For a period of time, long before I was born, my dad was a short-order cook. He worked the breakfast grill, cooking up mountains of pancakes, rivers of bacon strips and more eggs than is possible to count. Because of this experience, he is a master at the art of cooking eggs, be it soft boiled, hard boiled, poached, sunny side up or even over easy, hold the wiggle (a term that describes that perfect point at which the whites are just cooked and the yolks are still beautifully runny). I credit his egg mastery to my own egg-cooking ease. It never occurred to me to feel anxiety around the preparation of poached eggs, I've been making them on my own since I was 9 years old. I didn't realize that some people held to strict hard boiled egg routines, I just put them in the pot and go. They always turn out perfectly fine.
For those of you who need a bit more guidance than, "just boil until it feels right," Cooking for Engineers has put together a thorough soft boiled egg chart and tutorial for you. Michael Chu cooked up a whole bunch of eggs, removing them from the pan at 1 minute intervals, so you can see how a two minute egg looks different from a seven minute egg. Pick your egg preference, set your timers and enjoy!
Many an egg has been discarded after an unsuccessful poaching attempt. The eggs cook, but even after following every trick you've heard about adding vinegar, swirling the water around and using various cups to drop the egg in exactly the right place, eggs still manage to come out looking less than perfect. Using an egg poacher will help you get cleaner shape, with no tendrils of egg white snaking off into the water, but using a 
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