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At my employer, every incentive, every metric, every conversation, was aligned behind using AI. Every team performance meeting pulled up graphs on whether velocity was increasing beyond last quarter’s metrics, which should be going up because of AI. Choosing not to use it inevitably means getting let go since I’d be working at slower speeds. But as team lead this was already happening because all my time was spent reviewing slop and I had no time to produce my own code, because the entire team was being reckless with their submissions. I was going at 1/3 the speed of everyone else trying to keep things coherent. My manager preferred to fix forward rather than address my concerns that we were producing tech debt at 10x speeds, so none of my comments were addressed. As soon as our prototype was done, the other most senior engineer and I pleaded that we rewrite it from scratch before getting it to prod, but that of course would have been a two month setback. By now, all of upper management were ending every quarterly meeting with “If you don’t like AI, then leave now”.
I haven’t looked back, and I don’t think it will go well for them.
What kind of self talk is going on when you try to get yourself motivated? Are you saying negative things about yourself for not getting started? Are you pushing yourself to do things so you have the glory of having accomplished it? Do you value yourself based on these accomplishments and compare yourself to others to see how valuable you are?
Get rid of all these. They won’t help you. It’s possible you procrastinate because your subconscious does not like having to deal with the “club over your head” evaluating and analyzing your every move.
Instead realize that your relationship with yourself is made up of “We” instead of “I”. Amongst many things, there is a subconscious and a conscious mind that must work together in harmony. A good metaphor is seeing the subconscious as a team of players who play the game of life and the conscious mind as a coach who doesn’t play but helps the players focus on something and gives feedback after the performance.
The issue arises when the conscious mind (ego) wants to be a player and in full control. Using sheer will power, the conscious mind tries to control everything such as the behavior, the outcome, the process, everything. This is tiring, ineffective, and not fun.
Instead, remember what it was like when you were a child and this conscious mind didn’t interfere with the doing. No criticizing or trying to control the outcome and getting frustrated when you fail. Only play and fun and discovery. The only thing to do when you fail is to keep trying and discovering and playing with no harsh feedback or expected outcome.
So first, become still so your conscious mind can be silent. Lay down on the couch and stare at the ceiling. Sit and meditate. Go for a walk. Whatever you do, just be in the present, don’t think about what you should be doing or whatever. Keep your mind as silent as possible for even a minute by listening and observing what’s going on around you. Practice keeping your digital distractions off and away if you can. The point here is to see what you feel like doing at a deeper level, and avoiding the distractions that fill your day.
Pay attention to how you feel and find out what you want to do next. It should be spontaneous, not what you “should do or else you’re no good”. Once you find natural motivation to do something, your conscious mind gets to decide whether or not it is aligned with your goals. Pay close attention here because the subconscious mind can be like a puppy. If it wants to go back to digital distractions, say that is not appropriate. If it wants to do something aligned with your goals, “allow” it to do so.
It is okay if you feel like playing and not being productive. Allow yourself to just be yourself. It is okay to only feel like doing something for a few minutes only to switch to something else. Just go with your intuition.
When you decide to do something, play! Don’t try to come up with some grand scheme and force yourself to follow it. Do what comes naturally like you’re a kid again. Make it fun. Be spontaneous. Try learning a new skill. But whatever you do, don’t force the subconscious to behave a certain way for a specific outcome. Just visualize the goal or state your intent, and then hands off. Just let the conscious mind be silent and observe. Once you perform an action, THEN the conscious mind may speak like a coach. Tell yourself what you can do better or what you did well. Avoid negativity here. Only focus on how close you are to your goal. THEN try again or do something else with the conscious mind silent and observing again.
Don’t evaluate in the middle of an action. The point here is to let the players play and for the coach to let go of attaching itself to some expected outcome. There is no “failure”, just action. Try again or go do something else, without judgement or criticism. When the coach gets mad because it didn’t win, that doesn’t help anyone or anything. It needs to be hands off and let the players play and have fun. It is ALL about the journey and NEVER a means to an end. Ideally, work will become play and you can do it forever if you had all the time in the world!
