Stop Waiting for a Guide to Life
So here's the piece of advice I've needed for a long time.
September 3rd, 2025
Are you the type of person who is great at giving advice but can't help themselves?
The type of person who knows what they should be doing but just can't seem to do it?
Are you me?
Before going any further into those two traits I need to come clean on another trait of mine: being hard on myself. But sometimes being hard on yourself, at least a little bit, is what you need to grow. How else can you come up with self-referential advice if you can't self-identify your flaws?
So here's the piece of advice I've needed for a long time.
Stop waiting for the FUCKING Guide to Life by God almighty himself to drop down from the sky.
Here's a small example:
There's a term for spending a year learning programming without learning how to program.
Tutorial Hell.
Going through tutorial after tutorial, starting MOOC after MOOC, wondering if you should just join a bootcamp or what. Never just grinding through the actual programming on your own part.
And frankly, that's where I've been for YEARS!!!
Not specifically with programming but applied more broadly to the pursuit of a career/passion/mission in general.
I'm obsessed... no... addicted to learning just enough to dip my toes into the world of actually doing something.
I need to find the right framework, the right step-by-step, the optimal method etc. etc. etc. All before I can even start doing what I want to do.
And perhaps even worse, the times I've skipped the pre-start optimization Hell and dove right in to something, tutorials be damned, I've convinced myself it's okay to take shortcuts or do sub-optimal work because: "I'll go back and do better things once I've learned the actual way to do it."
Brother...
YOU ARE DOING IT! LEARN SOMETHING GOD DAMN YOU!!!
Another hilarious example of this tendency is my eternal desire to use a new note-taking/writing/calendar/productivity app.
If I just find that perfect app then the thoughts will start flowing.
Once I find the perfect app then I'll start researching all these topics I'm interested in.
AND once I find that perfect app, I'll make sure I find the perfect framework for using the app so I'm not organizing my flowing thoughts in the wrong way.
Truly hilarious.
Two Months Later...
I wrote that partial post in a burst of unproductive frustration just over two months ago.
Everything I said still feels true but I do have a somewhat, possibly, major update since then.
I finally decided to give ADHD treatment another shot.
I intend to make a post down the line all about ADHD and my potential treatment/strategy regiment but the short version is:
I've avoided medication for ADHD my whole life and the times I briefly tried it in the past it either didn't work or I didn't like how it made me feel. But this time, (started this medication a little over two weeks ago) something feels a little different.
Reading back through these words I see that my frustration being stuck in a mind bursting with a million ideas without the horsepower to make good on any of them wasn't a moral failing, but a chemical failing. At least partially.
It's too early to say for sure but assuming my treatment continues to work as well as it has so far, and it isn't some placebo effect that will soon wear off, I think that it's going to be a lot easier for me to take the advice I was talking about when I wrote those words two months ago.
More soon...
Also! Check out my new resume site:
I made it with Framer, it's pretty slick. Planning on posting more projects/case studies of my work there soon, if you know anyone hiring for junior-mid technical account manager/solution architect/product manager roles let me know!
