In 2022 I was living my dream - a senior software engineer at Meta / Instagram making great money and building systems impacting billions of people around the world. It was my dream job - working with smart, supportive team members on a product I loved.

And yet I wasn't happy. I was restless, bored, and irritable. I had low energy, no excitement, and I felt pretty hopeless - like I was going through the motions but it was all empty.

So I quit my dream job at Instagram which kicked off a 1.5 year journey of reflection and discovery from software engineering to entrepreneurship and back to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

Now 1.5 years later I'm feeling pretty good - I'm excited about projects again, I'm building more and better projects than ever, and I'm having a lot of fun along the way. I've been reflecting a lot to more precisely identify what worked and what didn't so that I can be mindful and intentional about avoiding those mistakes in the future.

So here I'm going to share my main takeaway from this journey for finding and engaging in work that's fulfilling short and long-term.

Finding Fulfilling Work

The first question we have to answer is "What is fulfilling work?". The answer is going to be different for everyone as we all have our own values but I think there is a simple system that can help us answer this for most people.

To get there we need to change the question to "What makes work fulfilling?". Then we can work up from that foundation with your own values to figure out what work that actually is.

The answer to this question in my experience is essentially something that fulfills the Hedgehog principle:

• Something that the world wants (and will pay for)
• Something that you're good at
• Something that you're interested in

At Instagram I was doing something the world wanted and something I was good at. But I was no longer interested in the work. I had done the same thing for about 3 years, wasn't that excited about the problem area, and wasn't being challenged / growing as an engineer anymore. So over time I became unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

This principle may seem overly simple but it is a very powerful razor as it easily cuts out a lot of options. And truly if the work you're doing doesn't fulfill each of these then you're not doing something you are uniquely suited for - this means you're spending more effort to get less results and there are certainly other options out there that would allow you to do less work and get more results while enjoying the process along the way.

Next

Going forward, I'm applying this principle to all projects I take on - from projects at work to side projects I do for fun. I've found it very helpful for doing more things I enjoy which anecdotally has led to higher impact with less stress. Go figure.

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