| "Quand je me regarde je me désole, quand je me compare je me console." Talleyrand When I look at myself, I feel dismayed. When I compare myself, I find solace. --- No one follows on every single trend. It's hard to not feel overwhelmed especially when everyone in those verticals try to create this fear of missing out because it drives wages up, attracts investors and pumps assets values. The inflow of almost weekly breakthroughs / amazing demos also takes its toll on insiders. I remember seeing a post on HN from an AI researcher saying that those days everybody in their field was both enthusiastic and close to burnout. Because the rule to make any significant contribution is be first or be best. Personally, I am trying to ignore it. 99% of what hits the headlines will be irrelevant within a couple of months, context and general understanding are easier to get and more relevant than knowing the very last things that was in the news. I am using the "news feed eradicator" extension to prevent this hectic stream to even reach me. I also try from time to time to dedicate some hours to toy or to read more about some things that interest me and dive deeper. Ultimately: pick you battle, you can't become on expert on ten things at the time. You will be bad or superficial at the rest. It's life, be ok with it, we all are. You don't need to be on the forefront of a technological race to have a fruitful contribution to the world. |
I am slowly realizing the fact that specializing in an area is the true answer, there is only so much information my brain can handle and I would prefer being an expert in an area rather than just being good in general things.
I might just list everything that interests me and allocate some hours per day or week to play around with it, that's actually a good idea! Thanks.