What I Learn From Building My Self-Learning Community
If you recall my initial 30-day challenge post, “survival instinct,” you would likely be aware of the extent of my brokenness two months ago when I experienced a breakup and joblessness simultaneously. You wouldn’t believe the growth I’ve made in my hacker house (powerhouse) after two months.
What we accomplish
Let me begin by sharing my OKRs and how having this house has helped me achieve them.
O1: Get jobs that I can compare and negotiate without worrying about my future
I have not only obtained two job offers that I can compare and choose from, but one of them is also my dream position: an AI/LLM engineer. Can you believe I started learning LLM only two months ago?
My housemate, who wants to transition from a designer to an engineer, has an amazing job search story. He asked startups to pay him a very high price (higher than the big tech rate) just to interview him, and he got all the jobs. This is the first time I’ve seen someone get paid for interviews…
My other housemate also impressed me so much. Her cold email had a 60% response rate, which is the highest I’ve ever seen in my life on Earth.
O2: Enabling confidence that I can build my own career (Develop 0- 1 muscle)
I initially planned to build two technical projects, hoping to have at least one user other than myself for each project. However, my first project, an auto-email follow-up, received 35K impressions and around 50 people signed up to use it. Although my other projects are more practice-based than production-based, they helped me land my current job. You can view all of my projects: here.
Regarding the mindset I have built for my career, I wrote a post called “How to gain career confidence? Strategies and Mindsets for Being the Best” on how to build career confidence as a female. As for progress in working towards my passion, I wrote “#1: How to Do Great Work? — Myth” and have been constantly practicing it since then.
Audience growth in writing
Writing isn’t part of my OKR. I just have nothing else to do, so I participate in my friends’ 30-day writing challenges. But look at my growth in the past two months! Even without a strong intention to write for others, I started with around 250 followers and ended with around 700 followers on my Medium. That’s 2.8 times growth already! My post, “What I Learned in Minerva,” also accidentally became famous and was featured in a Medium weekly digest.
My housemate, who also started her challenge, has achieved a 2x increase in followers on Substack, which is very impressive.
I believe this is the fastest growth I have experienced so far, and I would like to share what I have learned with you. This will also serve as a reminder for my future self during uncertain and difficult times in life.
Pick radically growth-oriented people
First, I picked the right people to be my comrades. They were the most growth-oriented people whom I trusted in my school. This made a whole ton of difference. Fear-oriented people stressed each other out, while growth-oriented people brought out the potential in each other.
For instance, many unemployed classmates apply online every day and accept whatever job they can get. They believe, “I will become a good engineer once I get a job to train me.” However, our group believes, “I want to become a good engineer first, and jobs will come to me.” Therefore, we build project sprints, network with people to discuss our projects, and that’s how we find people to learn from and obtain jobs. Yes, most of us eventually find a job, but our group instills in me a much stronger mentality that I am not as afraid of unemployment anymore.
Don’t try to get a job, practice our 0–1 muscle
When experiencing uncertainty such as joblessness, most people act to minimize fear, but our house aims to overcome it. We call it the “0–1 muscle.” The logic here is pretty simple: we will need to face uncertainty and build things from scratch. How can we build confidence when we have nothing?
Therefore, instead of grabbing the first piece of driftwood, we want to learn how to swim. This mindset allows us to push each other to pursue our real passions rather than settling for whatever is available. For instance, when I got my LLM job that I love, my housemate still challenged me, saying “Looking back at your speed of growth, do you think working there will help you grow more or build your own projects?” We make sure we all choose our work because of honest passion rather than fear.
Beyond mindset, 0–1 muscle also means exercising strategies to practically realize them in the real world. For instance, my current founder didn’t give me any job description. I brought my own AI/LLM engineer job description to the table during our salary negotiation (Read: What I learned from my first offer negotiation). My job now is amazing because I learned how to craft it myself!
As a result of 0–1 muscle, our house pushed our second flatmate to give up his high-paid big tech design job to look for a new engineering career. Similarly, it pushed the third flatmate to give up finding a US job and really build her own startup in Vietnam.
Trust me, we were all so scared about our choices until today. We are all so scared for the future awaiting us. But the muscle we built has enabled us to take the first step already, and we believe it can take us much further than fear.
With a focused consistency, two months exceed a year of practice
I used my OKRs as a guideline for my weekly plan, so I can ensure consistent growth in the same direction. I realized that even with just one or two months of intentional and consistent practice, I grew much faster than by doing 100 things in school for a year. For instance, all the skills I am performing in my current job are from the two months of practice because my project is a mini-scale project for a startup, but all the technical skills and methodology apply.
Writing is similar. I publish every day, no matter if it is trash or gold. Most of them might really be trash, but a few happen to be gold. Through my daily writing practice, I not only overcome my fear of publishing, but I also review my learning by reading my blogs and discussing them with others. Based on our daily iteration, my housemate and I gradually find our niche audiences (she is in edtech, and I’m for fun learning) through our massive content production.
Growing is painful, but with the right support, it can be joyful.
In the end, the breakup didn’t drown me, even though I still felt torn down. Joblessness didn’t choke me, even though I’m still scared. Having this house didn’t take away the pain or fear of growing up. It’s just that we grow too fast for fear to consume us.
We got ice cream to celebrate our small successes every week. We challenged each other when someone wanted to retreat from fear, and we gave each other honest feedback on our strengths, opportunities, and risks.
I write consistently because they told me, “Don’t worry about writing a popular, standard post. Write in the way you love because you aren’t like normal people.”
I build quickly because they told me, “Let’s try to finish our MVP in two days first.”
We called out each other’s sugar-coated bullshit. I said, “If your love for engineering is genuine, why are you trying to go back to big tech as a designer instead of working in a tiny startup as an engineer? Do you think your avoidance tendency is only in your relationship, or maybe it affects every dimension of your life?” (Sorry, we did bring up a life crisis.)
He said, “Why do you assume you need US money to sustain your startup? Why don’t you raise funds for your startup to support yourself?”
The funny thing is, I thought I would get demotivated or depressed from all my life crises, but I didn’t. I’m so far from that. I am very, very grateful for this growing journey with them because I see that all of us not only grow in our careers but also grow as characters.
