End of Week 1: Agency, Obsession, "3D Goals", and Loneliness
It’s been a tough first week - here’s some reflections
As much as I want to talk about how much design I’ve learned in just a week, I decided it’s more important to write about why this past week was so hard. I struggled with navigating my new agency and dealing with the loneliness of learning on my own.
Agency Is Freeing But Terrifying
In my first meta-learning post, I was exhilarated to do “whatever the fuck I want to do.” However, in practice, having complete agency over my life is scary.
Like most people, I’ve never lived a life where nothing and nobody is dependent on me. As a student, I felt pressure from tests and grades. As an employee, I was compelled by my managers and promotions. One day, as a parent, I will be responsible for my kids. There was always something that I have to do each day. However, right now, I don’t have to do anything. I set up a meta-learn day structure, but nobody cares if I don’t follow it; I am running this meta-learning experiment in public, but what I deliver is totally up to me. Nobody will be upset even if I decide to terminate this experiment tomorrow. I am not used to the amount of power I have over my life.
On Wednesday, I woke up feeling completely unmotivated. I learned a lot about Figma components, frames, and assets by finishing 1 pixel-perfect remake of a Notion mobile screenshot on Tuesday. The thought of remaking another 2 screenshots felt so unexciting that I ended up staring at my laptop for 30 minutes, failing to get myself to do anything.
Regaining control is hard because I am only driven by internal motivation and internal validation — it’s pure and rare. Anybody who wants to do agentic, innovative work must eventually adapt to a self-driven mode of living. I’m still learning to lean in on internal motivation and validation, but here are 2 humble thoughts from this week :
Internal motivation is fueled by curiosity, passion, and obsession.
Internal validation is supported by goal setting.
Curiosity, Passion, and Obsession
Curiosity, passion, and obsession is a progression essential to internal motivation. Obsession essentially replaces external coercion to create “musts”, so that even though things are tough, you feel like you must continue on. I have this controversial belief that every founder is slightly crazy (in a good way) because that’s the only way they’ll survive. Like this super alpha motivational video says, “But us crazy people, we get to work, we get obsessed.”
It always troubled me that I am not obsessed with anything — I never even binge-watched a TV show. My friend Julia once told me that I get bored of things easily, which I find increasingly insightful. Whenever learning gets daunting, no matter it’s a hobby or a personal project, I find it hard to carry through.
I want to have something I am so obsessed with that I can’t let go, but I don’t know how. Would love some thoughts on this ❤️
Goal Setting
Without a goals system, it’s really easy to slide into a constant judgment of “I didn’t make enough progress.” I am struggling with this right now. Today is Friday and I am not confident that my progress this week is worth celebrating… 😟
My Original plan [Monday]: Week 1 will be used to onboard Figma and recreate 3 screenshots of Notion. During week 2, I will design a new feature for Notion.
Change of plans #1 [Wednesday]: I felt pretty good about Figma basics after recreating 2 screenshots in 3 days, so I needed a new agenda. I felt uninspired to design or redesign a feature for Notion, so I pivoted towards redesigning Theatrius, the website I write theater reviews for because I could potentially implement my design.
Change of plans #2 [Wednesday]: I made some progress towards Theatrius redesign, but then I remembered the website was run on WordPress and realized that it would be way too daunting to implement my designs on WordPress. I lost interest in this new idea again.
Change of plans #3 [Thursday]: I brainstormed a list of new ideas and circled back to the idea of redesigning a feature for Notion. This time, I have a more specific idea in mind, so I spent yesterday and today executing it. (will share the specifics in a different post once I’m done)
Objectively, I probably made more progress than I had planned, but subjectively I feel like I wasted a lot of time switching directions. My goals kept changing, so I could not properly evaluate my progress.
A new concept: “3D Goals”
While trying to make my goals adaptive, I came up with a new concept: “3D goals.” A 3D goal includes:
the assumptions and motivations behind the goal
specific, measurable, and time-bounded quantitative and qualitative steps
a clear change algorithm based on assumptions and execution outcomes
It’s three-dimensional because we are not only aware of the goal itself at its current state but also understand the history (assumptions & motivation) and future (change algorithm) of the goal. My original goal was “redesign Theatrius, do it as fast as I can.” It’s obviously a bad goal. Turning it into a 3D goal, we have
The assumption and motivation behind my goal to redesign Theatrius is that the design could be implemented so this project feels personal and useful.
Redesigning the logo, color & topography selection by day 1, nav bar by day 2, landing page by day 3, and single post pages by day 4.
If the design can’t be easily implemented, take 30 mins to reevaluate the strengths of the original motivation; if redesigning the nav bar takes over a day, take 1 hour to prioritize what should be in scope vs. out of scope.
“3D goal” is nothing but a structure to help me think through the why, the what, and potential adaptive trajectories of a big goal. Making a goal 3D will allow the goal to adjust itself and allow us to have a more concrete personal validation system.
Loneliness is Real
I really didn’t expect to feel lonely, but loneliness is real. Everyone else on campus is regularly seeing the same friends for classes or clubs and they have shared context. I don’t get to complain about having to go to an 8 am lecture nor do I get to hang out with friends for an entire afternoon because I don’t have any homework. Nobody knows exactly what I am doing from day to day. Learning engages me, but whenever I take a break, I feel viscerally lonely.
Maybe this is why we normally learn in classrooms with other students. Perhaps, it’s also why having a cofounder is important or why so many founder houses exist. Taking a unique path is lonely - as Peter Thiel says in Zero to One:
“The best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve.”
Part of the meta-learning is learning to thrive on my own — having agency, relying on internal motivation and validation, and being ok with being alone. For week 1, I think I’m doing ok :)
i really like the idea of anticipating how a goal might change and being intentional about the "change algorithm!"
also, for what it's worth, i think re-designing theatrius could still be a valuable exercise even if you weren't able to implement it pixel-for-pixel due to the constraints of wordpress. i think of it as an exercise in [creating new designs given some existing material (e.g. the pre-existing website)], which is a skill distinct from [using figma] (seems like you've got that covered!) or [going from concept → mockup for a new feature, given an existing design system], etc — might be a different way to think about it!