Why Your Goals Need Background Processing
What Stoics and Software Engineers Know About Getting Results
I've discovered something pretty wild: there's this fascinating parallel between programming and life that revolves around asynchronous processing. The most elegant solutions rarely come from forcing synchronous behavior on a naturally asynchronous process. Whether you're waiting for a database query to return or a career change to manifest, the principles remain the same. You do the work, you trust the process, and you don't block the main thread of your life while waiting for the results.
What the Hell is Async Programming Anyway?
For those who don't spend their days staring at code, here's the deal: In programming, we have synchronous and asynchronous operations. Synchronous is like standing in line at the DMV. You wait for one thing to finish before you can do anything else. Your entire program just sits there, frozen, waiting for that one slow operation to complete.
Asynchronous is different. It's like ordering food for delivery while you're doing other stuff around the house. You place the order (start the operation), then go clean, work, watch Netflix – whatever. The food shows up when it's ready, but you didn't waste time just sitting there waiting for it.
In coding, we use async operations to prevent UI freezes while operations complete in the background. We don't want to hang up the user interface just because one process is taking its sweet time.
The Stoics Called It First
Ancient Stoic philosophers understood this pattern 2,000 years before we even had computers. They just called it "detached action" instead of async/await.
The Stoics were all about doing your best work while releasing attachment to specific outcomes. These guys figured out that you can take meaningful action without being paralyzed waiting for results. You do the work, you focus on the process, but you're not sitting there anxiously refreshing your email every five minutes to see if life has updated yet.
Think about how this applies to real life: when you're job hunting, building skills, or working on relationships, you can either block your entire existence waiting for one specific outcome, or you can keep multiple processes running in the background.
Instead of refreshing your email every five minutes after sending a job application (blocking the main thread), you continue applying elsewhere and developing skills (background processes). Rather than forcing a friendship to deepen on your timeline, you show up consistently and let the relationship develop naturally.
Exception Handling is Just Negative Visualization
Here's another programming concept that the Stoics nailed: exception handling. In coding, we implement try-catch blocks: we prepare for failures without assuming they'll happen. This is standard practice. You can't just assume everything will always work perfectly.
From a Stoic perspective, this is negative visualization. You mentally rehearse setbacks to build resilience. Both approaches reduce anxiety through preparation, not pessimism. It's not that we expect bad things to happen; we just want to handle them gracefully when they do.
There's always going to be stuff outside of our control: network failures in code, rejection letters in life, data corruption, relationship drama. The key is having your try-catch blocks ready. What's your backup plan if this job doesn't work out? How will you handle it if this project fails? What if this person doesn't text you back?
It's not being negative; it's being prepared. And when you're prepared, you're not as likely to completely lose your shit when things don't go according to plan.
Don't Force Sync on Async Processes
Here's where most of us screw up: we try to force synchronous results from naturally asynchronous processes. In programming, this creates deadlocks and performance issues. In life, it creates suffering.
Demanding immediate results from slow processes like character growth, career advancement, or building meaningful relationships is like trying to make a database query finish faster by clicking refresh a thousand times. It doesn't help, it just makes everything worse.
We get so anxious for results that we don't do the proper work. We don't trust the process. We don't measure things correctly or break down our goals into manageable pieces. Some things simply take time, and your job is the input, not controlling the timeline.
Learning guitar? You're not going to sound like Hendrix after a week, no matter how much you practice. Building a business? It's not happening overnight, despite what those Instagram ads promise. Getting in shape? Your abs aren't going to magically appear after three days of sit-ups.
The Power of Background Processing
When you embrace the async approach to life, something interesting happens. You stop putting all your emotional energy into one single outcome. You start running multiple processes in the background.
You're learning a skill AND networking AND working on your health AND maintaining relationships. None of them are blocking each other. If one hits a snag, the others keep running. If one takes longer than expected, you're not just sitting there waiting – you're making progress on other fronts.
This doesn't mean being scattered or unfocused. It means being smart about where you invest your mental resources. You do the work that's required for each goal, then you let the background processes run while you focus on what's immediately in front of you.
Making It Practical
So how do you actually apply this async mindset to your goals? Here's what's worked for me:
Set up your background processes. Identify the key areas where you want to see growth: career, health, relationships, skills, whatever. Set up consistent, daily actions for each one. Then let them run in the background while you focus on today's tasks.
Build in your exception handling. For every major goal, think through what could go wrong and how you'd handle it. Not to be pessimistic, but to be prepared. When setbacks happen (and they will), you won't be caught off guard.
Stop blocking on single outcomes. If you're waiting to hear back about a job, don't put your entire life on pause. Keep applying elsewhere. Keep developing skills. Keep your other processes running.
Measure progress asynchronously. Check in on your long-term goals regularly, but not obsessively. Maybe once a week or once a month, depending on the goal. Daily checking just creates anxiety without adding value.
Trust the process. This is the hardest part. You have to believe that consistent input will eventually lead to the output you want, even if you can't see it happening in real-time.
The Elegant Solution
The most elegant code, and the most peaceful life, comes from trusting asynchronous processes. You do the work, you handle exceptions gracefully, and you let the background processes run their course.
It's being process-oriented instead of results-oriented, expecting that results will come over time. Some things take longer than others. What we can't do is try to force things or add unnecessary blockers that actually slow everything down or send us in the wrong direction.
At the end of the day, you're the architect of your own system. You can design it to be elegant and efficient, or you can create a mess of blocking operations and deadlocks. The choice is yours.
Your goals are running in the background right now. Trust the process, handle the exceptions, and keep your main thread free to focus on what's actually in front of you today.
Quote of the Day:
"Confine yourself to the present." - Marcus Aurelius
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