At the start of this year, I had a somewhat vague goal of “doing enjoyable things,” but through several events, I came to have a more intensely obsessive goal. That is “do my own work.”

I’ve always been someone who tried to do my own work, but the big change from before is that I’ve acknowledged the failure of the methods I’ve been using so far. If I’ve been doing it for 10 years and the results aren’t great, it’s worth looking for different methods. And I judged now to be the right time to internalize these different methods.

The “different methods” I’m thinking of have the following elements.

Answering “Questions”

Recently, whenever I went with concerns about various aspects, I received this question a lot. So what do you want to do?

We’ve learned to think primarily about answering well, but I felt through solving several events above that the most important part of life is actually “what questions you ask.”

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

— Albert Einstein

Actually, important things are missing from the questions we hastily create. So we end up asking hollow questions like “how do others do it,” “how should I do it,” “what technologies are there.” So unlike the past when I asked “what is the problem?”, I’m practicing asking first “what do I want to do with this right now?”

It’s actually a question that’s several times harder. Especially considering that we don’t know ourselves as well as we think. But as I watch the results brought by answers and actions derived this way, I feel it’s worth the effort.

”Extremely Fast”

It’s actually a common feedback cycle, and I’ve seen through many analogies that it’s greatly connected to growth. But how much are we actually trying to be extremely fast? Since putting this concern in my head, days of reflection have increased. There are more things to reduce than I thought. I was still thinking big and slow.

Having built my career as a software developer, especially as a backend engineer, I came to value stability more. Since server failures can lead to serious problems, this perception change was natural. This concern about stability naturally developed into deep thoughts about overall product quality improvement.

But I think this situation will work negatively considering the development direction of AI products. For the past month, I’ve been actively adopting a coding technique called Vibe Coding, and accepting points I would definitely have rejected in the past. This way I’ll be able to get “extremely fast” feedback from a product perspective.

Desire for Proof

“An essential element of being a contrarian is proof. Many call themselves contrarians, but among them, very few actually prove themselves without caring about others’ opinions.”

— Reid Hoffman

Among work elements, there are elements where I think my way is clearly right. Things like what kind of collaboration is good, how companies should work, what kinds of conversations shouldn’t happen. But most people either don’t notice such points, deprioritize them, or I’ve even seen cases where they criticize people who point out such problems.

I came to think that I want to prove that I can achieve the “success” they speak of while rejecting these directions, and that it’s more efficient.

And there’s only one way to prove this. It’s to take action directly.

When Life Gives Me Lemons

According to the law of action-reaction, there’s as much reaction as there is action. Since realizing that the essence of life is strange questions and making a determination to keep moving regardless, confusing things have been happening continuously.

A lot happened in Q1 of 2025. I wonder if things are going this way because this year will turn out so well. I don’t know where the direction is going, but I feel quite good because I seem to be definitely walking forward.

Anyway, lemons have been given to my hands, and I seem to be at the stage of thinking about how to make lemonade. I want to be with a glass of lemonade next quarter.