| > "what overall goal you want that you are very interested in" When I am really interested in learning something, researching and solving isn't a problem. But that doesn’t last beyond at most 2-3 weeks, right? Working really hard for some hours to two weeks isn't my problem. If I don't really need something in my daily life or job or some philosophical answer that I am seeking, should I not try to learn that? If I am looking really long term, and don't have any concrete need for something, should I forgo that, in your opinion? Say, I don't need Julia for my job, but I want to learn it to the level of contributing to open source libraries. I need to spend some weeks of my (little) free time, right? I get lost after 2-3 days and something shinier comes along. So, when I don't have any concrete need present, should I forgo them? Like, I am not a web developer, but wanted to learn Elixir and Phoenix. Never could continue beyond 2 days straight. If my goal simply is: "broaden my horizon" or something similar and vague and really long term, I shouldn’t really pursue them? I do okay when I can sporadically spend some time now and then and solve a hard problem. But if it requires sitting down everyday for some months straight for something broad and vague, I fail every time. Something that has helped is group study. People look up to my sessions when it is my turn to present, I prepare and study really hard, and polish my presentation really well and understand things deeply to answer possible questions. But here extrinsic motivation of impressing people is present. I have thought about making YT videos before and I am going to, soon. I have some famous open source contributions, and I can get an interview at Google according to a PM I know. I want to prepare for that. But haven't set a date. Big Tech isn't ideal for me but I don't come from money and FAANG salary could turn my life around. I flunked another surprise and immediate technical interview because I took too much time. I solved the problem, and communicated well (according to them), but took too much time. Only if I Leetcoded regularly, I could land that 6 figure job. I passed 3/5 rounds and got rejected after the the 4th. If I start doing any course by Erik, I will lose interest after day 2 because that won't immediately give me fruits. Sorry for the wall of text. :/ |
Like Julia has sciml youtube lectures showing the guy doing all kinds of optimization to improve the libraries for HPC but he had a specific goal why he's doing that, he runs a startup pumas.ai
For me it was basic competency at Y subject I was very interested as first goal, find a mentor and work beside them for Y subject (second goal) finally become an expert at Y to freelance and I wrote all that down years ago because I too was just aimless and dabbling then giving up.
To find a mentor I had to impress them first to make it worth their time so that was motivating to slog through all the fundamentals in the beginning. Normally I would've given up here because who on earth wants to deep dive logical relations unless there's a good reason. Working was then a motivator too because I was given tasks to figure out with deadlines so there was urgency and focus so the person I chose as a mentor would actually keep teaching me.
Before that I would take interesting thing, that thing goes into the weeds to teach foundations and I gave up bored chasing new thing and repeat with no direction at all.