how to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method

you need to sit for this one for 48h

these past few weeks I’ve received a massive amount of dms from CS students being absolutely lost.

like to a level of lost I’m feeling their stress and anxiety in my own chest.

on top of that some of you are going through the absolute worst time of your life I don’t know how you guys are still standing up but I’m in awe.

I found myself reiterating the same advice to at least 7 people now, so I’ll write it all here for those who are too crippled to ask for help.

hope it’s useful folks and keep it up.

never surrender.

Hey I’m in {{UNIVERSITY or JOB}} and I feel lost can you help me learn {{AI/ML/MATH}} so I can get {{DREAM JOB}}

I’m receiving a variation of this, but the common element is always that the person feels completly lost.

lost because AI will take their job, lost because it seems there is too much to learn, lost because they don’t know if they actually like this whole tech thing, etc.

hold on.

hold it right there.

what do you want to be in like 5 years? who are you and what do you do?

most had no idea.

they had the vaguest picture of what they would be doing in 5 years.

and trying to figure it out by looking at technology is the wrong way to look at it.

it would be like trying to obsess intensely over hammers, nails, saw to build a house. tech is the same; it’s just a set of tools to do something.

the wafflehouse method ™️

enter my favorite method to get your life untangled, which I call the wafflehouse method (bear with me, I swear this blog post is useful).

I’ll detail here how to use it, but remember that untangling your life goals is a deeply personal process.

take inspiration from this, but feel free to modify so that it feels good.

step 0: take two days off in the middle of the week

call in sick, cancel your meetings and plans for two days.

straight in the middle of the week.

don’t tell your kids, wife, moms or friends that you are taking off.

you are going to go on a deeply personal introspective adventure and the only one invited is you.

48h to find yourself in the whole year is the least you can do.

step 1: [day 1] it’s time to vomit everything at your favorite spot

sorry for the image but yes that’s what you gonna do.

pick your favorite spot, the one you feel very good to be at, and can spend a whole day by yourself.

can’t give you advice on picking a spot just make sure that wherever you are going has deep significance for yourself.

mine was this bench.

now sit alone with your notebook and be quiet for a while.

try to imagine this one image: yourself 5 years from now.

not as of how you are going to get there from the current trajectory you are following, but how you would feel proud to be.

imagine it vividly, it may be still very abstract, but try to dive a bit in your mind what is going on in this vision.

does it have to be tech related?

no absolutely not, on the contrary.

imagine yourself at the pinacle where you really feel proudness bursting within your chest. this looks different for everyone.

try to remove anything attached to other expectations of yourself. doesn’t matter what your moms and dads want of you if you feel like a husk inside.

now that you have something to latch upon, write and write and write. write everything, how you feel now, how you feel then, what is different from now, what you regret, the things you think are not realistic, that one hunk of shame you have been carrying over forever, all these fears and hope lay them all down.

write and write until there is nothing more to be said.

write it all up until you have colors and shape of things you want to come to pass.

it doesn’t have to be clear for now, it just needs to be vivid.

when you are satisfied with this painting, it’s time to head home for a good day rest you are going to need it.

step 2 : [day 2] enter the wafflehouse

now is time to enter the wafflehouse (or whatever regional equivalent you have mine is called cora).

beautiful architecture

make sure that wherever you are going can tolerate you for a whole day because you are going to be squatting there opening until closing.

bring you computer, your notepad and this image of yourself.

step 3 : [day 2] refine the image into a 5-year goal

now that you are comfortably sitting with your beverage of choice it’s time to refine the image you painted into 2-3 clear goals that happen in 5 years time.

the goals need to be very specific and detailed.

if you feel absolutely ridiculous writing them down, it’s maybe too much, but don’t hold back. the goals need to match the image.

write as much detail as you can about each of these goals and make sure that there are as few as possible while still retaining the essence of the image.

step 4 : [day 2] time for interpolation on 3-year goals

now that you have these 2-3 5-year goals you interpolate what you need to achieve in 3 years time to be on track to hit them.

it’s ok if your interpolation is a bit crooked, you just need to trace a course here.

if you feel the 3 years are ridiculous, feel free to change the 5 years and adjust the knob of your dream self.

step 4 [day 2] bring it down down still on 1-year goals

now you do the same on the 1-year goal.

you are for sure going to do some back and forth between the 1-3-5 years adjusting things as you go.

try to keep the number of goals as few as possible.

if they sprawl around, it might be best for you to reduce the scope of your image a bit. for instance trying to be a nobel prize winner marathon karateka black belt might be too much.

focus on one aspect if you see your goals proliferating, the one that is more important to you.

