I have been struggling with this question. I have been learning web development for around 1 year, I learned significant amount of stuff. (See what I have been doing here) And now I have been thinking about the question "Now what?". I could learn something compeletely new, I could learn something new related to web development technologies or I could try to build a project with stuff I learned so far. Which one of them should I pick or should I pick something other than those options?

If you clicked to this article thinking that answers to question in the title will be clear, you came to the wrong place. Because this article will likely lead to more questions. However I will share some of the thoughts that can be helpful when taking the next step in life.

Creativity

I think creative process can be helpful. Because you need to come up with an idea on what to do next. So you need to create something, some idea forward that can help you forget about existential dread you have been feeling, at least for a while. Creative process, according to the book written by psychologist Graham Wallas in 1920s, can be grouped into for steps: Preparation, incubation, illumination and verification.

Phases of Creativity

Preparation is the phase where you feed your mind with information related or unrelated to your current problem, seeming unrelated info can be helpful since you never know where will ideas originate from. Information can either come from thinking about the problem (inner focused) or researching about it (outside focused).

Incubation is stepping off of the preparation phase and doing something unrelated to the problem. Ideally the thing you are doing should take your mind out of the probled you have been thinking and help the problem incubate in your mind, hence the name.That thing could be walking, playing or doing other kinds of activities that make your mind wander.

Illumination phase is the part where ideas start to pop up in your head when you don't expect them to. For example, you started taking a walk and after a while a possible solution to your problem popped up in your head. Ideas illuminate your mind per say.

Verification phase is starting to problem solve, implementing the ideas you have come about and seeing how they fare if the real world.

These phases might not be as linear as lined out here, but this model is a nice way to think about the creative process. I think the crucial part here is that, you need to step out the problem after getting some information and do something else that gets you into flow state so that ideas can start rising to the surface. Then you see how the ideas work and you repeat the whole process with the newly gained insights. 

How Does All This Relate To What To Do Next?

My aim in telling you all this creativity related things is to help you find a way forward. Because if you are stuck inside the problem, you will lose the ability to see where to go next. So maybe apply these steps, or something you derive out of these steps, and see what you come up with. Certainly my process on finding pathways is something similar to phases lined out in this article, event though it might not be exactly the same. For example I also take shorter 5 to 15 minute breaks during the preparation period to get mini incubations so that I can realign before it is too late. I guess it is not so different from steps outlined here but it is a mini, repeated iterations of them if I may say so myself.

For example, I applied an iteration and came about the idea that I should write this article, It by no means help me with what to do with web development path, but hey, at least I found something to do and will repeat the process so that I can find something to do again. That something may be related to web development or other things that will help me in life, who knows?

One last thing I wanna mention is that, no matter what you do and what process you go through to find the way forward, sometimes it will feel like you have chosen the wrong path and there was a better path you did not see. This uncertainty will worry you but if you cannot see the "better" path, in other words if it is not there in your mind, then I believe it is not worth worrying about. Because if you see it, you can implement it, if you can't see it, other than this vague sense that there might be a better path, don't worry about it.

I am aware that telling you not to worry about it might not really ease your anxieties. However, hopefully, even after significant struggle and worrying, your anxieties might go away after a while. So If they are there, wait a little bit and they will disappear, If you are still alive that is. Wow rough ending there huh? Have a good day.