Goal Setting

A Vision

Everyone has a vision. If you don't have thoughts about the future, you are either not being truthful to yourself, you are already living the perfect life, or something is seriously wrong and you might need to go see a medical professional. Odds are, you have a vision. I'll talk about the visions I have had: Obtain a degree, get a job using said degree, purchase a home, eventually have a family, become a strong engineer, become a leader and team builder, be able to wake up every morning able to exercise and drink coffee on my patio. Some goals are simple, other goals are more complex. Usually, visions are hard to accomplish in one step. For instance:

Obtain a college degree

step 1.) Graduate.

Clearly, there is a level of complexity that need be reduced. Most people understand this concept. Reduce your goals into actionable steps. I think the majority of people, and myself included, struggle with the taking action part. At some point you need to get the ball rolling. Once it starts rolling, you need to keep it rolling. The focus of this discussion is mostly on the getting the ball rolling part. I struggle greatly with that. There are periods of time in my life where I feel extremely unmotivated and night after night I beat myself up for not doing anything. So, here's what I did to get that ball rolling.

The Steps, The Spark, The Drive, The Environment

I think these four concepts need to align for the ball to move, and to be completely honest, the steps aren't always a necessity. For the sake of writing a simple blog post and not a book about the intricacies of these 4 keys, I will be keeping them separate and explaining their importance, and how they feed into each other.

When you have a vision that you want to accomplish, it helps to break them down into steps. I find it the most valuable to focus on the next step, as you will learn on the journey. These lessons will redirect steps, so unless you like planning out steps, try to spend your efforts on where to start. Let's take my current goal of becoming a strong software engineer. Now I need to figure some things out. What type of software, what languages, what do I want to build, how do I want to be useful? I have experience in full-stack, and just a little bit of experience with DevOps and Data Engineering. I'm no expert, but I can solve a problem when it comes my way. I don't know the answers to these questions for now, so I decided my first actionable step is to start writing code in a low level language to understand something that has already been built. The concepts I had in mind were graphics or networks. Okay so I have somewhat of an actionable step, but I still struggled to really define it. So I started to craft my environment around software. I listened to podcasts, I started just looking up software concepts, and when I got distracted by something I made it difficult to reach. Playing games too often? Deleted Steam. Watching too many shorts? Added extensions to block extra YouTube clickbait. Eventually, my environment was crafted so my path of least resistance was to engage in software. In my previous blog post I talked about a post I saw.

This was the spark. I thought it was cool enough to try to copy. I spent time trying to implement their solution, which introduced me to GLSL. Now I know more about shaders, and I am actually interested in researching more about their development. I never thought I would like shaders. I never knew how people got into something so complicated and niche. Now I am someone with a genuine interest in diving in. I had an idea in mind, and all I did was craft my environment towards this goal, then I found a spark. Now my goal is to create my own shader. My first actionable step is to watch a video about getting started with GLSL.

So I've gotten started, now I need to keep the momentum going. The start is the hardest part, but staying consistent is the most important part. If you want to achieve your goal, you have to keep the ball rolling. If you stop rolling the ball, you will lose interest. You will look for something else. You might even fall back into your distractions. People say discipline is more important than motivation. I don't agree, I think they both serve an extraordinarily important purpose, but discipline is often a component of drive. Even after programming for 7+ years, I lose discipline, I get burnt out, and I question myself. When this starts to happen, I know it's not a discipline problem, it's a deeper problem. Staying disciplined when the light is gone is how you burn out. Quit dumping your fuel into the void, look for something to ignite a new spark. Craft your environment, and if you don't have the motivation to do that, think about what you can gain from setting your phone down or deleting those apps you find yourself draining your hours on. Just get rid of them, they don't care about you. Make yourself bored. Spending 5 hours a day bored is better than spending those hours mindlessly. Eventually you will do something. When you start doing something, you will grow.