I know it’s tough to make a call here, but you have to be somewhat pragmatic at some point.

btw the goals aren’t starting in like january 1st, they start now now.

step 5 [day 2] 100s of nodes in a directed acyclic graph

now you are going into the details for real. you’re going to make a DAG.

they look like this usually notice that there are no cycle (for the rest of the blog view them as the node on the left being at the top and the node on the right being at the bottom).

at the top it’s where you are at. put some numbers in there about your current situation (e.g. maybe you are broke).

at the bottom put your 1-year goals (e.g. maybe you are not broke anymore)

now in between write as many steps as possible you think you need to take in a year's time to go from your current situation to the end goals (remember there is more than one goal usually) based on what you have right now and the fact that luck is against you.

this last bit is important. your whole plan is based on the fact that every damn day you will wake up will be a bad day.

sun is shining exactly 0 times for 5 years.

create a 100s of these steps that flow logically from your current node to the end node.

some will be more vague than others. these are your knot points.

step 6 [day 2] : unknot the knot points with knotledge

for each of your knot points node you should research to the best of your current ability how to unknot them.

sometime it’s because it’s actually 5 nodes mushed together and you don’t know it’s 5 steps.

sometime it’s because it’s the wrong step and you are acting on false prior.

doesn’t matter try to untangle them as much as possible so that you have 100s of very highly defined step from start to finish.

as highly super duper detailed as possible.

step 7 [day 2] : make your monthly goals

this month.

not the other month which will start in 3 weeks.

now. this month now now.

take whatever first steps there is in this directed acyclic graph and put it as stuff to do in the month you have left.

here you have to be realistic about what you can chew, but remember that these tasks are what bring you closer to what you want to be.

that image that made you feel good remember?

yeah that’s the path you are rolling in now so take as much tasks as you can from the list and put it in the month.

cancel other stuff if you can to have more time to work on these.

step 8 [day 2] : make your weekly goals

you thought we would stop at monthly!

NO!

we’re going down still!

take whatever you picked for the month and bring them into your weekly goals for this week.

remember when we are now at the wafflehouse? in the middle of the week? well good news you got 3 days left to get these tasks done.

and before I see any of you start to spend 3 weeks making the perfect notion dashboard dingy NO!

you take whatever you have right NOW I don’t care if it’s on a notebook.

you spend 0 minutes optimizing your project management here, you take all the time into actually doing the tasks towards a future you are proud of.

step 9 [day 2] : make your daily goal

you should be getting dangerously close to getting evicted from the wafflehouse so take the little time that is left to look at your weekly goals and pick a few tasks to work on tomorrow.

the waitress should be looking at you like this.

at this point thing should be so concrete that even if you were to not remember your yearly goals it wouldn’t matter at all.

every day from now on you will have two category of things to do:

1. stuff that actually brings you closer to where you want to be in life

2. and the other stuff.

things that your mom wants you to do, the stuff that this one friends always put on you or that your boss decided you were responsible for.

I’m not saying to throw all of this in the garbage (. . .).

but you have to make conscious decisions that you have a plan that is yours and that it is up to you to get it done.

good day bad day.

step 10 : step out of the wafflehouse

now you’re done, it’s time to work and this work is your life's work.

you don’t need to parade this mega plan to your relatives it’s a deeply personal one.

it really doesn’t matter because they should start to see the difference anyway since this plan is one where you will transform yourself into what you truly want to be.

every day before going to bed take some of the stuff from this week and put it in your bucket for the next day.

when you wake up look at the task your past self is imploring you to get done and oblige.

every week on a quiet sunday afternoon, tend to this plan like a garden.

look out at the work done in the week, check what need to be done in the month, revise a bit the directed acyclic graph or the 1-3-5 years goals.

make the small tweaks based on your learning from the week that passed.

and when you still feel good about the trajectory and that this image still bring a smile to your soul pick a few tasks for next week.

disclaimer:

you have to be careful though.

if you actually do this you get a very stressful side effect:

• there is no one to blame but yourself

it’s not your mom, it’s not your teacher, it’s not your friends, it’s you.

from that point going forward you have your life in your hands and it’s time to act like it.

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if this was useful to you in anyway hit me up periodically with the update.

you got this.