Just remember that you do need to allow yourself breaks and chances to rest and wind down after working hard. My rule is once every 1-2 hours, take a break. If you don’t want to lose track of time, set a timer or tell yourself you’ll resume once you’re done distracting yourself with a specific thing.
Hope that helps!
The outcome may seem similar but it is not. The writer does mention that the effort is light, and that realization is monumental, but it also means that the writer is now infinitely flexible to spend their time effectively based on what is going on in the present moment. This opens up new possibilities and allows the subconscious to come up with ideas that the conscious mind and ego could never dream up when they focus so hard on a rigid approach to life. Concluding there is a right and wrong way of doing things crystallizes your life and not only is such an approach is limiting and restricting, but such control over a schedule is an illusion and makes you focus on the future. It constantly makes you play catch up and is never fun, leading to self inflicted misery and depression that you’re not good enough based on some non realistic ideal.
It is more effective to see yourself as multiple parts, or a “We”. In this case, the conscious and the subconscious. Whether you like it or not, the subconscious is actually the one doing things and the conscious mind (ego) is the feedback loop. It is helpful to see the two as a coach and its players. The coach (ego)’s job is to be used as a focusing tool and feedback loop. The players job is to do the work and let the coach know what it notices. Such a metaphor helps you understand how your self talk should sound. Coaches are not on the playing field but guide the players towards a goal without trying to control the game or action in this case. But once the game starts, the coach is hands off.
The problem arises when the coach (ego) wants to control the outcome of the game and be a player. I call this the ego trying to be general manager of the universe. It tries to control things it cannot control and thus is frustrated that the outcome does not go in its favor a majority of the time. It also puts in an immense amount of strain and wastes a ton of energy trying to do something it cannot. Thus the coach suffers greatly and still gets no closer to playing on the field instead of the players.
Instead, run the subconscious program (complete the task) and get out of the way. Then afterwards, reflect upon what happened and let the conscious tell the subconscious how it can do better next time. To let it sink in, visualize the outcome in your minds eye, then trust that your subconscious will do better next time.
This is what being in the present moment is all about.
Alan Watts is also a good resource to check out on YouTube for mindfulness meditation, though he’s not for everyone. You can find a few lectures about meditation and Zen Buddhism if you search around. For understanding who you are not, try Learning the Human Game: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SsU9UUtELkw
The point of learning all this is because there’s a lot of stuff happening when you are meditating or being mindful in everyday life. It’s difficult to discern who is the real you. The big questions is: WHY are you behaving a certain way? What do you get out of it and who taught you? Where did it come from?
If society taught you so that you can be proper and fit in, it isn’t you. If you learned it through trauma or for the sake of pride/ego, it is not you. Pay attention to your emotional reactions to things. They are telling you that you want something to change. Then simply do what it takes to move that direction. No need to get mad or sad or wish it were different. That is all a waste of energy. (Avoid saying shoulda, woulda, coulda)
We are not our thoughts. Pay attention to when those arise and let them go. Your true self will have tons of energy and motivation, and you will not have any resistance in doing it. Let that energy carry you till you feel diminishing returns or fatigue, then figure out what you want to do next in the same manner.
This isn’t to say that you must get rid of your conscious mind or ego. Simply understand why they’re useful.
Your conscious mind is a focusing tool, like a coach, and your subconscious mind is like the players in charge of the doing. The conscious mind shouldn’t be the one trying to solve everything. The ego cares too much about things that don’t matter like pride, greed, and ruling the universe. It is just trying to protect you from harm and death.
Let go of these feelings and thoughts, and stop trying to be the supreme ruler of the universe. You cannot control nearly as much as you think you can, including yourself. You can only influence.
Be still, let life happen and flow with it like water. Translation: Be perceptive of what’s happening around you and within, then act appropriately by gently guiding everything toward the desired outcome without using force and striving. Patience is key here. Striving makes you use up your energy too quickly and potentially burn out.
When you achieve this state of mind, it feels like you can solve any problem using your mind and ingenuity, and nothing really bothers you anymore. You’ll only spend time on what truly matters to you and your life will become one that’s truly worth living.
