RE: https://thepit.social/@peter/116376219055579156
I know a lot of people, in software and otherwise, who are feeling things along these lines.
Hold on, whatever tools you’re using, just hold on to your sense of purpose and meaning. There are a lot of forces at work in this world that want to rob you of that. Your feeling of losing that is not recognition of some new fact of our reality; it is you experiencing a psychological weapon.
One advantage of being an artistic weirdo who makes completely commercially non-viable music is that I have a •lot• of practice forging that sense of purpose and meaning for myself when the world is aggressively not handing it to me.
Software development has been coasting on a wave of profitability / employability for several decades, and as a discipline perhaps has an underdeveloped sense of intrinsic purpose. Now is a good time to for us to redevelop that as a community, regardless of future job market prospects.
Tips I can give you from my experience as a musicial weirdo if you’re looking to redevelop a sense of intrinsic purpose and meaning:
Beware of leaning on extrinsic validation (winning a contest, getting a grant, getting a job) for your psychological well-being. Those things may be important for practical purposes, but psychologically they are all empty calories.
Three •good• sources of purpose and meaning in your work that can sustain you:
- your own sense of satisfaction in your work
- sharing work via meaningful, sustained human connections
- the sheer joy of making and doing
@inthehands Process not product, yes, but how do you cultivate that sense of "sheer joy of making in doing"?
A "life hack" I've been trying is to make things _completely in secret_. Like you promise at the beginning that you aren't going to tell ANYONE about it.
Not only does this help you find the excitement of failing, which is the only way to play or learn, but it actually _trains_ your brain to realize, "Hey, no one saw this, no one told me it was good, and I still had a lot of fun and fulfillment making it"
@mathew @audiodude @inthehands
What if neither works for you? And only extrinsic rewards works?
@Energetic_Nova @audiodude @inthehands You can still enjoy extrinsic rewards, even treat yourself to rewards, the trick is making sure you don't let yourself feel rewarded for telling people about things before you've actually done them. The most effective way to avoid that is to not tell them.
It's certainly difficult, because if you want to do something then by definition you're going to be enthusiastic about it, so you're going to want to tell people about it and share the joy. Unfortunately that can harm your chances of doing it.
There are some cases where telling people can help. "Accountability buddies" can help you stick to something you've committed to, but it's by supporting and motivating you, rather than by rewarding you.
Paul Cantrell
Travis Briggs
mathew
Energetic Nova