
Ask HN: How did you find your resonant frequency? - adinfinitm
In other words when and how did you figure out that perfect algorithm to lead your life, professionally and otherwise. A sense of purpose, if you will. I&#x27;m 27 and will be graduating from Carnegie Mellon today but I still don&#x27;t know what I truly want to do with my life. And without direction I struggle to excel at anything. I do have some direction in mind but I feel I have missed the boat and can&#x27;t sum up the courage to pursue what I truly like. I&#x27;m torn between the desire to be practical (be risk averse, lead a comfortable life) and an insatiable craving to create some meaningful impact. So, wondering how you folks handled this situation, if any.
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dalke
That's a either a very poor, or a very apt, metaphor. A resonant frequency is
also the one that will destroy things, from a wine glass to a building. Tesla
famously claimed he could build an earthquake machine based on resonance
frequencies. If you find your resonant frequency, you may burn yourself out.

Allow me to make an interpretation. For the last many years you've had a goal,
which is to graduate, first from high school, and then college .. and given
your age, perhaps also graduate work.

Graduating is an easily expressed, realizable goal. There's an entire
infrastructure set up to help you reach that goal.

And now, you're done. You're the Apollo astronaut who's walked on the Moon,
come back to Earth, but the parades are done, and now what? See
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/5870958/Apollo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/5870958/Apollo-11-Moon-
landing-astronauts-were-neglected-by-Nasa.html) :

> "What can make it hard for people like this is that they're so highly
> motivated and they wait so long for a mission," Prof. Palinkas told Time.
> "There can be a deep sense of loss once the goals have been accomplished,
> and there may be no adequate substitute."

If that's so, then my first and second substitutes were startup jobs, both of
which lead me towards burnout. I then got involved with social dancing, where
I had a big, though local impact. I'm now researching the early development of
chemical information systems, from punched cards to 1990, because it interests
me, even though there are only a few dozen people in the world who would care.

If you have meaningful impact on 10 people, will that be enough? Or do you
need to affect the world? Does it require being better than other people at
something? Once you've achieved that, then what? If you become the next Marie
Curie and get two Nobel Prizes, each in different fields, will you feel like
you need to go for a third?

At some point you have to decide that what you're doing is good enough. You
need to learn where that is.

