My favorite story from the Quora discussion on Chua's article (http://www.quora.com/Parenting/Is-Amy-Chua-right-when-she-ex...) was this one: "At one point, I attended a "piano camp" with other equally talented white students, and what struck me is that those students actually practiced for hours because they loved music, and genuinely practiced for hour after exhausting hour because they couldn't get enough of the emotional expression that piano afforded them. Piano held none of that for me."
I think it's obvious when someone is truly passionate about something versus just doing it because they think it will get them another carrot.
Is it possible, though, to have a functional society where everyone follows his or her passion? I believe it is, but would be curious to hear thoughts.
Yes, I believe that you can have a functional society where everyone follows his or her passion, but to see it, you have to realize two things:
1. The current allocation of labour isn't set in stone. Just because we have a certain number of accountants now, doesn't necessarily mean we need all those accountants for society to function in a way that makes us all happiest.
2. Almost everyone is passionate about eating and having a warm place to sleep. An accountant who quits his job to pursue a career as a rock star will likely soon run low on money, and may find renewed passion in accounting, if only as a part-time gig to feed and shelter himself and his family, while he finds greater fulfillment playing music in his spare time.
I also believe that nothing truly great gets done without there being a huge amount of passion behind it. Look at any great project you know and you'll see it there in the core people. They wouldn't want to be doing anything else. The world would be much better if everyone followed their passion. I think most of us are just too scared to let go of the security of making the safe, easy, predictable choices.
It's an interesting supply and demand question. If everyone suddenly started valuing "passion" more and "money" less, then as you said, given the current pay scales then maybe lots of accountants would switch to being rockstars.
But as well as the running out of cash problem for the new rockstars, the remaining accountants would presumably be able to charge the rockstars a fortune to do their tax returns (fewer accountants = less competition), which might persuade some of the rockstars that accounting isn't that bad overall.
This does break down in the extreme case where people don't value money at all, but that doesn't seem like a very likely scenario. Sure, I have a passion for being a rockstar, but if being an accountant for 3 years could give me enough money to pay for my rockstar career for the rest of my life then I might develop a passion for accounting.
Is it possible, though, to have a functional society where everyone follows his or her passion?
At the extreme, probably not. You'd have a population of people who spent most of their waking hours: playing basketball, rapping, shopping for shoes, having sex, watching movies, and doing drugs.
Who is going to be a cashier? Janitors? Work on assembly lines or make clothes? Lots of construction jobs go unfilled. Big swaths of the medical profession disappear. Prisons have 1/100th the correction officers. Dentists are gone.
On the bright side... there's no patent atttorneys.
I like Paul Graham's essay where he points out that society can adapt to not have these things.
He uses the example where people used to have live in servants. Now people aren't willing to be butlers so the wealthy just go without.
A similar job would be hangman or executioner. If everyone decided not to do that job, then it wouldn't get done. Is that really so bad?
Janitors are quickly being replaced by passionate iRobot employees. Cashiers at the stores I shop at are replaced by self-checkout robots made by passionate robotics people.
Assembly lines and making clothing...... do I even need to say it?
Construction jobs should go unfilled, it's shitty work, why not leave it unfilled? Who cares? Soon enough those quad-copter construction workers will build stuff anyway.
The medical profession is full of passionate doctors and society will adapt if we truly run out of proctologists. Many dental visits would be unnecessary if people used proper preventative dental hygiene. Society could cut back on the suicidal dentists and be fine.
If a job would truly go unfilled due to lack of passion I doubt this would be a problem.
Also, every single job you listed, I guarantee there are people who thoroughly love those jobs.
Some people are passionate about making money and those people would be passionate about being a highly paid prison guard or executioner or butler. This is, in fact, pretty much what happens. People who love money a lot do become dentists and they do enjoy their job because it affords them their yacht on the weekends.
