Productivity Over Passion

Have a couple of weeks of PTO? Instead of spending lots of time and money on a two-week vacation, consider spending that time and money on a side project.

Picking a career? Maybe focus more on how much money you expect to make from it than on how passionate you are about it.

There’s plenty of content urging you to prioritize passion over money. It’s a personal choice, but I think about things a bit differently for my life.

Passion and happiness at work are important because they boost productivity, but beyond that it's not crucial.

I would gladly spend ten years in constant torment if it gave me a 40% chance of earning $1 billion.

With that $1 billion, I could do immense good for my society that's bigger than just me.

I have unconditional love for my society. Regardless of anything that could possibly happen, I will always care for my society. That's a big reason why I am a hardcore worker, and I will always be a hardcore worker because I will always love my society.

How happy you are definitely matters, but you’re only one person. If you spend ten years playing video games alone, earning $0 and loving every second, that’s great for you, but society doesn’t benefit. Instead, it bears the opportunity cost, and you wouldn’t have a dollar more to help. (In that example, a good compromise might be to make videos games for others to enjoy playing instead.)

I argue for putting productivity over passion for our society’s sake.

Everything in this post is just my take on my life. As long as it doesn’t involve dishonesty or otherwise being immoral, anyone should be free to make their own choices without persecution.

If you choose to focus only on what you enjoy and don’t care about productivity, that’s fine by me. I just hope it doesn’t significantly hurt our society’s future.

(I think this is a time for us to have a healthy concern about what will happen if an AGI is created, and try to ensure that the wonderful possibility of AGI happens rather than the two main bad possibilities. Refer to EAGI.FYI for more information on that.)

SS5.org/2025/05/27/productivity-over-passion