Direction

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? Effort without clear direction is wasted effort. This is a quote I read the other day from Thomas Frank on Twitter, and I was thinking about it, naturally. You know, if you asked me nine years ago where I'd be today, I would've told you that in 9 to 10 years, I hope to run a hipster-esque coworking space with great coffee, a stationary and yoga studio, a spiritual room, and weekly coding and design workshops that I run with a co-founder and a small team, maybe in Vancouver, somewhere close to the ocean.

[00:01:02] 9 years ago, I was just starting out in my career and my goals and aspirations were based on the trends of the day and very university-culture centric, because that's what I knew. So that was the direction I set out towards. I think a lot of people have trouble figuring out what they want because they feel the pressure to choose correctly.

[00:01:30] Like somehow if you really decide what you want, you can never change your mind and you'll be a failure, if you do anything else. You'll have settled. Well, I think that is just about a boatload of nonsense. Whoever and whatever made us feel that way is nonsensical. It is worthwhile to have a clear direction, a goal you're working towards.

[00:01:56] No one said that direction cannot change. That your goals can't evolve as you learn more, discover more, see more, feel more. Don't get me wrong, there's something to be said for persistence, for not giving up when the going gets tough, and sometimes it's not that things get hard, it's that what we want changes, and when that happens, we are allowed to change our mind.

[00:02:28] We are allowed to change direction. What I wanted out of my life has changed a lot over the years in all the different parts of my life. For example, when I was 12, I was convinced I'd be married by the time I was 22. When I was 17, I was setting up my life to eventually get a PhD, not freelance and, you know, run my own business or do any of the things that I do today.

[00:02:58] There was a time when I was convinced I was gonna get, you know, making kids really early and doing all of that. Then I changed my mind about that too. I, I think our fundamental values don't change _very_ often. They definitely evolve over time with our life experiences and with that comes more clarity, which often makes us change direction actually.

[00:03:29] But maybe it's actually that what feels like a change of direction from the outside is really just a minor internal adjustment that brings us more in alignment with what we truly wanted in the first place. I think it is important to have _a_ direction. You know, it's not so important to have the right direction because what is right is often fairly relative and it changes with time, circumstance, the people in your life, the people you surround yourself with.

[00:04:15] And I think as long as you're not yo-yoing with the wind, uh, it's okay to let go of some of that internal pressure to choose correctly. It's far more important to decide on a direction – to always be working towards some kind of direction and be making effort towards that. And of course, reevaluating from time to time.

[00:04:43] Yeah. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.