Only a Certain Kind of Weirdo Should Want Your Dream Job

The essayist, puzzling over why people pick jobs they end up hating, starts with a clock. It is 2 p.m. on a Tuesday and you are doing your job, he writes, and then it is 3:47 and you are still doing it.

His line, in his words, is that "only a crazy person should do it" once a job is described in full detail. He means a surgeon is signing up to repeat one operation again and again for decades, an actor is letting employment turn on bone structure, and a wedding photographer is agreeing to work weekends clearheaded while everyone else celebrates.

Prestigious work looks widely appealing, he argues, because the daily grind stays out of view and remains endurable for just a small slice of people. No exertion of discipline, he adds, can sustain someone across endless midweek afternoons. What fills those hours had better be something the worker actually enjoys.

The consolation, he argues, is that everyone is, in his words, "far outside the norm in at least one way." Some wake up at 5 a.m. to make almond croissants, some watch golf on television, and some will haul a massive rig loaded with novelty toys from coast to coast. Others savor the squeak of packing foam rubbed together, or will watch a 94-part series on YouTube about the Byzantine Empire.

Seen from high above, he writes, careers look like blurs. Seen as a run of ordinary weekday afternoons, most futures suit only one kind of person. To find yours, picture a typical Tuesday for the job you want and ask whether its routine matches your own oddness.