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If you’ve read up to this chapter, then I assume you’re motivated to get your well-paying job after college. Your goal is to get that job and you plan to do so by acquiring a degree in computer science. That’s a fine start, but have you thought in more detail about how you'll get that degree in computer science?
College isn’t that simple. Getting your computer science degree involves more than hand-waving and declaring, “I’ll take four years of courses and everything will work out right.” Many people say that and drop out of the major shortly after. Many people also get their computer science degree but somehow can’t get a software job. Something went wrong with their process… We need to take a step back and understand goal setting and execution from a life skills perspective.
There are two high-level steps to taking control of your life direction:
It’s simpler said than done though. In this chapter, we’ll examine these two aspects in greater detail.
You need to know what you want before you can get what you want. It sounds obvious, but goal setting is not as easy as just writing something down. Suppose you write down, “my ultimate goal is to get an excellent software job.” You’re far from done because you have no clear direction towards this goal.
Getting an excellent software job has tons of prerequisites. First, you have to do well in the computer science major in college. Then, to do well in computer science, you have to score high on tests and projects. To score high on tests and projects, you have to pay attention in class, study hard, and grind through projects. To pay attention in class, you need sufficient sleep. To focus on studying and grinding through projects, you need to be content with most of your life and not be distracted by finances, a crumbling romantic relationship or other issues. This list is far from over and as you can see, the chain of subgoals spreads far and wide into all areas of your life.
A large goal such as “I am going to get my computer science degree” depends on tons of smaller goals. Each of these smaller goals in turn depend on other smaller goals. The first step is to break down your large goals into smaller milestones so that it becomes easier to draw a path from where you stand to your final destination.
You won’t know the entire path to your final destination, but other people who have already walked that path do. Leverage other people’s knowledge and experiences to help you identify the stepping stones to your final destination. You can read books, look at what other people are doing, ask others for advice, and utilize the internet. All of these resources will illuminate some of the miniature goals to set for yourself.
Whenever you encounter a problem, know that other people before you have encountered the same problem and written books on the matter:
If you find yourself struggling with something, check for relevant books in your library, bookstore, or Amazon. You can read reviews online and only spend your time on the top-rated resources.
Books tell you exactly what you need to do. Part III of this book discusses key dimensions of the college experience: academics, mental health, physical health, finances, and work experience. Then, Part IV highlights sample milestones for each year of college. From this knowledge, you’ll be able to create your own subgoals and create your path to the software job you desire.
While books are full of theoretical advice, your peers are real, walking examples of where you could be a few years from now. In general, if you’re ever not sure about something, just copy someone else. Whether it be your first time patching a hole in a wall, cooking a medium-rare steak, or going through the computer science major, just look at how other people do it. Don’t copy failures though — you don’t want to end up like them. And don’t copy the people who just got super lucky either — you’re not going to win the lottery as well. Look at the people who got to where you want to be through a combination of hard work and taking calculated risks. Did what they do make sense?
When pursuing your computer science major, look at successful peers who are a year or two ahead of you. What courses did they take and which ones did they enjoy? What companies did they intern at? What did they do for fun during their spare time? How much sleep do they get? How often do they go to parties? If you’re not sure, go up and ask them. Whenever you’re struggling to make a decision, ask yourself what the majority of your successful peers did.
In addition to your peers, you can also ask adults for insights. Your parents could be one of the best sources of advice. They have been alive for decades more than you and have a lot more experience and knowledge of what’s out there. Plus, they might have social circles with other adults and hear more about what others are doing. Beyond parents, you can talk to professors, or your own friends who have already graduated. Should you try to cram in an extra class this semester? Should you spend time dating? Should you dedicate a lot of time to a varsity sport? Is it better for you to focus on machine learning or web development? What’s the best way to get noticed by recruiters for internships? When you ask the right questions to the right adult, you get great insights.
Finally, if you exhaust all other resources, remember that the internet can be your friend. Websites are effectively an extension of books. You can ask Google any problem you have and it’ll point you to helpful websites. Online forums are an extension of your peers and adults. You can ask questions on forums such as Reddit, TeamBlind, or Quora, and other people will comment. The only drawback of the internet is that there is no guarantee on the accuracy of the content. Anyone can say anything, so proceed with caution.
