When I was in college I was having a hard time deciding what major to choose. I randomly went and spoke with a professor of Portuguese and asked him for some advice (I wasn’t even in his class — looking back on it now I have no idea why I chose this person).

“How do I know what to do? There’s so many things that interest me I really can’t decide what to study.”

“Just because you get a degree in one thing doesn’t mean that’s all you can do for the rest of your life! You need one thing to pay the bills, and you can spend the rest of your time on other pursuits.”

This piece of advice is not the subject of the title, because it was very good advice and I will stand by that.

I was good with computers, and I realized I didn’t need a degree in IT to keep working in IT, so I randomly studied Sociology, but continued working in IT and getting certifications and that sort of thing, as my career progressed. IT was the thing that paid the bills and Sociology and Writing and Music and Psychology and History and a whole bunch of other pursuits are what fill the rest of my time. I feel pretty good about that.

Of course, as a child I didn’t dream of becoming a manager in IT. What I wanted to be, and what I continued to work towards, was an author. I wrote short stories and books and eventually found that I really enjoyed writing screenplays. I thought “I could do this — my screenplays are better than some movies out there. I could do this for a living!”

I talked to my wife about it and she was behind me 100%. We could sell our house, and use our savings, and live somewhere for a year or two while I dedicated all my time to writing!

I hesitated. The problem with any creative pursuit is the amount of LUCK involved in it. Writing is not a meritocracy — the “best” writers aren’t always successful. And while I may consider myself a better writer in some ways than, say, Stephenie Meyer — even if it were objectively provable that I AM a better writer than Stephenie Meyer — it wouldn’t guarantee even a tenth of her success. We could spend two years chasing my dream and end up with a two year gap in my resume, no house, no money and nothing to show for it but a bunch of unsold manuscripts.

So I, well, didn’t quit my day job. I continued to write at night, continued to try new ways of gaining traction (self publishing, kickstarter, submitting screenplays to The Black List) and continued to achieve a consistent level of no success.

I also continued to progress in my career. Continued to get new opportunities, learned new things, met new people, got new certifications. My “day job” continues to be much more successful than my dream — and I’m pretty okay with that. My family is taken care of and I have a job that is stressful, but interesting and engaging and full of opportunities to try new things.

Let’s get to the advice

So when a friend talked to me and lamented that they didn’t want to spend their life just fixing computers, I gave them the advice to keep fixing computers, but to pursue their dreams as well. Fixing computers doesn’t involve (quite as much) luck — although it’s not perfect, there’s a more direct correlation between effort and reward. So keep at it, but also work on your dreams in your free time. Ideally, the better you are at your day job, the more free time you’ll have to pursue those dreams.

So that was the advice. Let me make it really clear the advice I ultimately gave (and have chosen to live by):

You can’t trust luck, so work a day job where you know you can be successful, and spend your off hours working on a dream that may not be such a sure thing.

Don’t I sound like a killjoy? Like a villain from a late 80s children’s movie, telling little Timmy that he’ll never make it in the NBA, that he should take the middle management job at his dad’s firm?

But I feel like my advice is pretty rational. There’s an interesting thing called survivorship bias, where you only see successes, and don’t see failures. Here’s an example from the linked article (which I highly recommend you read): everyone thinks of VW bugs as bulletproof, because they started making them 50 years ago (or 70 or whatever, I’m old now apparently) and you still see them on the road. What a marvel of german engineering!

But they forget that VW made seven quintillion bugs! Of COURSE you’re going to see some on the road, but it’s not because they’re build like tanks. It’s because they just made a ton. You see the ones on the road, but you don’t see the thousands more that were crushed and melted down into scrap.

We see successful people, and they tell a compelling story, like Steve Wozniak (and that other, less famous Steve) making computers in a garage and turning it into one of the most valuable companies in the world. But we don’t see all the other members of the silicon valley computer club, or whatever they were in, that DIDN’T make multi-trillion dollar behemoths. For every Steve Jobs there are a hundred or a thousand other people who are just as talented, but weren’t in quite the right situation for that level of success.

My point is, if you follow a “dream” you’re gambling — and you don’t know the odds. It could be ten to one. Or a million to one.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow your dream. Hence my advice. To pursue your dream, but make sure you are also progressing in something that isn’t quite as much of a gamble.

Will I ever sell my movie about the creation of the odyssey by Homer, who turns out to be a drunk and a con-man in my version of the story?

I mean … probably not. I haven’t sold anything yet, and at this point it’s not longer a source of frustration. I write because I enjoy writing, not because I think it’ll transform my life.

And so maybe this is … terrible advice. It hasn’t led to success in following my dreams, so why would I ever presume to tell someone else what to do with their dream? I suck at dream following, apparently!

And it definitely leads to a slower pace than if I were focused on my writing dream exclusively. When I was writing a lot I pumped out a new screenplay or short story every month or so. Now a single short story takes me six months to get through. I just have less energy for it (I blame the children).

So what do you think? Is that terrible advice? Or is it actually pretty reasonable?