BTW, you contrast "comfortable life" with "meaningful impact". These are not
necessarily opposites and you shouldn't think of it that way.

~~~
rajeshmr
well said. :)

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theSage
For the past year I have experienced a similar situation. There had been no
purpose in life and so I ended up going with the flow and 'keeping options
open'. After reading every word of written advice and looking to friends,
family and mentors for guidance I have somehow arrived at the conclusion that
'closing options' is the way to go. What led me to this is hearing an aged
professor of mine say that one must excel at what has been given us to do.

In order for me to do anything substantial I must do one thing and one thing
only, whatever that thing may be. Everything else must come as secondary. That
said I had difficulty finding the one thing I needed to do. To solve that
problem I simply started doing more of what I was spending most of my time on
which was computers. I started my own blog, began writing code, joined HN and
lots of other stuff. I can safely say that the past half a year has been
better than the rest of my life generally speaking.

That said it might be too early for me to judge this decision but so far
things have worked out for the better. I tell you this so that you know that
someone has been there and pulled himself out. In the years I was aimless I
did everything from boxing and hard labor to philosophy and mathematics.
However I feel a lot better now that I have decided to pursue computers.

You might want to check out Brene Brown's TED talk.

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6d0debc071
My advice, if you run into a courage problem, is to plan ahead of time what
you'll do if things don't work out - and what things not working out looks
like. For instance, whenever I go into any sort of business venture I know
that I have a certain sum of money in reserve, and if the business looks
likely to run into that money, then I end the business. I know roughly what my
CV is going to look like if the business doesn't work out as well and what
companies I'll hit up for jobs or what contracts I can run alongside my
company to provide me with income coming out of it.

IME a need for courage is often indicative of a need for planning.

As for drive: My biggest drives come from a desire to be irrelevant to a
problem. I get bored easily. The first six months at any job are almost
invariably fantastic; learning new things. Then the new things are learned and
it's time to apply what's essentially a skill to boring instances of a problem
where you need just enough coms skill to get the relevant bits of info out of
someone. You become a glorified parser. Which is a job for computers, not
people.

I feel like the latter one is the sort of insight that is highly personal
though. Not sure the answer for me is the same as the answer for you.

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MalcolmDiggs
Well first, congratulations on your graduation! That's huge.

Many of us have a tendency to mentally skip right past the milestones we're
accomplishing and only focus on the distant ones. Taking the time to sit and
appreciate the accomplishments you're making right now will lead you to a
greater feeling of contentment. You're reaching a HUGE goal today, you should
be proud of that, and take some time to just enjoy that fact.

All that being said, this part of your post concerns me:

> _... I feel I have missed the boat and can 't sum up the courage to pursue
> what I truly like._

..That's crap man. It sounds like __you already know what you wanna do. __In
my experience it 's better to chase your dreams and fail than never pursue
them at all. Fear is not a good reason to abandon your passions. Kids to feed,
responsibilities to take care of, illnesses to battle...these are good
reasons. But fear of failure should not hold you back.

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andersthue
I figured out six years ago that my current situation was pretty messed up
business wise. I bailed out of the company while it was actually taking off,
used 5 years to heal myself working alone in the beginning and then building a
consultancy. During (and before) I read all kind of business and self help
books, like 7 habits.. 4 hour work week, etc. They all helped me move in a
better direction, but it was not until I read Simon Sinek's "Start with why"
that helped me understand what is most important to me and how I conduct my
business.

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Red_Tarsius
> _...a sense of purpose, if you will._

Don't find purpose in _what_ you.

The projects that make you proud today will be embarrassing to your future
self. Many illustrators I know hate even looking at their 6 months old
drawings. Learning is 99% failing, so finding purpose on your successes is not
a sustainable strategy toward well-being.

Self-worth (resonant frequency?) comes from _why_ you do something.

Search for the core values that define your actions. Persistence, empathy,
discipline... whatever you define as the leading factors of your life. Then
stick with them. As long as you are true to yourself, that is, you stick to
your _why_ , you'll find self-worth.

Accept that your values may change over the years. Coherence is a self-
defeating value.

> _...insatiable craving to create some meaningful impact._

Many people fall into depression because they are either _changing the world_
(whatever that means) or doing nothing. Don't fall into this trap, find
meaning in the little things. Keep in mind that 100% of the "overnight
successes" you hear from the media bubble were ALWAYS X years in the making,
where X >= 10.

> _I 'm torn between the desire to be practical (be risk averse, lead a
> comfortable life) and an insatiable craving to create some meaningful
> impact._

Don't let the media fool you, _risk aversion_ and _entrepreneurship_ are not
mutually exclusive. Before you go solo, being employed in a field you're
passionate about is going to give you 4 kinds of _leverage_ :

– network / mentorship,

– First-hand experience,

– Financial safety net,

– (If your business is tied to your day work) future clients.

If your employer is not a douchebag, you can start your business on the side.

> _I feel I have missed the boat_

Bullshit. That's almost never the case. [http://www.quora.com/I-am-in-my-
late-20s-and-feel-I-have-was...](http://www.quora.com/I-am-in-my-late-20s-and-
feel-I-have-wasted-a-lot-of-time-Is-it-too-late-for-me-to-achieve-something-
worthwhile)

EDIT: I found it! I highly recommend you this essay: _Does life end at 35?_
[https://web.archive.org/web/20131101195131/http://kzhu.net/d...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131101195131/http://kzhu.net/does-
life-end-at-35.html)

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programmernews3
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Agnesi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Agnesi)

decayishingly fab.

