEM! Boo everything else!” But someone like Day[9] has a degree in mathematics and a graduate degree in Media I think. Yet, he still lives in a very small room sharing a building with four other housemates. Clearly, he is doing ‘what he loves’, so what is going on?

Society doesn’t need Starcraft 2 commentary. If Starcraft 2 commentary disappeared, as well as Starcraft 2, would society care? Probably not. That is why he isn’t making significant money.

You only make money when you do something society wants.

Consider Miyamoto. He was the artist type. However, he was smart enough to recognize the growing trend of video games with Space Invaders and that this would be a good career to get into. Video games, then, weren’t as artistic as today. They were (and still are) extremely technical. Miyamoto doesn’t seem like a technical, engineering type of guy. But he knew video games was what society wanted (in that time period at least. Society no longer wants video games today).

I think vanity and narcissism cloud people’s judgement on what their ‘passion’ is to always be something society doesn’t want. For example, if someone wanted to be a writer, instead of making a blog or novel that society doesn’t want, why not make technical writing that society DOES want?

Also consider the nature of youth. When you are young, you have time. When you get older, you have less time. As I’ve gotten older, I realize that things become MUCH FASTER when I do what society wants. Wealth becomes faster, status becomes faster, and so on.

Here is another way to look at it. Instead of looking at the WINNERS of life, let us look at the LOSERS of life. Look at that near homeless person. How did he get there? Well, he thought he would ‘follow his passion’ and become a rockstar singer. Society didn’t want a rockstar singer, at least they didn’t want him to be a rockstar singer. Instead of recognizing this, his vanity pushed him against society to his cardboard box.

I’ve noticed that losers tend to be the biggest elitists and have tons of vanity. The winners aren’t elitist because they have nothing to prove, and they often don’t have the vanity. They knew they at to stab and carve up their infantized ego to get to where they are today. Losers in life have never carved up their ego.

Let us say your name happens to be Aonuma, and you make wooden dolls and a Wind Waker Zelda video game. “I AM FOLLOWING MY PASSION.” That’s nice. But society is saying they don’t like what you are making. Market data says Wind Waker is not liked. “IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE I AM A CREATIVE DEMI-GOD. I WILL KEEP MAKING AND REMAKING IT UNTIL THEY LIKE IT.” That is the mentality of a loser.

Consider women. If a man follows his passion, he finds himself acting incoherently in front of a woman (all us men have had this experience). The LOSER will keep doing this. The WINNER will say, “Hmm, maybe I need to figure out what society wants me to do,” so he figures out how to stop acting like a damned fool and behave like a man.

Doing what you want doesn’t necessarily mean you are at odds with what society wants. It just means you should drop your vanity and ‘oh, I’m a special snowflake’ to reconsider how to use your talents  in ways that society wants. So instead of making toys for kids, Miyamoto ended up making video games for everyone. He ended up doing what he loved in a context of what society wanted.