Last time, I left off having decided to spend a summer doing whatever interested me, “a summer of freedom” if you will. I still had to figure out what to do though.
Part II: Process over Outcome
When I was pretty young, we’ll say around age 8, I said I wanted to be a “philanthropist.” Sometime later I wanted to be a Disney Imagineer. Later, I wanted to be a medical scientist and get an MD/PhD. I believe these short-lived career choices say something about me, but they’re all hopelessly wrong. (Especially the MD/PhD, the day I go to school for 15 more years….)
Why do people get such crazy ideas about themselves? On one hand, Self-awareness requires a threshold of firsthand experience before one can learn vicariously through others, so it just takes time to build up the necessary experience. On the other hand, it seems to me people with adequate experience still make strange decisions for themselves. I (of course) have a theory about one reason people have such misdirected ideas how they want to spend their time, particularly with regard to occupations. Here goes the Personal Misdirection Theory:
People heavily over-value outcome over process when selecting goals.
People, particularly high performers, tend to be goal-oriented. They want to feel they’re working towards something. And I think this is a great thing. But when selecting their goals, very often I think people tend to forget to ask the question: what will I be doing day to day, moment to moment in order to attain this?
Sometimes you’ve got to just put your head down and climb the mountain. That’s just the way it is. But, as you can probably guess, I don’t see much sense in climbing a path of misery. Once you get to the top of the mountain, the next question is only where to next? With this in mind, it doesn’t make sense to go through a miserable process. We live our lives working towards a number of goals. We should enjoy the process.
These were things I had in mind when I was trying to figure out how to spend my summer. What did I really want to do purely out of interest? What did I want to learn that I would enjoy doing?
I write this as if I was at a loss as to what to do. I definitely had no shortage of ideas. I just didn’t know what to focus on. In January of 2008, it became clear what my primary project would be. One cold day in Boston, I sat in my room in my fraternity house looking at Google Maps. As often happens to me, I started thinking about how incredible this tool really was, and how much more it could be.
Not so long ago, I was interested in the non-profit sector. After talking to some people, I realized that all over the place, people were trying to help out by doing good, but they were doing it haphazardly. Someone comes up with a cause and finds money to support it, whether there is a real need or not. (Foreshadowing: this insight is a bit ironic with regard to my own future experience). However, the time and resources could often be better used in another manner.
When combined with my new interest in data visualization, the thought led me to my first Big Worthless Idea that I actually pursued: The Identification of Societal Needs Project. My brain connected the value of data visualizations linked to location (data overlaid on a map) to the very inefficient and disorganized non-profit sector. The idea behind The Identification of Societal Needs Project was that if you visualized social needs on a map, problems and their proximity could be easily understood, resources could be better allocated, and real social problems could get the attention needed. The first and hardest step is identifying the problem.
I filled out applications. Knocked on doors. If you look hard enough, you’ll find money to do what you want to do. I was able to get a hold of two thousand dollars to work on the project. This took me the whole spring semester of my junior year. (Lesson learned: raising money can be done, but it takes time. )
To anyone out there that has a lot of ideas, I highly encourage you to act on them. You’ll learn a lot after the first couple times you try and implement an idea. I learned many lessons when I tried to evangelize the value of my Big Worthless Idea. And while I refer to it as a Big Worthless Idea, it’s actually very valuable. In fact, it developed into an intense vision that I hope someday is implemented by someone. At the time, I just didn’t have any of the connections or resources to begin making real headway on it in terms of implementation. At the time, it lacked the razor-like focus necessary to begin making the right steps towards implementation. But, it started it all for me….
In parallel to chasing this Big Worthless Idea, late in the spring semester, my overly ambitious self made a list of other things I wanted to do over the summer. The list looked something like this:
- Read one book per week
- Write every day
- Draw Every Day
- Learn to use Adobe Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver
- Create YouTube personality
- Learn metal working
- Learn how to do injection molding
- Learn basics of hardware design
- Go to the Gym every day
These were the main items that I recall. Clearly way too many things to do in a summer, but I certainly had no shortage of ways to fill my time. I also got a part-time job at the MIT Edgerton Center doing learning projects with 4th – 8th graders. This got me a little extra cash, an “in” at the Edgerton Student Machine Shop, and a chance to teach and learn cool stuff.
I was all set. I had a Big Crazy Idea to work on, and plenty of other small goals to fill my time. What I was completely blind to was the Truth of what was really happening that only hindsight can reveal.
Kevin Vogelsang
8.2.09
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