In college, Will Ferrell was pursuing a career as a sportscaster. Then, at a low point, he had the idea to sift his memories for clues—any information that might help him discern what he’s really meant to do with his life. “There was a moment in high school,” Will explained, The class president asked Will to write short comedy sketches that they would perform over the intercom system during morning announcements. “One night,” Will said, “I was writing a little sketch. I thought it’d been about 20 minutes. At one point, I stopped and looked at the clock, and it was midnight. I’d spent four hours writing and rewriting and revising that little sketch.” Will said he realized it was one of the few times where work didn’t feel like work, where he started working on something, and “the next thing I knew, the night was gone.” “And I thought, ‘Oh, don’t ignore that feeling. Find a way to follow that feeling of doing work that doesn’t feel arduous in any sort of way.’” Takeaway 1: “For anyone,” Amy Krouse Rosenthal once wrote, “trying to discern what to do with their life: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO. That’s pretty much all the info you need.” Pay attention to what you can pay attention to so that, as Ferrell put it, the next you thing you know, the night is gone. Takeaway 2: In economics, there’s a concept known as “match quality”—the degree of alignment between the traits of a profession and the traits of a person. One way to discern match quality is to pay attention to your degree of excitement—if you don’t get excited by the parts of the profession that excite your peers, that’s a clear indication of a “mismatch.” “There was another lightbulb moment,” Will contines. Just after he graduated with a sports journalism degree from USC, Will worked at a small cable news station in Los Angeles. In a meeting one morning, the station’s producer announced that he needed someone to do a post-game interview with John Robinson, then the head coach of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. “40 hands shot up,” Will said, “except for mine. I’m surrounded by these hungry people who were excited to do the interview. Meanwhile, my first thought was, ‘Ugh, I’m gonna have to rent a camera. Parking is gonna be a pain. I’ll have to ask one of my classmates to run sound for me.’” “I realized, ‘this is not a good sign. I should be leaping out of my chair.’” After becoming aware of this mismatch, “I said, ‘Well, I can’t get excited about this exciting opportunity, but there’s this comedy thing that is still gnawing at me,’ and that’s when I signed up for my first comedy class at The Groundlings [a sketch comedy school based in Los Angeles].” As he wrote sketches to perform at The Groundlings, he paid attention to that feeling of doing work that doesn’t feel arduous in any sort of way, and he knew he had met his match: “I said, ‘I’m done with the broadcasting thing. I’m going to pursue this comedy thing.’” - - - “One sign that you're suited for some kind of work is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious.” — Paul Graham Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!