Today I had my first job interview in a while. I flubbed it. But I didn’t mind as much as I have in the past.

You see, yesterday I was watching a motivational YouTube video (which I’m iffy about the actual value of doing; I was in a low energy mood), and one thing stuck out to me: don’t enjoy the outcome of doing something, enjoy working towards it.

This makes sense to me – you won’t uphold a habit if the benefits are far removed. You definitely won’t get the outcome if you can’t hold onto the habit.

This comes back to the interview – how can I enjoy a programming interview? I hate doing interviews. I’m not good at showing my expertise? I do like to talk about programming stuff. So maybe I can focus on that.

To that end I’ve decided to give up on the job search (though if you’re hiring, please reach out!), and instead focus on talking with other programmers. Maybe I hop onto a discord call every week. Or maybe I just learn how to stop lurking in the programming communities I’m in. Perhaps I even apply to a few jobs just to get a good chat. But in the end I think it comes down to choosing an activity that I can enjoy and leveraging opportunities that arise from doing that.

Message I Posted to Slack

I’m thinking of reframing how I do a “job search”. I’ve always hated applying to jobs and I haven’t figured the whole, “demonstrate you can do the job during the interview” thing. But I watched a video that emphasized enjoying the process of achieving goals, instead of the outcome.

“I don’t like applying for jobs, but I do like talking about programming.” Instead of applying for jobs, I want to focus on finding programmers and talking to them about cool stuff they’re doing, or maybe talk about what I’m doing.

I realize that this is just networking. But the shift from “I am talking to people so they give me a job” to “I am talking with people about cools things they are working” makes the process sound more appealing.

tl;dr: I’m going to focus on talking with programmers, in the hope that I’ll enjoy it more than submitting resumes and actually do it.