Let’s see how all the goal-setting and research plays out in a theoretical example. Felicia is a computer science student in her junior year and she doesn’t know what electives she wants to take. She reads this book and learns that she should select electives to prepare her for the job she wants after graduating.
Felicia researches various software specializations online: websites, mobile apps, backend data science, cybersecurity, and product management. She decides that she prefers a role where she can see the product she is building. She also wants to join an early-stage startup in hopes of it taking off and making a lot of money from an acquisition or IPO. She decides to focus on mobile app development because it’s a visual role and most hot startups grow a large mobile user base: think ByteDance, Uber/Lyft, or Coinbase/Robinhood.
To become a mobile app developer, Felicia understands she needs to take the right courses to equip her with the right skillset. She researches what courses can best prepare her for a mobile app development job. The mobile app development course is a no-brainer. In addition, she asks some friends who have already graduated for their advice. They recommend four courses: software engineering, web information systems, cybersecurity, and machine learning. Felicia does some more research on these courses.
Software engineering makes sense to her because all programmers need to know how to approach a large, multi-year software construction project. Her friends also explain that mobile apps and websites interact with backend servers in nearly the same way; the web information systems course teaches those skills and it also doesn’t hurt to learn about websites which are the primary alternative to mobile apps. Felicia buys this explanation as well.
Felicia isn’t fully convinced that cybersecurity and machine learning will help her though. Her friends tell her the capture the flag project in the course is super fun. After checking an online forum for her university, she discovers that most people take the course because it’s “cool,” and not because it’s useful for their career. Similarly, after speaking with a department advisor, she learns that machine learning is overhyped. The advisor explains that the course contains mostly theoretical math and has no relevance to mobile app development. From these findings, Felicia removes cybersecurity and machine learning from her course list.
Felicia made effective use of all the resources available to her. She used the advice in this book to help her analyze her decisions. She leveraged her friends to get additional course suggestions that she may not have considered. She also used online resources and her advisor to filter out her friends’ poor suggestions. By planning ahead, doing research and setting miniature goals for the courses she will take, Felicia avoids common pitfalls and progresses directly towards her ultimate goal: the mobile app development job at a startup that she wants after college.
Mistakes are a tradeoff: you give up time and in exchange, you learn from your failure. Small mistakes that cost a day or week might be worth the learning experience. On the other hand, making a large mistake by working towards the wrong goal for a year can have catastrophic consequences: you don’t get that time back. Limit your mistakes because time only moves forward; once a day is over, it’s over.
College is an especially time-sensitive part of your life journey. Advisors often say it’s okay to take it slow, explore, and fail in college; I fully disagree. Do thorough research and set the right goals in advance. As long as you research with credible sources, your subsequent experiences usually confirm the research. Nobody can predict future outcomes perfectly, but the more accurate your predictions, the more time you save by not making mistakes.
People spend more or less the same amount of time getting their undergraduate degree — you can’t stay in college and explore forever! If you waste a year pursuing the wrong goals in college, then you’ve lost a year of college. It is critical to set as many right goals as possible for college.
When you leverage all the books, peers, adults, and online resources available to you, you observe more possibilities and set informed goals. Look at what other people thought was the “right” goal and see how that played out for their future. Review the outcomes to make more-informed decisions for yourself and increase your likelihood of setting the right goals for yourself. After you set the right, informed goals, you avoid pitfalls and fast track yourself towards college success.
Goals are great theoretical guidelines, but to get results, you must execute and achieve your individual goals. Lots of people set out with goals:
A lot of times, they give up. Execution sounds easy; it is easy as long as you don’t get derailed by your emotions. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly common to get derailed by emotions.
Even if you make sensible goals, divide them into smaller subgoals, and see a clear path forward, sometimes you just don’t feel like moving forward. When you stop feeling motivated to do something, you allow your emotions to override your logic. Every “I’m so tired of this” or “I’m scared this isn’t going to work out” or “I’m too mad to think straight” is a capitulation to your emotions. You use your emotions as an excuse to avoid working towards your goals.
