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How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method

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Re: How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method

#11

Post by the_snooze »

Aurornis wrote: post #9

In my experience, the best case scenario for students (or anyone) who do these elaborate planning rituals is that it serves as a catharsis that moves their anxieties from their brain to some paper. Relieved, they loosen up and get back to making progress while forgetting about their detailed 5-year plan The worst case is when this ritual produces a rigid set of unrealistic goals that the person almost immediately fai…

Having supervised high-achieving students in undergrad research settings, I just tell them to chill out, be a whole person with friends and hobbies, and lots of things will just fall into place. The fact that they're where they are (i.e., fancy university, research group, yadda yadda) shows they're the kind of person to take initiative. The fact that they worry shows that they care. They're already way ahead.

The real gains at that point are in connections, reputation, and getting into the habit of physical exercise.

Re: How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method

#13

Post by busterarm »

I had a good strong 3 year run at something that looks similar enough to this around the time I moved across the country and changed careers a couple of decades ago. I've struggled to get that kind of determination again, but I've done it again with personal fitness in the last two years...

I think this is good advice, for nearly anyone.

Re: How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method

#16

Post by treetalker »

I'm not in tech, but in my experience, I've gotten furthest in the directions of my goals, and my best results, by:

- keeping in mind the direction I want to advance, but

- determining which activities I should repeat every day to move in that direction,

- executing those activities consistently (every day) and regularly (according to rules/principles, as I learn/discover them), and

- gradually refining that execution with practice.

To me, it feels a bit like walking across your house in the dark: you know where you'd like to go, but you can only feel your way there a step at a time, you run into things, but you course-correct and keep moving forward.

Keep it simple.

Some paraphrases:

Tyson: Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. (A PERT chart with hundreds of nodes, planned in advance, is almost certain to fall apart.)

Patton: A good plan, violently executed now.

Von Clausewitz: The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.

Re: How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method

#17

Post by strken »

trvrprkr wrote: post #5

Grinding out your goals in a 48-hour vision quest-esque process like this, especially for someone early career or facing larger questions about trajectory, seems odd. Five years is an infinite amount of time for some people and especially so with pace of change and uncertainty these days. I suppose this might work for some, but it comes off as excessively performative and not actually practical.

I did something like this a while back, although it didn't take 48 hours. The point is to move you from that infinite five year timeline where decision paralysis is stopping you from doing anything, and taking you back to three years, then one year, then next month, then tomorrow.

I agree with you that five years might as well be a lifetime. The point of this exercise is to define how you want that lifetime to end, then step backwards through it until you know what you're doing tomorrow. The plan for five years ("be a CTO") only matters insofar as it tells you your plan in three years ("be in a position where you report to the board"), one year ("be a lead engineer"), one month ("be confident in passing a job interview and be sending my CV out"), and tomorrow ("message Todd and ask if he'll run a mock interview for me, do some leetcode, message the Acme group chat").

You honestly might as well throw out any plans beyond the one year mark. Either they're important and you can recreate them, or they've changed and you should recreate them. The process of planning is more important than its output.

Re: How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method

#20

Post by turnsout »

The problem with this kind of detailed long-term planning is that you won’t possibly be able to reverse engineer the exact path you’re going to take. And if you get too attached to your bullet points, lists, charts and graphs, you don’t know how to react when you hit a snag or a fork in the road.

When that bump comes, people often abandon the whole plan. So the trouble with goals is that the good (getting you motivated to act) is often outweighed by the bad (draining motivation when the arbitrary goal is not met).

What you really want, in hn-friendly language, is not a 2D point on a map, but a vector. You want to know the general direction that you want to move toward in your life, and then start increasing your velocity.

A point is something you have reached or not (hint: it’s not even satisfying when you hit it). But you can change your vector on a dime. Even if you’re nowhere near your dream life, even in terrible times, you can always instantly pivot and vector in the right direction.

If it makes you feel good, make the big plans and be as detailed as you please. But hold them lightly. And just get moving along your vector.

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