The paradox of following the crowd

The boring Pre Statement

What follows here could be a simple retake on how people like Elon or Jobs were thinking of “success”, while any individual can have their own opinion and definition for success. Looooong long ago, Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus replied “Nothing” to the question of “What it was possible to know”, and the mere reason is, a rational discussion around anything is absurd. For the same reason, it is impossible to have a common definition for the success of our life and our career.

For the same reason, a few things written here may not sound reasonable and sensible straight away. Inspired from the crux of the book “Stop being Reasonable” , I am here to put across my view-points with no fear of judgement.

So let’s get into this unreasonable Paradox of thoughts inspired from reasonable people.

Strong Vision and High Flexibility in Details — the summary of Jeff’s advice.

In 2016, a less experienced Iranian friend in Sydney assured me, “Trust me, this will change your life,” when I mentioned casually that I was reading a book (it’s called as the Red Book in Scala world and my evening task at home was solving its exercises). Since then, that book has enabled me to achieve several milestones both professionally and personally over the years. Considering my own modest abilities, the impact it has had remains nothing short of miraculous to me.

That Iranian voice resonated many times in my life. He was a voice that’s least heard in the company, that’s least popular in the company, and in-fact someone who is no-one for the Eagle out there — yet I started to believe in his words!

To an extent I started having the opportunity to pair up with well known people with this knowledge from different countries, writing Open Source Projects (like this). I started giving talks in my own work place, and in many other places, and I was clearly having a good time. I considered that as an achievement, because until then, I was only a listener to great talks, and a user of great libraries. That’s my definition of a small success which is not super relevant to what I am trying to say!

Some things can turn out to be a fuel for years to come unexpectedly. Catching it is not just by luck but an outcome of curiosity in things that may not be popular enough. It could be that 1 person who stayed away from the crowd having a coffee with you in the morning. Listen to them and who knows – Their inputs may not be a shortcut to success but it can turn out to be a direct traversal to a great destination much more quickly!

Yet, I was happy to change the details of the book, in my own ways. I was happy to learn varying opinions about the same book from experts. I listened to people with an open mind, ready to change the details around the vision, while keeping the vision strong and intact. In other words, that single book forked itself to a sea of knowledge+++ on the subject, and the derived confidence killed my imposter syndrome — the villain in many people’s career. Yes, I was still not sending any rockets yet :)

So what is Paradox?

One question we may ask ourselves : “What to learn this year?". That could be useful but that’s the most suboptimal starting point if we are in search of being special out there!

I can copy paste a few content from Internet and talk about Web 3.0, Internet Computer, Decentralised Apps, Open AI, ML, AR, VR, the big picture of Functional Programming & Design and the list is infinite !

Instead of following the crowd and listing a few new technology let me point out a few steps that I took in my career knowingly or unknowingly that kept me going. Note that I have also made mistakes and had my lows in my life. This by no means, trying to be “success tip”’ of Afsal.

Bumping into something interesting

See if you bumped into something interesting (tech) even if it’s for a short period. See if you are sort of loving it. Remember, taste and passion are different. You may not be so passionate about it until you drill more to find more details.

Basic Research

Basic research on your interested area is required but often abused. Note that this research is NOT the infamous Google search of “how many users are currently using this tech”. Instead a better one could be “where is my interest currently being used” . Example, Python is dominating the market, but my interested language Erlang is used to develop WhatsApp. Or my current fascination Haskell is used to develop Cardano and why?.

Don’t follow the crowd

Prioritise your own thoughts on your technology or area of interest over the crowd. What crowd thinks may invoke false confirmations in your brain. Following the crowd is the biggest contributor to confirmation bias in tech industry.

Deep dive, find passion and kill mediocrity

Deep dive on to your area of interest regardless of other interesting tech advancements that could distract you. Be aware of advancements but don’t be distracted. Example: don’t stop learning vanila JS with direct DOM manipulation straight away because ReactJs came in. Remember, advancement is most of the times a detail of fundamentals.

Deep dive also reinforces your interest and transform itself into a passion. Passion kills mediocrity in what you do.

Be flexible in details

Be flexible in details while deep diving. A detail, for example, can be an advancement of your current interested technology which you came to know from your colleague. Good that you were learning the fundamentals, and now you are ready to take in the details.

Space and time to acknowledge the details as early as possible also kill mediocrity in what you do right now. If you are not fast enough to acknowledge the advancement that are deceived as mere details, then you are always stagnant and devoid of necessary tools, techniques and muscle memory to tackle a tricky problem with high efficiency and uncompromising quality. Keep learning but be focussed is another way to put it.

Stop, validate with the crowd and be ready to unlearn

Here goes the most toughest part. Be ready to move on regardless of how far you dived into your field of interest or passion, by validating with the outside world. This is an informed decision to move on to the next technology or area of interest.

That said, the frequency of validation shouldn’t be neither too high nor too low. Too high results in overly scattered data points in your brain resulting in distraction and it only increases your imposter syndrome. It also results in facing your own mediocrity, because you kept moving around than being focussed.

Same time, it shouldn’t be too low to be completely isolated and lose the direction in your career. At this stage, you are fully prepared to unlearn and invert your thought process and unlearn what you learned until now to imbibe something more interesting with a higher potential to be more passionate about. This is where , we sort of flip the advice of not follow the crowd.

Keep repeating in this your career and have fun. Have a great career ahead!

Get in touch: https://au.linkedin.com/in/afsal-thaj-10ab2842