How do you know what is the right step in life? IE JD/MBA, make a ton of money for a tradeoff in work/life balance, work in the public interest, raise a family, travel, work at a restaurant and surf and smoke weed all day, etc. is it all the same in the end? what key factors help in determining what is right for me?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26516052)

Work experience->MBA->IB assoc.

OR

JD(if T6 with not too much debt) -> Death

OR

Work experience->work experience->work experience.

I just don't know.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26516061)

It used to perplex me when I read about people who liked what they did so much that there was nothing they'd rather do. There didn't seem to be any sort of work I liked that much. If I had a choice of (a) spending the next hour working on something or (b) be teleported to Rome and spend the next hour wandering about, was there any sort of work I'd prefer? Honestly, no.

But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.

Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.

As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of "spare time" seems mistaken. Which is not to say you have to spend all your time working. You can only work so much before you get tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do something else—even something mindless. But you don't regard this time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn it.

I put the lower bound there for practical reasons. If your work is not your favorite thing to do, you'll have terrible problems with procrastination. You'll have to force yourself to work, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior.

To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool. This doesn't mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that's pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.

So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, is reading books. Except for some books in math and the hard sciences, there's no test of how well you've read a book, and that's why merely reading books doesn't quite feel like work. You have to do something with what you've read to feel productive.

I think the best test is one Gino Lee taught me: to try to do things that would make your friends say wow. But it probably wouldn't start to work properly till about age 22, because most people haven't had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then.

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26516351)

1. Try to do something that would make your friends say "wow" -- this is one of the easiest ways to wind up extremely unhappy, chasing prestige and "wows"

2. Try to do something that you can admire and say that's pretty cool -- a philosophy that excludes 99.99999% of the jobs from being worthwhile can't be right. this is some boomer shit where everyone ends up getting lib arts degrees, trying to write the next big novel, and wanting to practice "international" whatever.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26657747)

at least with (xo 2007) most poasters here might have been in the appropriate echelon for the advice to ring true

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26658242)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26516102)

Reading: consumer trade newsletters, blogs, books about shit you might like, XO

Networking: talk to people be it alumni in a professional capacity or friends of friends doing shit you might like (note this advice is not just about jobs, it can be about living in Japan or taking up surfing or whatever)

And then trial and error: so you read a lot and networked a lot and think maybe you want to be a psychologist or a cop; you might live in Chicago or California; well, time to start trying those things out

Get on with life so by 30 you're on the "path" of whatever you pick.

XO is TOTAL FLAME w/r/t the idea that after 25 or something you're done here, but XO is right that if you bounce around for too long you're done

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26516396)

occasionally you should really go down the rabbit hole and learning everything there possible is to learn about something

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26521373)

jfc

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26516400)

because they're two of the worst, safest, risk averse careers out there and everyone hates them and each has 23423423432423 articles written about them and in the end it's the same shit just pushing paper or excel for rich jews

who the fuck grows up in life and is like "I BANKING OR LAW??!?!?!?!?" only a very specific subset of upper middle class elite zip code strivers, that's who.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26516495)

that's kind of where I'm going with it

it's crazy fucking overwhelming to narrow one's life down to a single path, imo

especially at a young age when one may not have any obligations

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26517758)

GO HAVE ADVENTURES. Try shit out.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26517189)

Fucking pick one. And by "one", I mean the MBA

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26517194)

My advice? Go do something dangerous and fun. For me that was the Marines.

You are only young once

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26517238)

If you have the means (a big qualifier, I know) JDMBA is CR to expand your network and figure out what you want to do before entering the professional world. Lots of good programs are only one extra year.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26596463)

Surprises me more smart dudes don't take risks on kooky PhDs (or at least stem PhDs) or non profits or whatever. Everyone just goes the safe route of doctor/lawyer/banker/consultant. Like among these last 4 you're just grinding for money, but at the level where you can get those jobs you should he among the echelon of people who can actually succeed at "doing what they love" which ought to alleviate the risk of doing a PhD, so why not? Are you only motivated by money?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26596343)

Doctor and even lawyer is a more exciting career than academics. Banking and consulting is more often than not a jumping off point. people just use it for the connections, expertise, and credentialing for exit ops.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26596479)

doctor is a truly noble profession. you can build a practice, do research and do good.

bankers/consultants often move on to become titans of industry, starting/running businesses, etc. you see a lot of these guys moving into gov't and contributing to and running non-profits later on too. ppl who are psyched about grinding and moving up in a firm are usually FOB or middling IQ PROLE.

law is the only shitty one, but i don't know anything about it. most kids are poli-sci shitheads tho and im sure some have some interest in BIGFED or politics.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26596538)

if you find fulfillment in marking up contracts or aligning ppt charts, good for you

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26602133)

2. Think about where you want to be 10-20 years out, not 1-2 years out, and plan backwards from there.

3. It's possible, though hard, to find a path that is both lucrative and enjoyable. Ideally, pick one of the few paths that allow both (doctor in some specialties, solo attorney, professor, pilot, etc.), but if you can't have both, pick something you enjoy but that will allow you to afford at least the basic necessities.

4. Balance enjoyment of the moment with steady progress toward your goals. Don't sacrifice more than a year or two of your life to just work and postponement of happiness, but don't let a year or two pass without making progress either.

5. Profit.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26600926)

if you're confused, try meditation. and remember everyone else is too.

rumor has it lsd, psilocybin, peyote, dmt, etc. can be illuminating.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26601057)

Maybe you should publish an article about the DIFFERENCE in an academic JOURNAL that no one will read?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2699695&forum_id=2#26602907)