I recently watched a Youtube video on a rat navigating a maze to find a piece of cheese.
Halfway through however, I realized something — I wasn’t so different from this determined rodent. Just like the rat, (let’s call him Tom), I was on a quest for something more in life but instead of cheese, my pursuit revolved around seeking excitement and purpose.
As I continued deeper into the video, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between Tom’s journey and my own personal odyssey. The video explored different search algorithms that Tom took to find the cheese, each mirroring different aspects of my own life experiences that I’m going to share more on.
Breadth-First Search: The Fear of Commitment
In Breadth-First search, Tom navigates multiple paths at once, exploring potential paths layer by layer, ensuring that no potential path is left unexplored before moving to the next level. While comprehensive, this is excessively time-consuming because Tom may visit every previous route over a dozen times before moving forward.
As I undergo a career pivot and explore avenues outside of startups and SWE. I find myself in a very similar scenario to Tom, where I tried to explore as many different things as possible — I made Youtube Videos, wrote blog articles, freelanced as a content creator, and more. Though it was amazing to try so many different things, it was difficult to discern tangible progress.
Though it’s good to keep an open mind and to embrace this mindset of trying new things, just like Tom retracing every one of his steps, constantly checking to see if there is a better alternative path will ultimately kill your progress.
Depth-First Search: Tunnel Vision
Unlike the cautious nature of Breadth-First search, Depth-First search involves pursuing a single path relentlessly. As the Tom passionately pursues its chosen route, it overlooks potential opportunities, unknowingly passing by the cheese it seeks and craves.
Whether it be embarking on the pursuit of big tech, chasing the dreams of becoming a YC founder, I thought for sure that each of these at the time was the one and only path. I threw away my health, my relationships, to pursue these single goals which, at the end of the day, caused each path I pursued to internally collapse and deteriorate.
While you don’t need to second guess every single decision you make, it’s also important not to close off your field of vision because sometimes you might pass by the thing you might want the most.
Flood-Fill Search: How Far Would You Go If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail?
The last path is a Flood-Fill search which enables Tom to take a more optimistic and adaptable approach. In this approach the Tom envisions the location of the cheese as if there were no barriers or walls in the maze, and instead relies on its ability to pivot mid-course based on its previous experiences.
The cool thing about the Flood-Fill search lies in its encouragement of continuous learning and growth and recognizes the setbacks and failures are natural parts of the journey. While the search might not guarantee the most efficient path, it promotes a mindset of resilience and making course corrections along the way.
In my own journey, it’s been harder to take on a similar approach. The cheese often seems elusive, appearing unpredictably or remaining undefined. Perhaps it is worthwhile to define what our own personal “cheese” looks like before embarking on this profound quest.
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In the labyrinth of life, as we navigate our own complex journeys, we invest a significant amount of time and effort into reaching our own ‘cheese’ and pot of gold at the end of the tunnel.
But sometimes you might want to check if that cheese is truly what we desire before wholeheartedly pursuing it.
After all, it’s better to move slowly in the right direction than 200 miles per hour the wrong way.
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