I'd argue that where you end is the world we live in today. People are passionate to do what they're doing versus the alternative. You say its passion for money. Others will say the passion to please their parents. Or impress the Jones's or put food in their babies mouth.
And I don't think you can appeal to technology that's not here, and frankly not close. Otherwise you can just begin with the thesis that we have mind reading nanotechnology that can build anything via just thought, including other people. Sure in this dream world everyone can literally just watch TV created by the best staff in the world (which was created by my thoughts).
But that's not going to happen. And quad-copter construction isn't going to build most of what is built today.
But what will happen is that people will do what they're most passionate about versus their alternatives. This is exactly the state of the world today. Every single one of us is doing exactly what we want to do, given the choices in front of us.
I personally know people who are passionate for construction work.
I asked a construction worker straight up - if you won a billion dollars, what would you do?
He said he'd go on vacation for a few months and then probably come back to the job site because he loves the culture and the work. He enjoys his job.
This is not unusual. Nerds can't imagine that some people enjoy being janitors, but they exist.
It would not be the end of the world if the only construction workers were the passionate ones. I think the world would be just fine - in fact, I think it would be better. I think we'd have higher quality construction work and a happier society.
I think a more convincing answer would have been "I will". But "you will" is more correct, and that is (one of the reasons) why communism won't happen.
There are still many professions though that very very few people are going to be passionate about. Problem is though if you automate these everyone can follow their passion but then you have the job supply problem.
Making everyone pursue his passion is a bit hard i think , but framed differently , this becomes the question : can everyone have a job he mostly enjoys ?
I can think of a few ideas that might help:
1. giving people the ability , at work (drivers, assembly line etc..) to have conversations with interesting people, cheaply.
2. a music/audio player that can measure when someone is in a state of flow , an can give the person the optimal mix of music , audio(podcasts/text-to-speech) audio speed , volumes , pauses , content types , etc to achieve maximal flow times.
3. job demands some attention , and that decreases the flow
state when you talk/listen to something. there's some research that the brain can do 2 things at the same time , allocating each side to some task. maybe there are ways of achieving multitasking and flow ?
4. Use game theory to make boring jobs more interesting.
5. Gallup strength model give an interesting abstract way to query people's strength(passions). view at this abstract way , a person can adapt to more jobs(instead of programming as a passion, solving complex problems is a passions and then you have many more opportunities).
6. This gallup way of thinking can give you better ways to interview ,assign jobs , and design jobs.
7. find ways of using augmented reality to make the job less boring.
As long as by "follow your passion" you don't mean "follow your passion to the exclusion of everything else", then it seems very possible. It seems unlikely that someone will have a passion for emptying my bins, but that's not to say that the person emptying my bins can't be following their passion when they're not collecting garbage.
Many people in the western world could probably work far fewer hours, own fewer material things and therefore have much more time to pursue things that they love.
You incorrectly assume those are the only activities that those people could possibly enjoy doing. Part of the trick is finding the overlap between enjoyable and productive.
I think what he meant is that there are many more people for whom basketball is their passion than can actually make a living with basketball. Therefore, it's impossible to have a society where everyone truly follows their passion.
They can find a different passion. Basketball didn't even exist a few hundred years ago. People have the potential to enjoy more than one thing. Having the mindset of finding ways to enjoy things is the key, not mindlessly pursing the first "passion" you encounter.
I'm curious - how many people have only one passion?
I remember that when I was a kid, I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. Then I wanted to be a naval architect. (Well, technically I didn't know the names for either of those, I just knew I wanted to design planes and ships.) I played violin and clarinet, I wanted to be in a rock band, I liked computer programming, I fancied myself a novelist (even though I hated writing), I wanted to be a famous theoretical physicist, and I was going to make a few million dollars founding a software startup.
I ended up a computer programmer, because that was the optimal intersection between what I wanted to be and what other people would pay for. Although that software startup may yet happen.
