I'll tell you talking to all those different CS Students, from a bunch of different universities, they all seem to have the same problem. Like some of them are from those big universities here in germany, that are viewed as very prestigious, they have good grades, are disciplined, but they all have one problem in common:
"They can't find a job"
In the current market here in germany and europe in general companies are unwilling to hire newbies.
And after talking to some of my friends and other people who study not only CS, but mainly CS, I have discovered two blockers, that all of them have, that hinder them from being seen as valuable for Companies and ultimately getting their job:
- They have no direction
- They have no obsession
The direction part I actually solved in my last article, where I gave you a complete 1 year study roadmap, with projects, exact courses to watch to finally get good at the skills that actually matter. And this alone will get you quite far, if you just follow it. Do the study routine I recommend there, that tells you to study 1-2 hours per day, go finish your courses, do your projects and learn the stuff I talk about. That's actually quite nice and will probably get you a job.
But I purposefully left out a unique point, a completely different concept. A concept one can't just learn in courses or master through doing projects. Something that excels typical learning or study routines you force yourself to do.
This one concept is: Obsession.
And that's what we are going to cover today.
For the beginning and to better grasp the concept, I want you to ask a question.
Let's leave the tech world for now and talk about a different concept, let's talk about sports. One sport in particular, the sport of Boxing. Just imagine we have two guys, both train hard, eat well, spar, are genetically gifted and have good trainers.
One of the guys goes to every training and works hard, but at the same time uses his free time to study fighting footage, he takes notes on how like those old school and new school boxing greats throw and defend different punches, he watches masterclasses on boxing and thinks about it everyday. Not just that, but he also can name you every single welterweight champ from 1960 to now. He completely studies the game. Even those random details, that don't really matter for his boxing skill himself, he just knows this stuff. If you talk about one random fight from like 1960-1970 where like Sugar Ray Robinson fought, he could tell you how the fight went, with what punch a fighter got dropped and so on. And all of that with like this nerdy and happy expression on his face. All of that without it burning him out or not being fun for him.
The other guy goes to his training with his coach, trains hard, works hard, is genetically gifted and is also a very good boxer. But then goes home and doesn't think a bit about boxing and knows nothing more than the current champs. He watches cool fights on the weekend and loves boxing, but despite that he isn't that obsessed with the sport.
Well it turns out under the right circumstances, both can become champions. But only one can become a great champion. Like think about it, there are a bunch of boxing world champions and a lot of them to be honest don't have that great of a technique and don't know the ins and outs of boxing, quite frankly they aren't even interested in boxing and its history.
They are just pretty good, because they are strong, have good cardio, have been fighting since they are like 5 and have a good coach. Those guys can become good but not great. If you listen to the greatest boxers ever, if you listen to like Terrence Crawford, Roy Jones Junior, Andre Ward or Mike Tyson, you will realize they all have one thing in common. They are a student of the game. They are obsessed with the sport. If they wouldn't be boxers, they would basically be considered nerds.
And that's what all of us should become, if we wanna reach greatness in our tech career. We basically need to become nerds. We need to become the guy, that if it's 8pm friday, he will stay at home, enjoy watching a video on infrastructure or building a project. The guy who talks about those kind of cringey new technologies and how AI is advancing. The guy that reads books on Linux. The guy that actually enjoys sitting behind his desk and finishing IT Projects and setting up Kubernetes clusters. I mean if you are not this guy, what exactly are you doing in the IT field. We need to be this guy, to actually become better than everyone else.
Because the greatest in every realm, sport, science, philosophy, usually love what they're doing and are obsessed with it.
Coming back to our topic.
As CS Students, we wanna build ourselves a good career. And with the rise of AI and the bad economy, this gets harder and harder. Now, to actually stay relevant in the next few years, we need mastery. Mastery of a few skills, that will make you stand out and hopefully will make all of us almost irreplaceable by AI. I personally believe mastery is what makes greatness. Like those boxers I described, have mastered one thing: the art of boxing, which made them great. Of course there is never true complete mastery for us humans as there is always more to learn, discover and improve on. But we wanna get as close as possible to mastery. This only works through obsession. Obsessing about the skills that are currently in demand and pretty future proof.
This is what creates mastery. Where we don't study the skills to get jobs. But we work and study the stuff, because it's just fun to work and learn more about the skills.
Well now you could of course ask: Ilyas, how can we attain this obsession. How can I become obsessed.
Well this sadly isn't as easy as just doing a bunch of things. This is a whole restructuring of your brain and what's fun for you.
For the start I would recommend you to check out my last article, where I give you a complete one year roadmap and tell you what skills to actually learn. This roadmap and the study structure will give you a good starting point and you will find out if you actually like tech by following it.
And from here on you need to get better and better daily, read books about the skills I describe there, watch videos in your freetime, build projects.
Because the more and more you do, the more and more effort you put in, the better and more important it will feel for your brain.
This is how you slowly become a nerd.
Being a nerd without being a nerd
Beforehand I told you to become a nerd and that's right. But now I am gonna give you a few things that will help you bridge the gap to where you start to obsess more and more about the topic, while staying a sane and good human being at the same time.
I told you to start by building projects, watching videos around the topic and investing more and more time and effort into this world. But that's easier said than done, because most CS Students I know have dopamine-fried brains that can't focus for more than 1 hour, let alone follow a whole roadmap for 1 year. So what we wanna do from here on is level up our human being skills. This will not just make us more disciplined so we can slowly become nerds, it will also make sure we don't become the kind of nerd we don't wanna be. I mean we wanna build a cool career and live, right?
So, I in my past also had huge problems with discipline, I was bad socially, I was a TikTok junkie and no matter how much I wanted to change I couldn't. But over the last few years, I have read a few books, watched a few videos and done a few things that were game changers for me.
So here's what I would recommend you:
- Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E6cg8c0M38 This is hands down one of the best guides on YouTube and it had a big effect on my life, going from an undisciplined TikTok junkie to actually fixing my mental health and improving myself. Most people severely underestimate how important stable mental health is. Watch this first.
- Read: How to Win Friends and Influence People This book is a classic for a reason. If you struggle with communication or just being approachable, this is the one. I plan to reread it myself soon.
- Read: Deep Work by Cal Newport This book will teach you how to reclaim your focus and actually work and learn like a functional human being again. Literally nobody knows how to focus anymore, and this book directly addresses that. I have spent a lot of time studying this topic and the core ideas in this book are real.
That's it. 3 things. They make you disciplined enough to enter nerd phase, but also level you up as a person, so you don't become a nerd in the classical sense.
Because the coolest guys are friendly, disciplined, trained people who happen to have this nerdy obsession with their craft. That's the version of yourself you're building toward.