
Writing things down (how to know what to do next) - tc7
https://blog.manythingsblue.com/2019-01/writing-things-down/
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sidcool
I feel the same debilitating anxiety when it comes to planning out career.
It's become so bad that I have started ignoring it and instead checking emails
and Hacker News for solace. Questions that keep me up:

1\. What to learn next?

2\. Is this the right career?

3\. Shouldn't I be a CTO by now? What a failure!

4\. Dude, you forgot about your family!! (Gasping for air)

so on and so forth...

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southerndrift
Life is not a race. Either nobody is judging you for your choices or whoever
is judging you doesn't have the right to do so.

If you ask yourself what you want to do instead of asking yourself what you
want to achieve, the conflicts that demand solace should be gone.

That said, it's still a nice game to try to achieve the most. But that's
stressful and you should be in a position of choosing that stress, not
submitting to it.

~~~
Topolomancer
This might also be a good time to pitch the 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius
again (a time-honoured classic that pops up very often in HN discussions). I
cannot stress how much insight is contained in this book---it may help you
achieve a healthy detachment from these things.

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chrisweekly
I've learned a similar lesson, and incorporate a high-quality mechanical
pencil and quad-ruled notepad in my personal workflow / productivity system.
Thanks for sharing your insight, and good luck w/ ProjectPoll!

~~~
tc7
Thanks! I appreciate the comment, and the good wishes :).

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xtagon
What you describe sounds very similar to my take on the Rubber Ducky method,
except with writing things down instead of talking out loud. I think what
works is the act of putting your thoughts out into a form you can then turn
out and think of as external, then respond to. This enables you to look at it
from an "outside perspective" even if it's literally your own perspective.
It's hard to challenge your own ideas if you don't put yourself into that
seat.

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tc7
Yeah, agree there's a perspective shift there.

I also find that typing doesn't work as well as hand-writing for me. I think
my brain is in a different mode (publish), so it's judging/editing things as I
type -- vs handwriting, where maybe the mechanics are so unconscious the brain
can mull the thought over instead of trying to edit it. Maybe talking out loud
has the same benefit.

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thallukrish
You captured the dilemma of "build the best product and launch it and feel
that you've done it when you have not done anything towards finding the users
Versus. go without a clean product and get into the act of finding users" very
nicely. Again, this is something like moving towards the real goal versus
acknowledging the real goal but still continuing to stay where you are.

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0898
ProjectPoll.io is an outstanding idea.

I think your homepage copy buries the lede though.

For me, this was the a-ha moment: "ProjectPoll sends anonymous weekly surveys,
that give you unprecedented insight into your teams and projects. We help you
find and tackle the problems you didn't even know existed"

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tc7
Thanks very much! I'll definitely move this up. I've spent a lot of time
rewriting/moving/mangling copy in the past few weeks -- reasonably sure I've
made it worse. ;)

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asdfzalsd
Should link ProjectPoll in your post every-time you mention it, had to
manually search :P

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tc7
Very valid, thanks ;). I just added links, should be updated momentarily.