But I continued - and sometimes still continue - the other things quite far along. I made All-State Orchestra in violin, and continued to play throughout college, and still occasionally pick it up. I nearly ended up a physics major; I didn't switch away from it until my last semester. Now that I have no immediate plans to become a writer, writing is kinda fun.
Is this unusual? Do people get "stuck" on one dream and then ignore everything else that they might enjoy?
There are lots of ways to make a living if basketball is your passion beyond playing it professionally. For instance, you could do a sports-based startup (http://fanvibe.com) or coach middle schoolers or open a sports memorabilia store.
I don't see how you could definitively know it's not possible.
I was actually editing my message to say that I didn't necessarily agree with this, as I have uncles and cousins who are kid's basketball coaches. I do see where he's coming from, though.
Does _everyone_ in society really need to be working. It seems that as technology advances the number of labor hours required per person would decrease. Maybe only a small percentage of people need to be following a productive passion.
The most depressing people I know were the results of either laissez fair parenting or overbearing parenting. If you let a kid do what he wants, he'll eat coco-puffs, watch TV and eventually turn to drugs and booze. If you're constantly on top of him, and if he doesn't burn out, he'll work incredibly hard for a goal that means nothing to him.
I know 30 year olds who can't put a month of work together. I also know 30 year olds who have no idea why they became bankers and they ask their mom permission to switch jobs. Each one is depressing and there is a balance.
I respectfully disagree in that I don't think the laissez fair approach necessarily leads to doing nothing but watching TV, etc. I was given tremendous freedom to explore and learn about what I wanted from a very young age on (and I was pretty much 100% in control of my educational priorities from about 12 on). My love of video games led to a love of programming and a general love of tech, which has led to entrepreneurship.
His claim was that "The most depressing people [I] know were the results of either laissez fair parenting or overbearing parenting", not that "laissez fair parenting and overbearing parenting lead to the most depressing people [I] know".
I was more responding to the "there is a balance" comment, which I took to mean that uuilly thinks it's better on the whole if children are given some amount of freedom but are still forced to do certain things. That's the idea I was really trying to challenge, though that's admittedly not what I wrote in my first sentence. My comment was too hasty.
That's exactly what I was trying to say. It's true, some people come out of the womb requiring very little discipline. My sister, for example, would yell from her car seat, "Quiz me!" And we had her doing multiplication tables before she could read. She was her HS valedictorian, went to Harvard, played two varsity sports and is a VP at a major Investment bank and she's still in her 20's. She never needed any discipline and probably could have been given her own apartment at age 13.
I on the other hand, was a dreamer who seldom knew which day it was and frequently left for school 30 minutes late with only one shoe on. I hesitate to think where I'd be without my parent's prodding.
If the kid doesn't need prodding, then life just got easier for you. But to allow a kid to rot in the hope that one day he'll sprout wings is bad parenting. From my experience, kids who require no prodding are outliers.
The absence of force doesn't mean neglect. When I say children should be free to explore and learn what they want, I don't mean that parents have no role to play in their children's education, or that every (or any) child would flourish if left alone on an island. Parents have roles to play as facilitators, mentors, etc. I think parents should introduce their children to lots of things, but I think they should force them to do little or nothing. Depending on your definition of "prodding," we might be in agreement here.
I agree different things work for different people, and there's probably a spectrum of how "naturally" disciplined people are.
That said, I think people are naturally curious and don't, at least at the beginning of their lives, gravitate towards sitting around and doing nothing. Toddlers are naturally motivated to learn to walk and talk and are almost endlessly inquisitive.
Over time, this curiosity seems to diminish. I think formal schooling, which emphasizes external motivation over internal motivation, is largely to blame.
I might be more naturally disciplined than most, but I think a big part of that comes from not having the first decades of my life mapped out for me.
I really don't think it does. But I think what is valued becomes more narrow. Being curious about listening to different music bands at age 16 isn't valued as much as being curious about math. Being curious about girls isn't valued as much as being curious about programming. Being curious about knowing the stats of every baseball player isn't valued as much as being curious about Shakeaspeare.
