[keiferski]

I just read this yesterday in Conversations with Walter Murch, a well-known film editor. Not exactly the same, but I do get the sense that Tao still feels the same way about math:

As I've gone through life, I've found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old.

Interviewer: Yes—something that had and still has the feeling of a hobby, a curiosity.

M: At that age, you know enough of the world to have opinions about things, but you're not old enough yet to be overly in by the crowd or by what other people are doing or what you thinkyou “should” be doing. If what you do later on ties into that reservoir in some way, then you are nurturing some essential part of yourself. It's certainly been true in my case. I'm doing now, at fifty-eight, almost exactly what most excited me when I was eleven.

[albertzeyer]

I wonder a bit about that. What activities or possibilities are you exposed at during that age.

I know many computer science colleagues who were not exposed to programming during that age and only later came to it.

I feel kind of lucky that somewhat randomly I stumbled into computer programming (because XtreeGold could show the content of files, and I was learning to understand BAT-files by looking into them) during that age, and that's what I do now.

There are probably a lot of things you were not exposed during that age, that could have been the perfect match.

There are also lots of kids who just play games, or video games, do sports, watch films or so during that age, without really being exposed to any "potential useful" activities. Some parents would maybe even say that this is how it should be.

As a parent, I guess a good advice would be to try to expose your child to as much things as possible, without forcing it to do anything of course.

[keiferski]

Murch actually expands on that a little more in the interview. He doesn't mean the specific activity is what your job should be, it's more like "the basic similar activity."

So for him, as a video editor, it was using a tape recorder to record sounds, and reorganize them in an aesthetically appealing way. He didn't actually get into video editing specifically until after college IIRC.

[noisy_boy]

I first touched a computer after completing my university degree and I still remember the happiness I felt by simply running a DOS command and seeing the expected output.

It does't matter when the plug finds the socket - it is always electric.

[abcd_f]

> when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old.

As endearing as it sounds, that's pure selection bias on Walter's end rather than something even remotely common.

Clearly there are cases of this sort, like arts and other creative tangents, but on average it's a result of a discovery process much later in life.

[neosat]

I don't think Walter is implying anything about how common or uncommon this is. His core insight seems fairly objective and plausible to me: "...your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old". I.e. if you do end up being lucky and wise to do something as a profession closely related to what you *loved* doing when you were ~11 , because you end up spending time doing what you love (and equally importantly not spend that time doing something that sucks up energy) you increase your chances of being happier.

[keiferski]

I think you completely missed the point of his anecdote. It’s not a scientific study, he is merely saying that at age 9-11, you’re old enough to have a decent understanding of what you’re interested in, but not old enough to start worrying about social and financial pressures and expectations.

And so the thing you were interested in at that age is probably similar to what you’ll be interested in now, if you remove social and financial expectations.

[lordnacho]

I wonder if you could test this. Maybe someone has a longitudinal study where they check what people thought they liked to do as kids against what they do as adults.