Recently I've been stuck trying to start learning something new. I'm self-thought and am currently job-searching and noticed the insane amount of applications being sent in by numerous other people, obviously this had gotten me down but I knew I had to take action and adapt. Should I keep advancing my front-end knowledge? Should I make a new better project for my portfolio? I have a decent foundation on the front-end, so then why not complete the stack?

"Aha!" I muttered as I started searching for a back-end guide, and then my hope got squished when I saw how much I had to learn before becoming competent. How much time do I have to spend? A month? two months? five? I knew these were the wrong questions, but the thought did make me hesitant to dive in. I was able to be comfortable with SQL and exposed myself to Postgres after a few months, albeit I did struggle pushing myself to do so.

"There has to be an easier way" I thought, and there was. When I was searching I noticed a lot of web-builder jobs with Wordpress or Shopify, it'll be easier to jump in and it'll probably only take a month max if I wanted to be competent, but then questions began cluttering my head again, what then? Make web projects using said builders? What projects should I do? Do I even want to learn these? Isn't this choice "weaker" in the long-run?

There again paralyzed by choices, I couldn't commit to one so I spent a few weeks switching between the two, constantly trying to make up my mind, and have come to a depressing realization, I'd realized that I have wasted a lot of time thinking of what I wanted to spend my time on. This realization made my heart drop, as even before this web-builder vs back-end debate, this feeling of paralysis isn't new, I had contemplated over what to choose before: web-dev vs game-dev, continue self-thought vs continue traditional education, continue web-dev vs start mobile-dev, learn X vs learn Y, etc. etc. etc.

I wanted to shout, but I couldn't cause it was 2:00AM and I lived with my family, so just like anyone stuck fixing a bug for hours, I shouted my heart out internally. I wanted to reject this paralysis, I hated having to over-analyze, I hate having to think so much to choose so I gave up all my thoughts, I let go of what's best for my future, what's best for my time, and held on to one question: "what are you genuinely interested in right now?"

The next day I started learning game development, hours passed and I continued, there was no other thought but wanting to learn more. After years of overthinking, I have somehow forgotten what it felt like to genuinely learn for the sake of learning.

Conclusion

Often choices are difficult and that's true to some extent, we want to choose the right path, the right person, the right career. However, I think we are too hung up on that part, we want the "best" option and in doing so we ask the wrong questions.