In the design of lives, as in the design of most other things, you get better results if you use flexible media.

Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you're in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you're practically... See more

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think — because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don't have to force yourself to do it — finding work you love does usually require discipline. Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they... See more

Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind — though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

When you're young, you're given the impression that you'll get enough information to make each choice before you need to make it. But this is certainly not so with work.

What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. When you can ask the opinions of people whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of people you don't even know?

To do something well you have to like it.

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think—because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don't have to force yourself to do it—finding work you love does usually require discipline.

It seems safe to say there are more undergrads who want to be novelists and whose parents want them to be doctors than who want to be doctors and whose parents want them to be novelists. The kids think their parents are "materialistic." Not necessarily. All parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves, simply... See more