Fortunately for many people, there is a process to override your emotions: becoming aware of your feelings and supervising your brain. In The Life Coach School podcasts, Brooke Castillo, describes the brain as “an unsupervised child” [3]. An unrestrained brain creates whatever detrimental thoughts it wants. You might unexpectedly cringe about something stupid you did five years ago. You might unexpectedly get mad about something that happened ten years ago. Castillo proposes that you can control these thoughts by realizing you can choose to feel however you’d like. Forget about everything else right now. Smile and make a concentrated effort to believe “I am happy, today is a great day, and everything is perfect.” If you feel happier for at least a slight second, then you’ve chosen what to feel and supervised your brain for a moment.
Supervising your brain comes down to one main concept: you can choose to feel a certain way or you can choose not to. Most people don’t actively choose. When the going gets tough, they let their wild, unsupervised brain pick non-constructive emotions that derail their execution. The remedy is to be aware of what your brain is trying to do and take it under your supervision.
When you struggle to overcome negative emotions, ask yourself if that’s how you want to feel: do you choose to accept that negativity right now? Do you choose to feel negatively because it is the practical thing to do? If not, then choose to stop feeling the negativity. With practice, you will be able to catch your brain running around unsupervised, reign it in, and get back on track with your life.
For many people, the “tell yourself to feel XYZ emotion” exercise works. These people follow “logical truth:” everyone controls what they think, therefore everyone has full control of their feelings. If your feelings aren’t helping you, then change them.
Some people follow some amount of “emotional truth” and have trouble supervising their brain. Emotional truth is a feeling that someone has accepted to be part of themselves. I once suggested the “tell yourself you’re happy” exercise to someone in this category and their response was, “that’s chicken soup.” They were right; my exercise was superficial. For someone stuck following an emotional truth, the supervising-your-brain method is equivalent to handing a $5 bill to a cashier and arguing that it’s a $20 bill. It’s completely understandable to feel this way; to make progress, understand where the emotional truth stems from and slowly unwind it.
A primary source of emotional truth is trauma; trauma burns emotional truths into people. On the physical side, if you survived a bad accident, you would not be able to just supervise your brain and forget what happened. The accident becomes a part of who you are and you might find it difficult to take your mind off the accident to focus on future goals. On the emotional side, if you were abused, you might not be able to escape the habit of compensating for the emotional damage. For example, if you were consistently treated as a failure while growing up, then you might become excessively fearful of taking risks. If trauma has affected you, it’s important to talk everything through and take time coming to terms with what happened. Seek a therapist’s professional help to naturally unwind emotional truths.
The second common source of emotional truth is habit: letting emotions dictate your behavior for so long that they become the norm. Some people are unaware they’ve become addicted to feeling a certain way and through years of habit, the feelings cement into emotional truths. For example, a narcissist often belittles people to feel amazing. The behavior alienates others and definitely doesn’t help accomplish anything productive. If you notice yourself in this category, take time to reflect and consider professional help. As with trauma, work on breaking all the years of habit and unwinding your emotional truths.
Breaking free from emotions allows you to return to the realm of logic. You’re no longer doing homework when you feel pumped and skipping homework when you can’t take your mind off a negative emotional truth. You’re doing your homework because it helps you master the course material, and mastering the course material helps you pass job interviews, which leads to a job after you graduate. Once you are back in the realm of logic, your goals, rather than emotions, control your actions.
Beyond execution, unsupervised emotions can deter you from setting logical goals and plans, and throw off your interactions with others. If you feel you aren’t good enough, you might set overly-conservative goals. If you find something difficult and don’t want to think about it, then you might skimp on breaking down your goals and miss a major pitfall. If you get mad at someone, you might say something explosive and permanently break an important relationship. Understanding the source of unproductive emotions and supervising your brain is an important concept for avoiding all these scenarios and I encourage you to listen at least to Castillo’s first few podcast episodes for further detail (first episode: “Why You Aren’t Taking Action”).
When it comes to managing your life, understand that you only get one life. There are no restarts. You can choose to spend your life on a scratch ticket: let your variable emotions and chance dictate your future. Or, you can choose to invest your life well: dictate your life with logic-based goal-setting and execution.
You might be wondering “am I guaranteed to succeed if I follow logic-based goal-setting and execution?” Not quite — it’s a good start, but you aren’t 100% guaranteed to succeed. Life isn’t a single-player game and other people will impact your success for better or for worse. In the next chapter, we’ll discuss how to manage your interactions with others to reduce the risk that someone else negatively impacts your chances of success.