I've been noting that in the last 2 years, my interests sprung from computers to various fields including writing, drawing and fighiting. I start to be a bit 'compulsed' to do the other things which I enjoy, so currently I have computing, writing, drawing and fighting. After some ponderation, I've noticed I'm able to make a living of any of those, but being computing the best paid one, but also the one that leaves me less time for the others. I'm still trying to decide exactly what I should pursue as a professional and what to chose as a hobby. I do not want to do two of them professionally mostly because I know I'll probably end up neglecting them and making them either 2 failures or 2 barely worth it.


Anyone feels the same? Just too many interests that they don't know which to chose?

I know exactly how you feel. I've struggled with choosing between two things, music and computers (I won't get into sub-fields of computers). Music is what I really love and want to do but this career as a PC programmer kind of fell into my lap after pursuing it as a hobby for a couple of years. It's hard to give up a career that comes so easy and pays so well, but I know what I want to do.

I wish you luck in deciding what you want to do, but that's about all I can do to help. Nobody can tell you what you want. I can tell you how I've made my decision, though. For me it comes down to this: I want to *love* what I do for a living. My passion is music, and all other things being equal, I'd rather be playing music than doing anything else. All other factors are never equal, but that's the bottom line for me. I don't care if my days are longer or I make less money or I have to sacrifice other hobbies, I want to play music. And that's exactly why I think I'll be successful at it - because my heart is in it. I enjoy programming, especially game programming, but my heart will never be in it like it is with music. This website is actually one of the things that's helped me re-focus on my music career goals. Some of Steve's articles and posts, and others' as well, are highly inspirational but they apply to me in another field, not game development.

The only advice I can suggest is to prioritize your goals. Pick the first thing you want to achieve, and work on it until it's achieved. Then, look at your life goals list again, re-arrange it based on your current priorities, pick the highest priority goal and stick to it until it's finished. Prioritizing is the key.

How do you prioritize if your goals keeps changing from day to day? I've met some people where their goals are almost on an equal prioritization level, one or the other interest weighing over depending on their mood.
I do not have this problem basically because I only have one interest.

Too many interests isn't necessarily a bad thing. Leonardo da Vinci suffered from this affliction as well, and he still managed to accomplish quite a bit. Many consider him the greatest genius of all time, given that he achieved mastery in so many different fields. From what I've read about him, at any given time he tended to focus deeply on a single primary pursuit. One of his greatest regrets was that he left so much unfinished though.

I struggle with the same thing. I have more interests than time or resources.

I've discovered that the secret of success with multiple interests is to not spend too much time worry about which one you *should* be focusing on. Rather, pick one and go for it.

It's not like you have to make this decision once and then live with it the rest of your life. And even if one area of interest monopolizes for a while, you can still come back to the others.

Something I've found useful is set the "minimum time block" I work on something. Maybe it's a couple hours, maybe it's a day, or it could be weeks or months. The concept boils down to how long I plan to work on my current choice, before needing to decide again.

For example, if you wanna write today, write. Tomorrow, maybe you will work on your programming, or maybe you will spend the rest of this week writing and come back to the programming next week.

-David