How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by research_pie » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 12:16 PM UTC

hey everyone author here, I'm really glad to see all the different life structures people have adopted.

not all strategies work for all brains unfortunately.

but the essence is this:

- untangle yourself from the claws of others' expectations

- imagine vividly someone you would feel proud to merge with in the near future

- distill that image into your very own crooked and muddy golden path

- act now and take control of your life

- periodically look back at the image you hold and course correct where your heart guides you

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

#82

Post by adidoit » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 12:21 PM UTC

I'm sure someone will say this, but of course, having a plan is useless, but planning itself is priceless.

The reality you must accept is that life will just happen to you, and not just unexpected events, but transitions in your own needs, desires, and wants. Your plans will change.

One part of the planning fallacy that is perhaps understated is how much your internal locus will change over time. There are periods in your life where you chase money, status, impact, etc. And then there are other periods in your life where you chase knowledge, understanding, stillness.

Just know the tradeoff you make with any approach and structure.

The biggest challenge with the approach the OP explains is that you tend to have a very instrumentalist way of looking at the world. Every day, every interaction is in service of these goals. Obsession isn't healthy forever but it is useful in periods

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

#83

Post by adithyassekhar » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 12:50 PM UTC

taway2039458768 wrote: post #67

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 convin…

> 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'm 25 and I relate to this in a funny way. I see todo list apps like this. People say they get a high when ticking off a task but for me once you keep ticking off things, daily, things start to feel not worth it. Life starts to feel like checkboxes.

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

#84

Post by jpster » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 12:53 PM UTC

h4ny wrote: post #30

kmoser wrote: post #23

This may work for the author, and for other people, but I would never give this advice. It supposes you are able to articulate where you want to be in five years, and have the ability to break that down into actionable tasks. Most people just want to have a stable job, apartment/house, and good relationship. Any further breakdown is often guessing, unrealistic, or outright fantasy. My advice to people in this situati…

> It supposes you are able to articulate where you want to be in five years, and have the ability to break that down into actionable tasks. This is gold. :)

IMO this used to be a problem. But I’ve found LLMs are really good at helping one fill in these knowledge gaps, well enough to get started.

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

#85

Post by jebarker » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 1:15 PM UTC

alecco wrote: post #79

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…

All this middle age crisis stems from having fewer children and even fewer grandchildren. How to find meaning as childless person: help your relatives (Gen Z and Alpha are in crisis right now), help your community, donate blood, help disabled people, volunteer as firefighter. But above all, focus on doing it to people who are themselves pro-social. Avoid sociopaths and alert people being abused. Just telling them som…

I am not sure I agree with not having kids being the cause of mid-life crisis. But for balance, as the GP, I will say that I had two kids through the time that I adjusted my approach to life to this less goal oriented approach. They do provide direction to life, make many decisions easier (since I just choose what’ll be best for them) and provide constant distraction from consumption. They also provide an additional tension if you remain goal oriented though since now you have less time to sit and think about your goals and plans and that’s stressful too.

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

#86

Post by jebarker » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 1:20 PM UTC

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.

> Grass is always greener, I guess.

Indeed. Everything has to find their own path.

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

#87

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #50

socalgal2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience would be the opposite. I'm not goal oriented > Instead I now just trust my instincts and follow what seems interesting or meaningful to me right now for me that means watching anime, playing video games, reading HN and social media, and maybe writing small programs like solving S.O. questions, And now I look back, have accomplished nothing of significance, and have huge regrets. Regrets that I didn't se…

Does your instinct really say “watch anime for 6 hours right now”, or does your instinct say something else and you just aren’t listening to it?

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by wat10000 » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 3:12 PM UTC

alecco wrote: post #79

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…

All this middle age crisis stems from having fewer children and even fewer grandchildren. How to find meaning as childless person: help your relatives (Gen Z and Alpha are in crisis right now), help your community, donate blood, help disabled people, volunteer as firefighter. But above all, focus on doing it to people who are themselves pro-social. Avoid sociopaths and alert people being abused. Just telling them som…

How do I find meaning as a child-ful person?

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

#89

Post by wat10000 » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #75

xg15 wrote: post #71

I wrote a toy program once, in which an agent should navigate on its own through a 2D platformer environment. Jump over obstacles/holes, climb stairs, etc. The idea was that the agent would first receive a goal like "go to tile (15, 28)", then use Dijkstra's algorithm to create a "movement plan" - like "move 2 tiles to the right, trigger a jump, move 3 tiles to the left while in the air", etc - and then execute that…

Isn't the A* algorithm something that kinda helps with this? Basically you recalculate the route every "step".

A* still produces a full path ahead of time, it's just potentially more efficient to compute. Recalculating each step would be a layer on top of that.

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

#90

Post by mock-possum » Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 3:33 PM UTC

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…

Yeah this is how it works for me, for sure - as much as I like to frame my penchant for planning and scheduling and lists, the underlying truth is it’s a coping method for anxiety.

There are definitely times where I don’t NEED to plan things out in such a strict detailed way, in order to achieve a good outcome; but i do it anyway because it soothes me.

And as you say, internalizing that ‘approach, not outcome’ and ‘journey, not destination’ outlook is definitely what makes this little arrangement ‘work’ for me. It really helps failures to feel more like learning opportunities, less like let downs or blows to my self-worth.