After the layoff, I suddenly had too much time.
Ideas were everywhere, but everything felt vague.
Should I grind interviews? Build projects? Try something new?
Too many options, and somehow I couldn’t pick one.
So I did what most people do — I went into full sprint mode.
I tried to smash frontend fundamentals and system design in a week.
Late nights, aggressive goals, pushing hard.
It worked… for a few days.
Then I crashed.
The next week, I didn’t want to do anything.
Two weeks passed, and I was nowhere near where I expected.
Then I came across a story in Effortless.
In 1911, two teams raced to the South Pole:
Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen.
Scott’s strategy was to push hard when conditions were good and slow down when they weren’t.
Amundsen took the opposite approach — move at a steady pace every day, no matter what.
Amundsen won.
That hit me.
It’s not about how fast you can sprint.
It’s about how long you can keep going.
So I changed my approach.
Instead of forcing 5 system design questions a day,
I do just one — every day.
That’s it.
And because I’m not exhausted anymore, I actually have energy left to explore —
things like agent systems and random ideas, which ironically helped in interviews too.
The real lesson:
👉 Don’t push yourself so hard that you can’t recover the next day.
Because once recovery breaks, everything breaks.
Plans slip → pressure increases → you push harder → you burn out again.
That’s the death spiral.
What also helped me stay consistent is simple:
Before each day, I decide exactly what I’ll do.
Even just 10 minutes planning.
Because every small uncertainty costs mental energy.
And when your brain is full of vague thoughts,
there’s no room left for real work — only anxiety.
So now:
- Decide ahead
- Keep it small
- Execute like a robot
And most importantly —
protect your pace.