What Career Rule Does Jared Diamond Live by?

Jared Diamond says perhaps the main advice is to make sure you do something you enjoy, because that is what most people do not do. His friend, the biologist Tom Lovejoy, asked his father as a teenager what to do for a career. The father said do something you are good at, something you enjoy, and something that makes a difference in the world.

Jared Diamond says if people tell you that you have to live your life their way, tell them to go to hell. As a graduate he did not iron his shirts, and he says whether his shirts are ironed does not make much difference to life. What does make a difference is whether he enjoys the work, is good at it, and whether the work is good for the world. He spent a lot of time designing the national park system in Indonesia and New Guinea and the principles for national parks in general. He has written books about the big risks facing the world, trying to convince people to live better lives and not mess up the world.

He would have loved to conduct orchestras, but a conductor has to give the downbeat ahead of the players because of the speed of sound. He could not block out the sound of the playing or give the downbeat before the players played. UCLA invited him to conduct the orchestra once. Because he cannot anticipate the downbeat, he gave up conducting, although he would have loved doing it.