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You need problems to solve, but most importantly, problems that are highly relevant to you and your interests so you won't give up easily if they become unexpectedly difficult. You'll be forced to learn new approaches, new tools, perhaps even new languages to solve these problems if they're challenging enough, and don't worry, you'll almost always assume something is easy when it turns out to be a lot harder than you could ever imagine. Get exceedingly good at breaking down difficult problems into smaller steps you can actually achieve. Try and estimate how much time these steps will take so over time you can get better at estimating how much work is involved in something, which can inform which approach to take or which tool to use. Above all else, when you learn something and want to know more, learn both in terms of deeper fundamentals, but also in a more strategic sense, like how it is applied, and what are the ramifications of this knowledge, how it fits into the bigger picture. Remember, it's abstractions all the way down, but also all the way up! |
Find the Hard Work You're Willing To Do http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209541 )
The final two paragraphs of the essay (from a university undergrad advisor in a CS department):
> Maybe this is what people mean when they tell us to "find our passion", but that phrase seems pretty abstract to me. Maybe instead we should encourage people to find the hard problems they like to work on. Which problems do you want to keep working on, even when they turn out to be harder than you expected? Which kinds of frustration do you enjoy, or at least are willing to endure while you figure things out? Answers to these very practical questions might help you find a place where you can build an interesting and rewarding life.
> I realize that "Find your passion" makes for a more compelling motivational poster than "What hard problems do you enjoy working on?" (and even that's a lot better than "What kind of pain are you willing to endure?"), but it might give some people a more realistic way to approach finding their life's work.