God, here I am talking about a Tim Ferriss book again. Whatever. The deal was “buy the 4-hour body, get the 4-hour workweek pdf free,” so I got both. 4HWW is actually more interesting, as I don’t want to lose weight or gain muscle, and that’s what most of 4HB is about. (course, I don’t really want to make an automated web-based business either, and that’s what most of 4HWW is about, but whatever.)

Nevertheless, there are nuggets that have stuck with me, and one of the biggies is when he’s talking about happiness. Ferriss says people are always talking about happiness, but that’s like saying you want “good” food; it’s true, but it doesn’t give you any guidelines as to how to get there. Hey, I’m listening; this is something I think quite a bit. His answer is: talk about excitement instead. Don’t search for happiness, search for excitement.  (see quote #4 here)

I like it! I may adopt that as a motto or guideline or whatever. When you’re excited, all the little stuff doesn’t matter. Life is fun, in pretty much every way. You get to move mountains, because you gain energy from your work instead of spending it.

On the other hand, there’s another newfangled internet hero: Cal Newport, who argues that it’s not about finding work that excites you, but about enjoying the work you have. He does have, well, 3000 years of meditative history, as well as the entire religion that I most believe in, behind him. Well. That’s hard to argue with.

Or maybe we have a false dichotomy. Enjoy the work you have, and seek out new work that excites you? I guess that makes sense. I don’t know, if I had to pick sides, the excitement thing is really tempting. I may think more about this later but I have some purple potatoes burning in the oven.