Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method

yacinemahdid.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 113 posts

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

#61

Post by cortesoft »

bruce511 wrote: post #54
DavidPiper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment actually suggests that your instincts tell you those things are not as valuable, but you might just be following habit and dopamine loops at the current moment. Which I guess is to say that GP's "follow your instincts" can also be as difficult as "set goals and hit them", just in different ways.

I concur. The opposite of goal setting is not "doing nothing". And with respect, watching TV, playing games, etc is doing nothing. Rather you should be _doing_ something, something interesting to you. Create, not Consume. SO questions is a good start. Meaningful answers take time. You might set a goal of 10 questions a day. Some amount that represents meaningful time. From there, maybe you notice the kinds of questio…

I find my life is best when I balance my creation and consumption. Too much of either leaves me not feeling the best.

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

#62

Post by Leo-thorne »

I’ve felt pretty lost before too, like stuck in this maze of endless paths. That line about not chasing tools but getting closer to the person you want to be really hit me. A lot of times it’s not that we don’t plan enough, it’s just that we rarely slow down and really listen to ourselves. This approach feels simple but grounding.

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

#63

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

The longer you have to take to decide between Option A and Option B, the less overwhelmingly obvious the chasm between A and B is to you.

If you're already in college and you still have no idea what you'd like to do as a young person in your life, I would - and did - take that as strong evidence that I should just focus on executing and follow life's default goals for a while. They've been selected by competitive pressures I couldn't hope to reproduce with my own brain, so they're probably pretty good vehicles to midwit enlightenment.

You already know what these are: Finish high school, and college if possible; get a day job and try to focus on being good at it instead of angry at it. Get your own place. Find a life partner. Have some kids. Rise up the ranks at your day job if you're cut out for it, but there's no shame in just holding down the fort if you aren't. Etc, etc. It works well! You don't have to pretend to be special, you can just focus on being good.

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

#64

Post by iandanforth »

Any time you encounter a self help piece ask yourself, "Does this advice assume I have significant motivation, concentration, and persistence?" If so, drop it right in the trash. If you had that 9/10 you'd be doing something pretty effective already.

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

#65

Post by recursivecaveat »

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…

It seems to me creating a 5y list of daily goals is a recipe to immediately be behind on 1000s on tasks within a few weeks. The thing about estimates is the best case scenario is they take 0 time, worst case is unlimited. When you are planning 5y of tasks when you don't really even know what you're doing, a large majority will completely explode once you dig into them. I've never seen a detailed 5y plan hold up in any area, I'm sceptical to what extent the author has actually done so.

My advice to young people: focus on activities that have some combination of the traits: eventually mandatory, reduce uncertainty about the future, leave open further choices that interest you, benefit you if accomplished sooner.

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

#66

Post by treetalker »

Terr_ wrote: post #60
thanhhaimai wrote: post #22

For some reason, I see this style of "everything lowercase" more often recently. It distracts me from the content a lot. Was there a reason this style has become more popular?

Sometimes there's some sort of JS/CSS rendering trick that has broken on the page. However in this case words like "I'll" still contain their capital. In this context (not an immediate interactive chat) I find these issues awkward and disrespectful to the reader, the same as if the piece was filled with typos. When the author treats a post as worthless throwaway text which isn't worth fixing even when they have plent…

I agree — yet here we are on the front page of HN.

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

#67

Post by taway2039458768 »

jebarker wrote: post #25

This is the opposite of what helped me to stop feeling lost in life. I grew up very goal oriented and executed towards those goals with focus and determination. Around when I turned 40 I realized I wasn't all that happy and I'd spent my entire life so far living for rewards that would come in the future. The problem is that those rewards didn't give sustaining satisfaction. They pass remarkably quickly when you get t…

Thank you for sharing this. I am truly glad to hear that this works for you. This resonates a lot with me, and I hope to acquire the same wisdom.

Similarly, as a goal-oriented person I used a variation of the "Waffle House" method, until I turned 40 not long ago. I still have tons of pages in my personal Wiki with life goals, 5-year goals, goals by year, objectives, GTD lists, etc. It served me well, and I am convinced that it is a valid method, up to a point. In big part thanks to this method I also ticked some "societal and cultural expectation boxes". I would cautiously recommend it to younger people too, provided that it matches their personality.

Then, this goal-orientedness fell apart from about age 38 to 40. Having achieved a number of the goals (reasonable ones, nothing to an excess), suddenly all other "goals" turned into a set of stressors. Some - because I doubt I can ever achieve those, others - because I question whether those are what I really want. I accepted the former, but the latter is harder to figure out. This resulted in a 2-year-long haze. The instinctive approach appeals a lot - I would like to think that I have built enough core values to navigate through life intuitively and respecting who I really am. But it also scares, because it sounds like giving up some some control.

Would love to hear the thoughts of those who went through this already. And with all my love, I sincerely wish everyone who reads this to figure out the life!

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

#68

Post by Animats »

It's really tough right now, because it's not at all clear what to learn. For most of the last century, if your objective for a college education included at least a middle class living standard, there were choices you could make which offered a high probability of that. This is no longer true.

About US half of college graduates end up in jobs that don't really require a college education. It's worse in some other countries, such as Egypt and India. The phrase "elite overproduction" is sometimes used. That's not a new idea; see Eric Hoffer's "Working and Thinking on the Waterfront", where he talks about "intellectuals" from the standpoint of a longshoreman. It's become more of an issue as the educational establishment expanded. Historically, there's a surplus of smart people. Only from about 1955 to 2005 was there a general shortage.

Now, of course, we have "AI". We have no idea how good "AI" will be in four years. It's already reducing hiring of new graduates. We have no idea what happens next. Even the popular crap jobs, Uber and Amazon warehouses, already peaked and are declining.

And don't talk about "Universal Basic Income". It used to be called "the dole" or "welfare". You get a free apartment in a crappy housing project, which is in a bad neighborhood because it's full of people with no job and no future.

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

#69

Post by YuriNiyazov »

coffeemug wrote: post #39
jebarker wrote: post #25

This is the opposite of what helped me to stop feeling lost in life. I grew up very goal oriented and executed towards those goals with focus and determination. Around when I turned 40 I realized I wasn't all that happy and I'd spent my entire life so far living for rewards that would come in the future. The problem is that those rewards didn't give sustaining satisfaction. They pass remarkably quickly when you get t…

idk man, I have the opposite experience. I've always followed my instincts, and am now stuck with consequences of bad decisions that are not easy to undo. My life is good, but I feel like I squandered a real shot to be world class and am now stuck in the top echelon of mediocrity, maybe permanently. Grass is always greener, I guess.

Why are you at azure and not at a frontier ai lab?

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

#70

Post by Terr_ »

treetalker wrote: post #66
Terr_ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes there's some sort of JS/CSS rendering trick that has broken on the page. However in this case words like "I'll" still contain their capital. In this context (not an immediate interactive chat) I find these issues awkward and disrespectful to the reader, the same as if the piece was filled with typos. When the author treats a post as worthless throwaway text which isn't worth fixing even when they have plent…

I agree — yet here we are on the front page of HN.

To twist a quote: The attention economy can remain irrational longer than I can remain sentient. :p
Post reply on HN