Hi everyone,
I'm a 27M mechanical engineering grad from about a year ago. I've been in my current job for 6 months as an assistant to the general foreman on a construction site. It pays decently for a junior role, the commute is short, and I live below my means with my girlfriend in an apartment with a paid-off car.
The problem is: the job is incredibly boring. Low-IQ, repetitive tasks. I'm not learning anything meaningful, and it's starting to drain my energy even outside work. Every day I catch myself thinking about how the next day, week, and month will be exactly the same and it's slowly sucking the life out of me.
For the last 2 years I've been trying to start something on my own. After reading TMF , I realized most of my previous "business ideas" ignored the CENTS commandments, particularly the Entry and Need. I was mostly chasing money instead of solving real problems for people.
A few months ago I joined the forum and decided to build a small SaaS as a side project. It's still at MVP stage with zero customers. I know AI is making SaaS ideas riskier in terms of entry barriers, but I figured doing something was better than staying paralyzed.
What’s really draining me is that I’m just selling my time again. I realized I hated trading time for money back in university, but I still finished my degree. Now here I am.
I’m currently looking for another job, but most openings feel like they’ll be the same kind of boring. Even though I have a good academic background in mechanical design and automation, I have low real-world experience, so it’s not obvious to me what problems are worth solving or what people would actually pay for.
My goal is to find a real problem I can solve — whether it’s an existing pain point I can make significantly better, a gap in the market, or something people already pay for but could be improved. I just don’t see any clear opportunity yet.
I’m a hard worker and I have no problem putting in the hours. I just don’t want to keep selling my life hour by hour doing something that feels meaningless.
Has anyone here been in a similar spot, like stucked in a decent-paying but soul-crushing job, wanting to build a real Fastlane business, but feeling lost on what problem to solve or how to spot a good market gap (like getting a solution that already exist, better)?
Even with my background in mechanical design and automation, I feel like my low real-world experience makes it hard to see what’s painful enough for people to pay for or how I could improve on existing solutions, so that is an exposition a job gives me.
I’m not sure whether I should stay in this job longer, switch to a role closer to my field for better exposure, or approach this differently.
I would really appreciate any advice or perspectives from people who’ve been through this stage, maybe I am overlooking something !
Thanks in advance !
I'm a 27M mechanical engineering grad from about a year ago. I've been in my current job for 6 months as an assistant to the general foreman on a construction site. It pays decently for a junior role, the commute is short, and I live below my means with my girlfriend in an apartment with a paid-off car.
The problem is: the job is incredibly boring. Low-IQ, repetitive tasks. I'm not learning anything meaningful, and it's starting to drain my energy even outside work. Every day I catch myself thinking about how the next day, week, and month will be exactly the same and it's slowly sucking the life out of me.
For the last 2 years I've been trying to start something on my own. After reading TMF , I realized most of my previous "business ideas" ignored the CENTS commandments, particularly the Entry and Need. I was mostly chasing money instead of solving real problems for people.
A few months ago I joined the forum and decided to build a small SaaS as a side project. It's still at MVP stage with zero customers. I know AI is making SaaS ideas riskier in terms of entry barriers, but I figured doing something was better than staying paralyzed.
What’s really draining me is that I’m just selling my time again. I realized I hated trading time for money back in university, but I still finished my degree. Now here I am.
I’m currently looking for another job, but most openings feel like they’ll be the same kind of boring. Even though I have a good academic background in mechanical design and automation, I have low real-world experience, so it’s not obvious to me what problems are worth solving or what people would actually pay for.
My goal is to find a real problem I can solve — whether it’s an existing pain point I can make significantly better, a gap in the market, or something people already pay for but could be improved. I just don’t see any clear opportunity yet.
I’m a hard worker and I have no problem putting in the hours. I just don’t want to keep selling my life hour by hour doing something that feels meaningless.
Has anyone here been in a similar spot, like stucked in a decent-paying but soul-crushing job, wanting to build a real Fastlane business, but feeling lost on what problem to solve or how to spot a good market gap (like getting a solution that already exist, better)?
Even with my background in mechanical design and automation, I feel like my low real-world experience makes it hard to see what’s painful enough for people to pay for or how I could improve on existing solutions, so that is an exposition a job gives me.
I’m not sure whether I should stay in this job longer, switch to a role closer to my field for better exposure, or approach this differently.
I would really appreciate any advice or perspectives from people who’ve been through this stage, maybe I am overlooking something !
Thanks in advance !
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