Squirrels, and feeling “Shifted”
What did I make?
This year I worked on a bunch of things, but one of the projects I am most proud of is my squirrel picnic table.
The number one reason for making this bench was to get some squirrel pictures, and it was a major success. This bench was one of the first projects I created where I decided to make it a bit on a whim and just built it all in a couple of weekends. It’s extremely gratifying to make something quickly and ship it. My typical build process with side-projects is that I start them. Let it sit for a very long time. And then I only maybe finish it. I finish approximately 40% of the projects I start.
That feels pretty low, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it means I lost interest in the topic, but usually it means I hit some hard spot that would be hard to overcome. At that point it becomes an optimization problem of where my time is best spent. And that’s completely ok with me, as long as I am actively trying to finish at least one side project.
Feeling “Shifted”
This year I felt “Shifted”. I felt like I had the confidence to start new projects and build on my own. Starting used to be the hardest part, now executing is. This is some personal growth for me because in the past I would be stuck in analysis paralysis for most of my time.
What did this mean for me? It meant that I was able to explore a lot more. My projects were quite disconnected from each other which was exactly what I was looking for.
Interlude about Interest
Many people say that you should follow your passions, but sometimes it’s hard to know what you’re passionate about. Are you just hitting a hump in the road because it’s difficult, or are you actually losing interest?
There’s a certain level of activation energy required to become interested in something. You need to spend a while becoming knowledgable enough about a topic to start making connections and feeling like you can build something. So, rather than asking myself what I’m interested in, I’ve started to ask myself ‘what do I want to become interested in?’
I hope to find that after overcoming the hump (the “activation energy”) for many different topics, I find that I’m more interested in some things than others. The faster I train myself to overcome the hump, the less intimidated I’ll feel when faced with another topic to become interested in.
What’s Next?
I’ve become a bit obsessed with exploring. I think that I’ve typically tried to become very good at whatever I’m directly working on, but there is just so much that is out there. As part of this, I plan to dedicate half an hour every day for myself to explore my own thoughts and wonderances every morning. I’ll also be starting more projects, so stay tuned 🎵
I’m Varun, a student studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan. Aside from building, I enjoy dancing and reading.
