9/20 Anxiety of living in a tech world
So for the past few 2.5 months, I’ve had an incredible spike in anxiety about stagnation and “falling behind” in my job, my career, and most importantly, in the things I’m truly passionate about. I’m not sure if this is just what comes of working in tech, or if it’s just a byproduct of being in your early 20′s but I am often overwhelmed by a sense of weird FOMO and FOFB (fear of falling behind).
My thoughts aren’t yet fully formed on this topic, but I think it ties into a couple things.
How technology has made so many things accessible, and has made learning so easy. There is SO much content out there that it can be overwhelming and difficult to sift through and distinguish what’s really important from what’s just total fluff. Things are so accessible now that it just puts immense pressure on the learner to decide where to focus their attention. Plus, now there is no excuse for not knowing something. Cause why didn’t you Google it?!
How technology changes so fast, and as people working in tech, you constantly have to be supplementing your knowledge so that you don’t fall behind. But how do you keep up with all the new frameworks and languages and tools when people just keep churning them out??
I feel the same anxiety about graduate school, and feeling like there’s an expiration time on going back to school. So many people around me are starting on that path, and I know that it’s a commitment, but it also means that they are at least on SOME track that will help them build their knowledge. I could have been doing that for the past two years!
And coming back to attention span, it doesn’t help that technology makes it reaaally easy to split your attention in multiple confusing and conflicting ways, and more and more, we are pressured to be more productive, and more efficient, and just expected to be able to juggle multiple things at once. I see this every day in my job, when I need to toggle between 2 or 3 different customer issues at a time...which is just so inefficient. But it’s also started bleeding out more and more to my daily life. I can’t count the number of times when I’ve picked something up (say a prep book) to work on, then walked to another room and put it down, then gotten distracted by a completely different task, and before I know it it’s been an hour and I can’t even remember where I last put that book.
A separate but kind of related thought: I see projects that incredible people have made like the interactive dance book RUTH, by Keone and Mari Madrid, and of course everything that Sosolimited does, and I just feel so helpless. How on earth do I find a place in that “industry” if I can call it that? To be in entertainment and arts and media, you have to prove yourself through your portfolio and projects you’ve done...but how can I do that AND simultaneously make a living and get to work every day AND apply for grad school, AND apply for jobs?
As you can see, I am a stereotypical millenial in my 20s, confused about life. At times like these, I know that the best thing to do is to
Take a walk or grab something to drink.
Realize that it’s okay to not be able to do everything immediately.
Focus on short-term achievable goals - I think that’s really the key at this stage of life. There’s no way I can expect to do everything simultaneously, so I should just focus on the baby steps and the things I can do right now to change my situation. For me, that means sending out applications, especially to things I’m really passionate about. And talking to people! Network and try not to put on the pressure of having something come out of the networking. It’s difficult for me because I’m uncertain and shy, but it’s not all that difficult when you put your mind to it. It just takes perseverance and a healthy bit of guts and obliviousness to uncomfortable situations to put yourself out there.
More to come later (I’m sure of it...).
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