My friend in college was worried she would fall into trap that she eventually fell into: She wanted to be a writer, and she felt that Comparative Lit put you in danger of knowing your writing was crap before you had the motivation and discipline to do something about it.

I tend to give junior devs as much rope as I can because they're just going to be awful until they get about 1000 hours in, and no amount of me scaring them is going to make that any better. And once in a while they surprise me by doing something they shouldn't have been able to do. We all have our preconceptions and nobody's are right all the time.

I read the post differently – the point of the exercise is not that you need to know the answers to the questions. It's to gauge your emotional reaction to the question itself.

By examining the types of tasks you will be consistently faced with, you can ask yourself, "Do I actually want to do that?"

This is the basis of "The E-Myth". A book I didn't read a long time ago because the title made me think it was about Scientology, but a consultant encouraged me to read it and I did. Essentially, the book is about this:

Person A likes to bake and has creative recipes that people like. Person B likes to develop companies and knows a baker who can make a recipe. Person A struggles to keep a bakery open and could really live to never see another pie in their life. Person B creates Cinnabon.

This is problem with the places like 90% of the Kitchen Nightmares, Bar Rescue, etc., type shows. An owner retires with a huge nest egg and decides that, as a dive bar regular, they'd really like to think of themselves as the owner of the neighborhood bar. The "unpacking" that they never did would have involved cleaning up vomit regularly, violently drunk patrons, just having to do a shit ton of work yourself because labor is expensive, etc.

Yep, agree. I got into info sec because I found info sec fascinating. The actual reality of working in info sec is like many other jobs: lots of tedious shit with moments where you get close to what you actually found interesting.

If I had sat down and "unpacked" what the actual job was like I doubt I'd have bothered. But that doesn't make it a bad choice for me. I'm still glad I work in the field, I get a lot of value from knowing I'm helping keep things motoring and sometimes it can be fun too.

Unpacking does not sound like a good way to figure out what you want to do. It sounds like a good way to argue yourself out of doing anything.

I would agree with the post, in this case your dad knew a lot about his trade, so it wasn't a new industry for him.

The coffeeshop example is great, i've seen that a couple times, where people that like drinking coffee, open a coffeeshop, and since they don't know a lot about beans, or equipment, they end up doing bad purchases, choosing bad providers, and the result is just bad.

i think youre right that unpacking could get in the way of enthusiasm. speaking for myself i simply enjoy the challenges of software development and enjoy most new challenges the deeper i go

on the other hand i think unpacking is good because most people dont really know what they want to do coming out of high school, at least in the USA. in america adult jobs are a nebulous concept: i did well at accounting in DECA because i could do mental math better than peers. i assumed id be an accountant because i had to get some job. i assumed id wear a suit and do some math. its a good thing to tell adults because they approve. i took one database class and bailed on accounting to teach myself to code

maybe unpack a career path if there isnt passion and enthusiasm for the process

I think the point of that procedure is more to illustrate when someone hasn't thought about the logistics _at all_. The problems aren't when you can't answer one random question, but when you can't answer any, even the basic ones like what kind of espresso machine you want to buy.

The article says that you should at least find those questions interesting, not necessarily have everything already planned out.

I didn't become a physician, because my teenage-self unpacked being a physician as telling fat people to eat better food and start exercising -- for 50 years. Turns out there are other specialties... Despite thinking the human body is fascinating, I'm largely happy I don't have to tell unhealthy people to do what they probably already know they should do and then give them a bandaid for their gaping lifestyle problems.

My dad bought a burnt down pub for a dollar. He spent 15 years working on the place and now its worth quite a lot. He is always telling me to find something that requires hard work, but in the end leaves you with a significant asset. He put a cafe in the pub, and a coffee machine. He worked out the beans at some point. I think he had like 6 different POS systems.

This resonates. The article has some interesting points, and get where they're coming from. Unpacking can be helpful to think about the next smallest step, but I agree, thinking of all the things ends up creating a mountain that looks too hard to climb, nevermind that many of the questions and challenges you ask may not even materialise. My main takeaway is just to ask the question of why you want to do this thing you've said you want to do, and what the next smallest step is to do it. If you find yourself enjoying it, carry on.

For example, when people say they want to write a book or be a novelist, what they really mean is, they want to have written a book and been a writer. They're looking at the finished product. This is likely true of most people who want to do X, because they see it as a solution to their current situation.

The better thing is just sit down and write stuff. Poems, diaries, letters, very short stories and vignettes. See where it takes you.

The professor thing made me laugh, because some people like helping others grow and learn and blossom, despite all the day to day stuff. That was my step father's motivation for it. He found he enjoyed it.

There is value in just throwing yourself into something and seeing if you enjoy it. For example, I have a friend who started brewing his own beer. He loved everything about it, and enjoyed it. He connected with other home brewers, and gradually he ended up becoming a master brewer. He didn't start with the end in mind, he threw himself into what he was doing and carried on because he enjoyed it. Funnily enough, another friend started roasting his own coffee beans because he liked drinking coffee, and today he sells his own beans, and has just opened his own coffee shop. He carried on doing it, because he enjoyed it.

I've always liked Tim Minchen's advice on this: "And so I advocate passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you… you never know where you might end up. Just be aware that the next worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery. Which is why you should be careful of long-term dreams. If you focus too far in front of you, you won’t see the shiny thing out the corner of your eye."

Sounds to me that your dad would have been interested by the question and engaged with the interview.

The article was about "I hate my job people" and finding the difference between someone with enough interest to really change his life.

As an analogy, I'm sure car salesman know from experimental evidence that there's a difference between an interested buyer and a tire-kicker. ... that a few questions can discern with high probability.

> He was already a master of his trade at this point and I am sure he had a deep insight into the industry and the practices of the time.

This is exactly what the article is saying is needed in order to predict whether you will enjoy a job or not.

> if you can’t answer those questions, if you don’t even find them interesting

I think you missed the second part of the sentence, it's one thing to not know the answers, but you should have a personal interest in finding them