People who are curious about certain things are valued, while people are curious about other things are valued less (or rather their curiosity is valued less).
There is a difference between giving your child the freedom to follow their own will and ignoring them. I'm guessing that the latter leads to coco-puffs, drugs & booze.
+1. Just being "interested" in your own kids (all they really need is your time, agreed that it might be your scarcest resource -- but hey I have assumed it was a conscious decision to have kids) helps.
In particular, I am rather disappointed with generalization of the art of parenting done by Amy in her article. Sometimes, some things become instant hits by being controversial.
I sort of disagree. I agree that many kids will spend more time doing things that are immediately satisfying, but I think the values they absorb at an early age have a bigger influence; When I was really young my Mom would take me to museums and sciencey type things; Places established to celebrate achievements that take people entire lifetimes to complete. I suspect that this influenced me to later ignore her advice of playing outside/going to bed on time/finishing homework since I knew those weren't the sort of things that would turn into stories to tell grandkids. I instead spent late nights discovering PCs and the web and dove in and fine-honed my skills with the opposite of praise or recognition (building web apps in Idaho middle/high schools just gets you called a nerd). I am now employed building enterprise-level web apps.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it.
Whoever wrote this must not be very good at what they do (assuming they agree with the opinion). Programming was an enormous amount of fun for me, I would have never gotten good at it if it weren't. In fact, everything I ever got good at was tremendous fun. Sometimes it was work and pure misery, but for the most part it was fun. Perhaps others tick differently from me, but based on conversations I had with people that are very good at what they do, I doubt it.
In fact it's often more fun at the beginning. As coders, we have to constantly be learning new things - new languages, frameworks, APIS, etc... more than most professions I know. Personally I think getting that first little project done, a first proof of concept, in a new (language/framework/api) to be exhilarating - probably more fun than almost anything afterwards.
Yes. I have to say though that after 20 years of exhilaration, the buzz is getting less and less for me each time. I think because the process of learning another new language, framework, API etc is now no longer new.
Completely agreed. It's improving at something that's the most fun. As I get better at things, and improve more slowly, they become less fun.
That's especially true of sports and other zero-sum competitive activities: it's really boring when winning is the only goal, and you know you're going to win.
Many activities become enjoyable after a certain amount of mastery. Overcoming the initial hurdles is not fun and it's important to stick with it but it seems like some Chinese parents overdo it. If you just give up because you can not overcome certain initial hurdles then you might miss out on something worthwhile but if after the initial hurdles you're still not liking it then it might be a good idea to pick up something else.
I'm not sure if I should be depressed or cheered up by that. Maybe depressed because compared to Buchheit I must be super lazy. Maybe cheered up because it might be that I'm no lazier than him, and might be able to accomplish great things just as well.
He's a smart guy so when he does tackle something he is very efficient. The stuff about being lazy is just his way of saying his intelligence was very poorly measured by usual metrics like academic success.
I'm not lazy, I'm just intrinsically motivated. I love that characterization.
In all seriousness, this article hit home for me. I went through high school bored and came out with well above average, but not stellar, grades. I was accepted into a good enough college (where I'm currently enrolled) and have plenty of time to pursue my own interests, one of which is launching a startup. Which I'm doing.
It's often said that people become entrepreneurs because they can't handle a regular job. Perhaps these people are simply too "defective" to fit into any mold, or maybe they lack the extrinsic motivation necessary to care about bosses, performance reviews, and other things which are so important for success in the corporate environment.
Also, if you're interested in this stuff, check out John Holt. He explored the ideas Paul talks about and advocated a type of homeschooling called unschooling, which is student-led and based largely on intrinsic motivation.
I like to think I'm intrinsically motivated, because I don't like to do the boring, repetitive things at work. On the other hand, I haven't done anything creative myself either. Jeez, I'm confused.
