Thread by @adamwathan

The biggest take-away for me this time around is focusing on "who do I want to help", not "what do I want to build".

Racking my brain for ideas is always unproductive, stressful, and makes me feel terrible. (1/6)

https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1015751009501474816

For the past few days I'd been really struggling with "what am I going to be working on long term?"

All of my work felt like temporary stop-gap projects, filling in the space until I figured out what that one project was that was going to be my life's work. (2/6)

It felt like all of my projects were sort of scattered across different product categories, solving unrelated problems.

What could a video course on TDD and a CSS framework possibly have in common?! (3/6)

It felt like I was running in multiple directions at once instead of making consistent progress on a clear mission.

But forgetting about "what am I going to build" and thinking about "who will it give me genuine satisfaction to help" is giving me a different perspective. (4/6)

It turns out all of the stuff I've done over the past few years *is* related!

I like to help people make software they are proud of — everything I spend my time on fits when that's my mission. (5/6)

So thank you @sivers — in 1.5 hours I went from feeling really disheartened and that I needed to find my purpose, to feeling a deep sense of clarity and feeling satisfied that I know exactly what I should be doing and in fact have been kicking ass at it for years. (6/6)