There is an old saying that if you can find something you love to do, you’ll never work a day in your life. But this is probably bad advice.

Here is a simple graph, from Seth Godin, to help explain:

The problem with fun things (y-axis) is that they’re fun. So lots of people want to do them. And if there’s a small or no market for said fun thing, then it’s probably a hobby. (Hobbies are still important.)

Sometimes you can be fortunate where something that previously had no market eventually has a big market. Take, for example, tinkering with computers in the early days.

This is what Chris Dixon was getting at when he said that what the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.

But if this doesn’t happen or if a big market already exists — and you do want to be successful at something fun — it’ll likely follow a power law.

Meaning, you’ll need to be the very best in the world and it’s almost certainly going to be a “slog”. (Bottom right quadrant.) One example of this would be the phenomenon of “starchitects.”

And that’s pretty much it for the fun stuff. The rest of this graph is for things that are difficult, which means that 3 out of these 4 quadrants are difficult and/or a slog.

This is not nearly as much fun as not ever working.

I have heard from some of you that you don't like it when I write about crypto and NFTs. This personal blog is supposed to be largely about city building after all. So today I thought I would write about crypto and NFTs. More specifically, this podcast episode, which I watched last night.

It's with Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon of the venture firm a16z, and it's actually less about specific things like NFTs and more about the reinvention of the internet in general. Why I found it particularly interesting is that Marc co-invented the first widely-used web browser. Anyone remember Netscape?

So he was around for what we are now calling web 1 and he is around for what we are today calling web 3. And there are lots of parallels between then and now. Similar to today with crypto, the early internet had lots of critics and lots of people who thought it was dumb and that it would never amount to much.

Oops.

Here are a few other thoughts and ideas from the podcast that I found interesting (some of them even relate to city building):

• No matter how many times we have seen the same movie, humanity seems doomed to repeat the same mistakes when it comes to, among other things, embracing new ideas and innovations. I agree with Marc in that part of this is generational. Younger people are often more open to new ideas because they view it as a way for them to establish themselves and make their mark on the world. Whereas older people (established people) often view new ideas and change as a threat to their current position in the world.

There is an old saying that if you can find something you love to do, you’ll never work a day in your life. But this is probably bad advice.

Here is a simple graph, from Seth Godin, to help explain:

The problem with fun things (y-axis) is that they’re fun. So lots of people want to do them. And if there’s a small or no market for said fun thing, then it’s probably a hobby. (Hobbies are still important.)

Sometimes you can be fortunate where something that previously had no market eventually has a big market. Take, for example, tinkering with computers in the early days.

This is what Chris Dixon was getting at when he said that what the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.

But if this doesn’t happen or if a big market already exists — and you do want to be successful at something fun — it’ll likely follow a power law.

Meaning, you’ll need to be the very best in the world and it’s almost certainly going to be a “slog”. (Bottom right quadrant.) One example of this would be the phenomenon of “starchitects.”

And that’s pretty much it for the fun stuff. The rest of this graph is for things that are difficult, which means that 3 out of these 4 quadrants are difficult and/or a slog.

This is not nearly as much fun as not ever working.

I have heard from some of you that you don't like it when I write about crypto and NFTs. This personal blog is supposed to be largely about city building after all. So today I thought I would write about crypto and NFTs. More specifically, this podcast episode, which I watched last night.

It's with Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon of the venture firm a16z, and it's actually less about specific things like NFTs and more about the reinvention of the internet in general. Why I found it particularly interesting is that Marc co-invented the first widely-used web browser. Anyone remember Netscape?

So he was around for what we are now calling web 1 and he is around for what we are today calling web 3. And there are lots of parallels between then and now. Similar to today with crypto, the early internet had lots of critics and lots of people who thought it was dumb and that it would never amount to much.

Oops.

Here are a few other thoughts and ideas from the podcast that I found interesting (some of them even relate to city building):

• No matter how many times we have seen the same movie, humanity seems doomed to repeat the same mistakes when it comes to, among other things, embracing new ideas and innovations. I agree with Marc in that part of this is generational. Younger people are often more open to new ideas because they view it as a way for them to establish themselves and make their mark on the world. Whereas older people (established people) often view new ideas and change as a threat to their current position in the world.