The cultural environment has a lot do with it too my friend. As a foreigner, my parents always taught education is the key to success. Obviously, they also forced me play the violin which I profoundly disliked.lol. However, being foreign, as we see the U.S as the land of opportunities, our parents want to make sure that we have a better future than they had back in the motherland. Thereby come the pressure our parents put upon us. Don't you think it is also important to see life from Chua's lenses?
"I barely made it into the top 10% of my public high school class"
As a guy who went to Case when Paul did (and only vaguely recalls interacting with him), I know that being on the right side of that 10% translated into $50K+ in scholarships given CWRU's by-the-numbers merit-based aid system.
Edit: I'm just commenting on the significance of Paul's statement. A huge percentage of Case students would not have attended had it not been for the liberal disbursement of 75% off coupons without regard to financial need.
It's as much of a statement about the inanity of the college-prestige game as it is about our alma mater. CWRU is more than good enough. As a school. As a brand name with snob appeal... I have to agree with Paul.
I say that a little tongue in cheek -- regardless of what Paul thinks about Case, he was certainly an inspiration to me, proving that what you actually do is more important than where you came from.
I'm at CWRU right now, trying so hard not to respond to that bit with a super-long comment. I'll just say this: smart people, go somewhere else, at least for CS. (If you're reading this comment years later, re-evaluate.)
The only two alumni anyone ever names in the tech world. But Paul calls it "good enough" and Knuth was there long enough ago that it was essentially a different school.
With that said, being able to name two is better than most. Ask your average developer who famous (in CS circles) went to Yale, Columbia, Princeton, UIUC, etc... It's pretty rare that there is any association at all. Off the top of my head I don't know if I can name two of equal prominence from any of those schools (although I'm sure if I searched I could find some).
I doubt your average developer knows that Paul and Knuth went to Case Western. You're average developer probably doesn't know that the founder of Paypal and the co-founder of Youtube went to UIUC. I'm not really sure what argument you're trying to make. People in industry typically just don't care about these types of associations.
No offense, but did you read the thread? You kind of reiterated my point.
The fact that most people cite, at best, Knuth and Paul says little about CWRU since most people can't cite anyone from virtually any other school.
And BTW, UIUC was probably the biggest gimme... although I'm surprised you didn't go with Andreesen and Ozzie. Those are the names I most typically hear thrown out.
This rings true to me, and I'm finally following my own intrinsic motivation.
But it can be really hard to find a job that lets you do this. If you do, the first step is to realize you're in a rare position and take advantage of it.
I'm lucky to have a work environment (go ahead and ask) and a home environment that lets me follow this path to the extent possible.
The final paragraph resonates with me. Of all the reasons I have ever considered for finding a more enjoyable but potentially less gainful way to make a dollar, the idea that my four-year-old is watching me both frightens me and builds my resolve the most.
People tend to keep telling you have to follow your passion. I'm happy the guy who picks up my garbish every week is doing his job. Will he do it with great passion? Di I care.
Luckily not everyone follows his passion but brings food on the table.
I don't believe in the Chinese model, too. But I think it is hard to say what is right or wrong. A lot of really succesful people were forced to work (z.B. Andre Agassi, Paco de Lucia, Mozart ...).
Probably you need both for exelence:
1. you need to absolutely love what you do
2. but sometimes you need some preasure to stick to it.
I guess as a parent you don't really want to encourage your kid to take it easy in high school if they do want to get into college as they might take it to easy. Best I guess to encourage them to do their best without being overbearing so they will only slack off a bit under that level.
That confirms my suspicion that Amy Chua's article was a most fine piece of trolling. She wrote outrageous things in the article thereby trolling thousands of parents into buying her book, i.e. the WSJ article was "link-bait" to her book. Even if you're a non-parent you might be drawn by the someone-is-wrong-on-internet effect into criticizing her claims, but she's got a simple answer ready for you: "buy my book".
