New college grads: Don’t sell your time for a living
I don't think the world would function very well if all everybody was doing was "making" things. There are other required functions. Furthermore, most of the things mentioned in that article that you could "make" are internet-related. I'm not sure everybody having a blog or a youtube channel is all that sustainable. Is there a future where we can all just read each other's blogs?
This is such a stupid sentiment. There are countless people around the world who would give anything to be able to make a living to support a family or even just themselves. You don't need to go out of your way to ruin your ability to do so. Not to mention the practical concerns associated with this idea that WolverSwede layed out above.
Not that I'm a huge proponent of the system where a person is paid solely for their time, but this was a particularly poor advice column. No matter what, there's a good chance that sometime after college you will be paid for your time in some fashion. The key is, learning enough and saving enough during that period of time where you can actually do what you want after a relatively brief amount of time.
I'm currently working a ton of hours, and saving a whole lot of money doing a job that I'm not particularly thrilled about. The positive is, I figure that by the age of 30 I'll have enough saved where I can begin a variety of different endeavors and will never have to "work" in the formal sense ever again.
My recommendation to recent grads is to avoid getting caught up in the whole, "We're all moving to a city and blowing all of our money" situation that is very easy to succumb to in the 12-24 months after college. While it is a great time, it really sets people on a bad path going forward.
While I agree that most of the advice is bad, the one thing that I can't stress enough is to get involved with another person who shares your goals, is just as driven, and has a slightly different outlook on how things should work. In any endeavor, you should have a system of checks and balances. Having another motivated party aligned with your goals will also push things forward.
That column is addressed to the small percentage of people who have sufficient creative ability to make something interesting/useful. A very small percentage of those have a chance of doing it for a living.
It also ignores the possibility that someone could punch the clock every day doing something they merely like (or, at least, don't dislike) happily for X years. Also not for everyone ...
Speaking as a somewhat cynical person, I've seen people with considerable talent burn out badly by throwing themselves completely into their "passion."
tl;dr: There's more than one route to happiness.
I'm happy to see that this got sufficiently shot down.
Not only all of the above, but it also seems to me that the last part of that advice boiled down to "find other suckers willing to sell their time to you." So if everyone took his advice, his advice would turn out to be impractical, useless, and untenable. Well, even more so.
Worst advice column ever.
2nd worst ever. Jim Delany's fortune cookies are still the worst at providing advice.
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