I had a similar situation in school where I had a new project and team per quarter. One friend on one team didn't do anything, and the team tried to fail him because we put in all the work. He cried to his teacher and got a pass anyway. The real world can be like this too, actually. I find that managers are usually not willing to fire bad employees.
But anyway, it could be true that there simply isn't time, but I encourage you to try anyway because you will gain experience, even when you fail. The moment you conclude there is no time is the moment you stop learning and growing.
Of course, do what you care about and don't burn yourself out. In the end, you always return to asking yourself if what you're doing is working toward accomplishing your goals.
Thanks so much for reading my post and best of luck.
- Your internships are what you make them. The names don't mean much at an intern level because Amazon and Google aren't going to hand you "exceptional software" as an intern. Learn as much as you can while given the opportunity.
- People are still learning, especially in school. Programming is hard for a large majority of programmers, even for the masters. You may be smart, but if you can't work with people, then you are not valuable. There is always something you can learn about yourself and your approach, even when surrounded by idiots. If you don't realize this now, you will waste time throwing away opportunities to learn and grow in CS and with your soft skills. Unless you start your own business or become a consultant, you will need to get used to working on a team, motivating them and teaching them to become better.
- There are two types of programmers, imo. One does it purely for money. The other is truly passionate about it. The ones who do it purely for money aren't motivated to learn and grow, so treat them as order-takers. They just don't care, but they're paid handsomely for it. Learn as much as you can from the ones who are passionate, because they never stop investing in tech. They will shoot you forward in your career and save you years.
- Everyone recommends tech stacks they're comfortable with. Tech stacks are not what determine the quality of work. What determines it is good planning, design, architecture, and refactoring. Readability is king. The best way to write software is to adhere to the nuances and quirks of the tech stack you're working with, and to have proper separation of concerns, which is an art that takes at least a decade of refinement unless you devour text books on the subject regularly.
If you allow me to be frank and you truly want to know what's going on, then let me tell you that the issue is that you need more humility. Objectively assess what is going on and do what is necessary to solve the issue (without "firing" your peers and complaining that they suck). Always be learning from the situation and take the most appropriate action to reach your goal (without being passive aggressive or hostile). Then hold yourself to the highest standard you can, knowing that people will rarely ever match your dedication to your work unless you're surrounded by passionate engineers. What matters is that you're always learning and growing. Anything else is a waste of your time and opportunity.
For example, when you see that there are compile time errors in the main branch, you need to get your team together and talk about why that is bad. People may genuinely just not understand why it is important nor care. Now being a principal engineer at my company, I have seen time and time again that people just don't know what they don't know because computer science is extremely complex and humanity has not figured out how to teach people everything they need to know. I've learned by reading a ton and trial and error, but as I said, people who just do it for the money will not find it out themselves. If you care about it, you'll have to establish yourself as a trustworthy leader, raise morale, get them to care, and then start teaching them. Not saying you're doing this, but if you sit around and complain that they're not as good as you or they don't understand what they should, you're not solving anything and you're just part of the problem. This situation will arise over and over in your career. If you understand there is an opportunity for you to grow as a mentor and leader, companies will flock to you and pay you handsomely for your skills, AND you will shape and mold your environment to your liking with higher quality and standards wherever you go.
Last thing to note...be PATIENT. Change takes time, trial and error, and refinement. Humans are stubborn and slow to change, especially in this industry, unless they're passionate about it and have humility to learn and grow and receive constructive criticism.
Hope that helps.
I'd always return with them asking how the nap was and I'd always say it wasn't enough...haha
It was a neat experience though. I had the most vivid lucid dreams, flying and doing whatever I could imagine. The rem naps would seemingly last 90 minutes even though my alarm would wake me after 20. The days meshed together and felt surreal. I enjoyed it but I feel like I'd have to give up meat to realistically achieve uberman.
Sure, I got promoted around once a year and my salary jumped 10-15% per year without ever having to switch jobs. I learned a ton about enterprise software and architecture from real world experience. I went from zero to hero at my last job and became one of the most dependable people in my department in less than a year of working there.