From what I've heard her say, she didn't do the final edits and was surprised by the WSJ take on her book as well (likely, her publisher was involved, though). She was on Colbert last week and seemed quite reasonable. She explicitly states it isn't a parenting book, it is a memoir about parenting, immigrants, and culture.
No, she doesn't. I've read the book and at no point does she ever reject her approach or believe it was less than the absolute perfect approach. Although she eventually allowed one of her daughters to stop practicing the violin with Carnegie Hall intensity, she regrets it and feels she failed.
When I read her article, I shared it with my husband and my mom. My mom was shocked and saddened by it. My husband understood that she was essentially saying that she believed that her child could do it - like a coach who constantly pushes you because she believes in you even if you don't believe in yourself.
I personally could not do this someone.
However, it comes how to you convince someone that is worth the effort. There is an excellent book "Influencer: The Power to Change Anything" with great examples like curbing HIV transmission and eliminating guinea worm parasite. The bottom-line is the person who needs to do the change has to answer 2 questions essentially: Is this worth it? and am I really capable of doing it?
For Amy's children she is answering question 2 for her children.
Analogies to sports come up a lot, but the difference is playing football / soccer / tennis / whatever is fun and that's why you are there; eating crap from that coach is just a side-effect of you wanting to be better at something.
On the other hand in the child / parent relationship described in that article, the kid doesn't have a choice. He cannot change coaches, he cannot pick another sport. Some children endure and in fact may turn out better. But others become depressed adults.
And if there's one thing I know: I'm not a father that wants his boy growing up to be miserable. So I'll try pushing him when he lacks purpose, but whatever he likes doing I'll encourage him.
Thank you. This is so true: "It takes time to find your internal voice, learn when to trust it, and stop fearing outside opinion."
When I was young I did as I was told. It was easiest way for people to leave me alone so I would have time to do the things I wanted.
Later I always wondered why I was never competing for prizes or honed a specific skill; I was having too much fun doing things that others could care less about. It was a great way of learning about being comfortable with myself.
What great blog post. So well written, I am envious.
Some of the saddest people I know are people who achieved a lot in high school/college (prestigious school, high grades, awards, etc) but were always chasing goals set by their parents. In their post-college life, they've found themselves aimless because they quite literally don't know what they love.
Meanwhile, my friends who had the freedom to explore and learn what they're passionate about are much happier today.
(Yeah, I know, plural of anecdote is not data, etc, etc. But my sample of kids who were allowed to do whatever they want is slightly larger than the norm here because I was unschooled my whole life and so I'm in the position of knowing a lot of 20-something unschoolers, in addition to my peers who went to public/private school.)
This is the typical anglo-saxon management method used in multinational companies (like English as language).
The french call it mobilité forcée, and some of the consequences were exposed for example at France Telecom. It is a manipulative oppression method of working people by killing them existentially along with their family (i.e. your kid will have to change school every 2 years, along with all the friends). This could only work if it is voluntary (you don't loose your job and outlook if you don't play along), but then again the goal of puppeteers is completely the opposite.
The enslavement aspect only works when your employees never seriously think of taking a job across the street. It's pretty easy to spot the career developers, career managers, and the just-passing-through types at a big company. Interestingly, all three types tend think their chosen path is the best and safest.
Taking a job across the street means taking up another profession. This is the whole point: due to the economies of scale, taking a job across the street means literally restarting your career if you are "lucky" enough to find one and almost your entire life if you are less "in luck". A comparable job would be in another state, or even continent. Hence forced mobility.
It is all about making sure cogwheels are replaceable by ensuring they are actually replaced on schedule.
I think it's obvious when someone is truly passionate about something versus just doing it because they think it will get them another carrot.
Is it possible, though, to have a functional society where everyone follows his or her passion? I believe it is, but would be curious to hear thoughts.