Broken cars and life choices šŸ¤”

Do you know what you want to achieve?

Adrien Joly
2 min readJun 19, 2017

The last two weeks have been quite odd.

My parents visited us for a few days. My car broke. Then, I ended up spending way too much time dealing with emails, maintenance of side projects, and thinking about life choicesā€¦

ā€¦instead of prospecting clients for my business, as I intended.

Am I lying to myself? ā€” Part 2

Photo: Oceans, by Sharon Christina RĆørvik

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the realisation that I was not the super developer I thought I was. Now, Iā€™m wondering if creating my own business is not yet another ego-driven challenge that Iā€™m inflicting to myself. What is it that Iā€™m running after, exactly?

Derek Sivers advises to keep your real passion as a hobby, while learning to master (and thus, enjoy) a well-paid job to ensure a sustainable future. My family and some of my friends think that way. But, to me, this sounds boring, for some reason. While Iā€™m quite risk-averse, I like to think that I have a chance of achieving something bigger. So Iā€™m trying things.

On the other hand, while ā€œtrying thingsā€ sounds fun and instructive, it also sounds random and unpurposeful. Having a purpose (ā€œWHYā€) is important to stay motivated, especially when dealing with hard or unpleasant tasks. So, if I want to follow that route, I believe that I need to have a direction in mind. I need to know what I want, and what I donā€™t want. And, these days, Iā€™m having trouble figuring this outā€¦

Or maybe I should accept that weā€™re all delusional, that I should stop overthinking all this, and rather ask my friends for their point of view.

Iā€™d love to read your take on this:

  1. When you make life choices, what drives you?
  2. Donā€™t you see a contradiction between the two articles by Derek Sivers I linked above?
  3. When working on a project that you believe is driven by your purpose, how much ā€œpainā€ (or boring tasks) are you ready to tolerate before quitting or reconsidering your purpose?

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Adrien Joly

šŸ‘Øā€šŸ’» Software crafter @SHODO, legacy code / tech debt doctor (http://ajo.ovh/pro) šŸ„ Drummer of ā€œHarissaā€, VR lover, music digger