Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
I'm going to answer a question today about how can I feel comfortable with my goals.
This question comes from James and he says, "I have several goals I set for myself for
software dev elopement, but I am constantly second-guessing them.
I think, 'What if this is not the right goal' and 'Maybe I should be working towards achieving
something else?'
Are these thoughts normal, and how can I feel comfortable with my goals?
An example of this is for me thinking I should have the goal of learning a lower level programming
language instead of working on and finishing my current web development project."
There's a couple of things that are going on here James.
One of them it's called Shiny Syndrome and we're all susceptible to it, some of us more
so than others.
It's where we're like, "Oh, hey, there's something shinier over there.
This thing that I was working on, it's not so shiny anymore."
As human beings we're attracted to novelty, that means new things.
I'm attracted to novelty.
You're attracted to novelty.
That's why we don't eat the same pizza every single fucking day.
It's better to get some new stuff.
Sometimes that gets us in trouble, it really does, it gets us in trouble in a lot of ways.
You know what I'm talking about.
What can you do to combat this?
You can realize that—a couple of things.
One, being that if you really want to achieve something great it takes consistency and commitment.
That even though like—there's this period and I think a lot of skills, a lot of life
goes this way where it's like when you start doing some activity and it's new, you're excited
and you're motivated and you're happy and it's good and it's great and then you hit
this, what I call the wall.
I did this video on burnout.
Check out that video.
I talk about the wall and the other side of it.
Essentially what happens is you start to get bored and you're like, "Ah, I don't want to
do this anymore.
There's something shinier over there."
I thought I wanted to play guitar, but what I really want to do is I want to play the
drums."
You keep on switching so you never get good at anything so you never get past the wall.
On the other side of the wall is where all the rewards lie.
The reason why it is because most people don't make it up the wall.
I always talk about this, when you're running a marathon there's a ton of people at the
starting line.
You can't even move.
It's just so crowded.
When you get to mile 20 you're like, "Where the hell did everyone go?
What happened?"
It's because some people are sitting down on the street and they're like eating a banana,
and some people are walking, some people just gave up.
What I'm saying is that most people don't stick it through and can keep on going for
the distance, but there's a certain amount of rewards that exist for you if you're able
to do that because there's so little competition at the top.
You see what I'm saying?
If you keep on practicing, and you keep on playing that guitar, what ends up happening
is when you get over that wall you start to get proficiency and you start to get mastery
and then you start to get rewards again.
You still have this up and down where you feel like you don't want to do this anymore,
but you start to have a lot more fulfillment, not just happiness, not just excitement about
something being a novelty, but fulfillment in what you're doing when you stick with things
for long enough.
That's the first thing I'll say about this.
The second thing I'll say about the goals thing is this, picking the goal.
This is a good question, what if this is not the right goal for me?
What if I should be doing something else?
Pick something and go with it.
Your life will be better if you pick—when you pick a goal, I did this blogpost a while
ago on being a finisher.
You could check this out.
that kind of gives you the mindset.
It changed my life.
Become a finisher.
When I set out to do something, I do it.
I don't care—I don't care if I don't feel like doing it anymore.
I don't care if there's a better goal to achieve.
Very rarely, very rarely do I jump tracks, because when you jump tracks you start over.
Building 90% of a bridge is worthless.
It doesn't get you across the river.
If you're going to build a bridge 90% don't even fucking build a bridge.
Just don't do it.
Don't do it.
It's a waste of time.
If you're going to build a bridge, build it 100%.
Go 100% and build the bridge.
That's how you do it.
When you pick a goal it's not so important what the goal is.
I'm not saying that there are goals that take you—that can take you the wrong direction
in life, of course there are, but just complete it and then move on to the next goal.
See, the thing is, if you're always completing your goals and you make them small enough,
then what happens is that if you did pick a wrong goal, big deal, you're moving on and
you're doing the next one, but you've got at least a notch in your belt, whereas if
you're just building a bunch of 90% bridges, I call it the closet of broken dreams.
I have one, you have one.
In my closet of broken dreams, I've got a taekwondo belt, a yellow belt in there, I've
got a soccer cleats in there from when I thought I was going to play soccer, I've got a guitar,
I've got a bunch of crap in there that—all these things that I thought was going to do.
I never followed through.
If I would have followed through and completed the goals, I would have at least had something
to show for it, but I have this closet of broken dreams.
Don't make your life be a closet of broken dreams.
So many people, they achieve nothing in their life because they never complete it.
They never become a finisher.
My advice to you is just pick something and go with it and you're going to grow and you're
going to be rewarded.
You can always pick something else.
You can always pick another goal.
Just make your goals short enough that you can achieve them and then move on and pick
another goal.
Sometimes when people make goals that are too grand and too big and it's like 5 years
out, it's no good.
I'm not saying not to have a direction, but then you really got to question yourself.
If you're on a 5-year journey that's a bit of a different thing, but pick smaller goals.
Advance in small increments so you can change directions, so you can be agile.
That's a good question James.
I think this is definitely something important to consider.
But like I said, the biggest thing is just finish.
You've got to see it through to completion.
I've gone through a lot of crap.
Love the grind.
You've got to love the grind.
I'm grinding out—sometimes I don't feel like making YouTube videos, but I've been
doing YouTube videos now 2-day, 3-day for 2-1/2 years.
It's crazy!
But I'm going to keep on doing it because that's where the reward—and I'm starting
to see the rewards of it as the channel is growing.
There's 120,000 subscribers as of today.
That's crazy, right?
But it wouldn't have happened if I would have said, "Oh well, maybe I should start doing
Snapchat.
It wouldn't happen.
You stick it out.
You grind it out and that's where the rewards are.
You complete a goal, you move on to the next one.
Who cares if it was the wrong goal?
It doesn't matter as long as you're continually completing goals, you're going to have 100
notches on your belt versus someone who's like, "Well, I've got to pick the right goal"
and they never even complete one.
There you go.
All right.
If you have a question for me, you can email me at john@simpleprogrammer.com.
Make sure you click the subscribe button below so you don't miss any videos on the channel,
the bell, if you do that that will make sure that you get a notification every time a new
video comes out.
I'll talk to you next time.
Take care.
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