Week 4 - The Reality of Ambitious Goals

This week felt strange to me…

I feel like I haven’t done enough, but I know I’ve done quite a lot:

• Applied to 6 other jobs, each with a custom resume and cover letter (but I already got rejected by 2 :/)
• Spoke with Kyle from the Center of Civic Innovation to get a better understanding of the type of social impact work they do and what their needs are. 
• Followed up with a great recruiter who contacted me about a VR/AR Implementation role, something I didn’t even know existed but am excited to learn more about!
• Started the process to find and hire new employees to fill in the arcade team when I leave. I also updated the operations manual to reflect recent changes to the business and began creating new Loyalty, Membership, and Gift cards for the arcade.
• Performed domain research about the home repair services market for my UX Design Phase 3 project. We learned about ethical design methodologies this week as well! It was super dope to see so many documented processes for ethical and empathetic design processes. I really look forward to being able to embrace that sort of empathy at a big tech company!

Despite all that, I felt unproductive. I am not sure why. Perhaps it is because I set lofty goals and fell far from that. Perhaps because I simply should have done more: reached out to more people and scheduled more informational interviews and ‘coffee chats’...

Regardless of the actual reason, I have been wondering if I should aim lower or perhaps not set such aspirational goals. Part of creating SMART goals is to ensure your goals are ‘achievable’... but then I worry about underachieving… :/

I much rather fall short of an insane goal, because the pursuit of said goal would allow me to strive far farther and greater and harder then pursuing a smaller or more ‘achievable’ goal would encourage me to do.

Its a matter of balance; being able to set goals that are *just* out of your reach, but not so far that you feel like you didn’t even get close… and thus get demoralized from your (seemingly inevitable) failure.

This may seem like a terribly banal and trivial issue for other people. But for me, it is something I’ve struggled with for a long time. I just don’t enjoy life the same way unless I’m striving for something really ambitious. Does that make me entitled? Foolish? Naive? Maybe even brave?

Perhaps only time will tell. 

I don’t know how I will be able to strike that balance personally. When setting goals with others, I usually just go with their average level of enthusiasm, with me serving as the vision should anyone need help to realize the possibilities. In that manner, I am able to help a group move towards an achievable goal, while keeping everyone excited about where we would go afterwards or even what they can do now.

I just have not been able to apply that methodology to myself. My average level of enthusiasm is either uninterested (‘boring’ things), mildly curious (most things), or super excited (emerging technology, especially visual/tactile stuff) (1).

Nonetheless, my desire to find work in the VR/AR (2) field now, rather than later, has been greatly revitalized! I feared that I would not be able to discover anything in my ideal field outside of development or senior-level product design roles. It was so great to hear things like VR/AR Implementation exists!! Now I know what to look for. :D

--

I think the takeaway to this week’s steps down my PATH is the importance of documenting my own actions on a more consistent basis. Not only will this help me see my progress, but it will also make it much easier to share my journey with others as I trying to do on my social media, here on LinkedIn, and in my journals for the future. 

Documenting what you’ve done makes it much easier to actually show how you’ve grown and gotten closer to your goals, no matter how ambitious you set them.

I’d love to know how other people do this! How do you handle your ambitions when setting goals? 

Thanks for taking the time to read and react! There’s something truly invigorating about sharing one’s thoughts outside of one's own head (or private journal).

Notes and Tangents:

1. These interests are very fluid. Whenever I learn more about a certain field, my enthusiasm usually switches from ‘boring’ to ‘curious.’ That curiosity drives me to dive into further research until I am either satiated or I find that I actually am really excited about where this could go. A good example of this is when I did a UX project to build a Library app. I was never much interested in libraries since I usually got my books online, especially after graduating highschool. But after learning about the topic, I became very curious about the impact libraries have and the problems people can solve (or need to solve) through using their local library. I have since become very much excited about how the library can/will evolve in the future given the attention and money needed.
2. I have been interested in AR/VR since reading Conor Kostick’s Epic series back in 2008 when I was in 8th grade. Ever since, I read/watched stuff like Legendary Moonlight Saga, Sword Art Online, Snowcrash, The Gam3, and Ready Player One as well as researched tons of nonfiction on how to build simulations, how the brain works, game development, and so much more; all to understand the sheer magnitude of where this technology can go. Now it's here!! 

PS: I played 3 D&D games so far and it has been awesome!! I am so glad I was able to find an online community full of folks excited to play. And apparently just about my entire arcade staff has been playing or is interesting in playing as well :D So hopefully we'll be able to lock down a weekly D&D session too. Crazy how these things happen.