But it took a heavy toll. I went through two wonderful relationships that turned sour from resentment. I worked 58-70hr weeks on average this year with no weekends for four months. The worst was a year ago when I worked 100hrs/wk for 5 weeks straight which led me to severe depression, a failed project, and a missed 10k bonus.
I never had energy to do side projects or anything else except play video games, which didn't counterbalance my work. I spent very little time on cultivating my relationship with my partner so being around them wasn't relaxing. I had ego issues even allowing myself to relax and give myself alone time because it wasn't time spent learning and growing. My life revolved around helping everyone but myself.
I turned down a 42k raise before I left my last job because I knew what the stakes were had I accepted it in exchange for staying. More money and accelerated experience won't give you a happy life. It will destroy it instead.
I finished my last consulting project a week ago and I'm just taking a few weeks to heal. No responsibility, no coding, no stress, no worry, no chip on my shoulder holding a club over my head. I meditate an hour a day now, which is very therapeutic, and I allow myself to play video games all day without judgement. It's time to celebrate me, and I'm loving it.
After I heal, it's time to start my own business. I'm tired of spending my valuable time and energy helping other people become rich while I clean up after every stupid political decision they make. People are way too aggressive on timelines and cost without understanding the consequences on the software and on the morale of their employees. I need to get out of the rat race and attain financial independence, which was my original goal before I worked so hard, I forgot where I was going.
Trump's tweet showed he was concerned, not glorifying. If he wanted to glorify it, he would probably say something more along the lines of "Get in line or we will use our GREAT guns and military and open fire on you thugs." He also wouldn't need riots as an excuse to tweet about such things.
Zuckerberg is supporting freedom of speech when his company didn't have to choose to. He is correct that censoring only worsens the problem and it removes opportunities to improve the situation. If Trump were censored, people would not know him or what he is doing as well as they do now. Amidst all the risk to MZ's company and the violence happening around us, his decision is highly courageous and respectable as he is serving the American people and their rights, even though he said himself that he doesn't like what Trump said.
When in a lecture, see if you can record it and revisit it to create more notes. Look for visual cues and if there's something you can touch or do, feel it or try out whatever you're learning, whether in class or on your own time. Keep asking yourself questions about what's being discussed to stay engaged.
In class, do an outline so you can record everything as quickly as possible. If you can do written, it's better because it activates your spatial memory and forces you to put things in your own words. Only take notes about what matters. Dates, names, formulas, historical significance, pros and cons, theories, arguments, pictures, and questions you have.
Once you have an outline, come back to it and create a mind map so you have an overall picture of what you learned that day. Extra credit if you cultivate a separate mind map of the entire course over the semester.
For study, you could use the Cornell system to make it easy to quiz yourself and use Anki for rote memorization on the go. Review any time you're waiting like for class, an elevator, in line, etc.
If you're studying with a textbook, highlight, write your thoughts in the margin or on post-its in the book, and use color coded tabs in the best way YOU see fit. Group by theme or topic, or whatever suits you.
If you've pretty much rehashed notes in as many ways as possible, you'll retain a whole ton of it already just by activating all kinds of memory, not just one. You won't have to study as much later if you put more time up front right when you were exposed to it. The longer you wait, the more it fades.
But next comes review and this is the MOST important step when it comes to note-taking and retention. If you want to remember something long-term, look at your notes daily for a month. You don't need to quiz yourself or check that you've got it committed to memory. Just read through your notes once per day and be done with it. You can quiz yourself a little later into it by covering the notes and recalling as many facts as you can before looking at them. Also you can practice whatever it is you learned or listen to the lecture again any time you'd listen to music. To make it even more effective, choose different places to review your notes so your brain doesn't only recall information in your primary study location. Don't be hard on yourself here, patience is a virtue.
Once you've reviewed your notes daily for a month, you only have to review them once a month to retain it for years and years to come. Choose one day a month to read through all the notes you've accumulated up to this point over all your classes and go have fun with all the free time you have now.
Hope that helps!