Week 3 of Fractal Tech's AI Accelerator & Engineering Bootcamp
At the start of this week, I felt like I was teetering on the edge of burnout. The bootcamp workload was already pushing me to my limits, and when the opportunity for a two-week externship with a startup called Cerelog came up, my first instinct was to decline. Adding even one more commitment felt like it would be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Then Andrew shared something that shifted my perspective: "If you want something done, ask a busy person." Against all logic, I said yes to the externship. And something remarkable happened – instead of breaking under the additional weight, everything became more manageable. The act of committing to something beyond what felt like my limit somehow created space for everything else.
Opposite Action
This experience reminded me of a phenomenon I've noticed during periods of intense emotion or "craving", and which I've recently associated with the principle of opposite action. When I'm desperately craving sugar, what I actually need is water. When I'm itching to play video games for hours, what I really need is to read a book. Following this logic, when I feel like I'm at my absolute limit, perhaps what I really need is to commit to something beyond that limit.
The same principle showed up at the gym this week. After avoiding it for too long, I finally went back, and that single workout acted like a reset button on my entire emotional state. Sometimes the thing we're avoiding is exactly what we need.
Doubt Comes In
The Cerelog externship has been a perfect example of this paradox in action. I'm spending the next two weeks working in C++, Arduino, and Python, trying to improve hardware integration and EEG data flow - things I have no experience with and have had doubts about being able to contribute in any meaningful way. However, the moment I committed – that simple "I'm in" – replaced all my feelings of doubt with genuine excitement. Excitement about learning, about finding something that uses my existing knowledge, and about making a real impact on a real project.
But the path here wasn't nearly as straightforward as I've made it seem. Before even talking to Andrew or anyone on the Cerelog team, I had a day and a half to work on our bootcamp's weeklong hackathon project. I initially felt confident about building an app called Wisdom Librarian – a notetaking app with an AI personal librarian to help you find things on the tip of your tongue and organize various sources of information in one place. After getting feedback from instructors about its demonstrability, I pivoted to "Infinite Bingo", a sandbox game based on an existing "Infinite Craft" repository.
When basic functionality wouldn't work, frustration took over. I couldn't go two minutes without getting irritated with myself. This is when the spiral begins – I get stuck in my head, start doubting myself, then questioning my identity, my values, what actually brings me joy, etc. With little left to fall back on, even the smallest obstacles can feel insurmountable.
Breaking the Spiral
Here's where I made a crucial realization about my own patterns. When I feel behind on work or knowledge, I effectively "punish myself" by cutting out things that bring me joy. No ice cream until I catch up on blog posts. No relaxing until I've mastered this concept. The logic comes from a place of fulfilling potential – work twice as hard to catch up before it's too late – but it inevitably leads to further burnout.
This same principle of opposite action set me free here as well - when I felt that I needed to push harder and work twice as much to catch up, what I really needed was to take a step back and do things that brought me joy: simple things like eating ice cream and reading a book. Sometimes what looks like procrastination is actually necessary restoration.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
While I was waffling on my externship decision, Parth pointed me to an article called The Hard Thing About Hard Things,
My wife has been telling me for months: "You build self-respect by doing hard things." She's living proof of this principle – up at 5:30 AM for 6 AM CrossFit three times a week, excelling at her job, managing a household, supporting me more than I could ask for, and still reading 75+ books per year. Watching her has shown me what's possible when you consistently choose the harder path. As another article on emotional management puts it:
The safety, comfort, and security we crave aren't objective states. They are subjective feelings that come through increasing our understanding of our world and our capabilities. In short, we gain comfort and security by expanding our comfort zones, and we expand our comfort zones by venturing into the risk zone. We make ourselves uncomfortable and insecure for a short time in order to learn what we're capable of.
At the Crossroads
This week has crystallized something I've been grappling with throughout this career transition. As a mechanical engineer pivoting to software, I sometimes miss the tangible nature of CAD work, where everything refers to a physical visual model. In embedded firmware – what I'm doing in this externship – there are layers upon layers of abstraction. Missing one layer makes the next feel like hieroglyphics.
When I was working on special trackwork for NYC transit, pretty much every concept could be explained with math – still abstract, but grounded in physics and calculations. Software has similarities, but also many more abstractions to navigate. Working with things like serial libraries and FTDI complications feels completely foreign to my mental model of how systems should work.
But then I see a live graph dashboard of EEG data streaming from my fingertips, and everything seems wonderful again.
Rather than taking doubt to mean "I'm in the wrong place", maybe instead I'm at a crossroads, and the right path for me lies at the intersection of multiple worlds I love – software, CAD, game development, math. The answer isn't choosing one or the other, but finding where they converge.
Lessons
This week taught me that sometimes the thing that feels impossible to take on is exactly what you need to take on. The externship that felt like too much has become the thing that's energizing me and making everything else feel more manageable. The gym session I kept avoiding became the reset I desperately needed.
When everything feels overwhelming, maybe the answer isn't to do less. Maybe it's to commit to doing something meaningful, even if it feels like too much. Especially if it feels like too much.