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You are not 'behind'

zackkanter.com

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Re: You are not 'behind'

#31

Post by rdiddly »

insertnickname wrote: post #5

For the love God, why is the opacity set to 0 on the text? So that JS can be used to fade in the text... Why would you do this? You're just annoying people who do have JS enabled with annoying animations and barring people who don't have JS enabled from reading your content. It's not even that JS is used to dynamically fetch the content, all the content is right there in the HTML, it's just deliberately hidden with C…

Aha, so that's why mine was totally blank (the text never appeared). I had to turn off my ad blocker to read it.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#32

Post by wwweston »

Macha wrote: post #11
insertnickname wrote: post #5

For the love God, why is the opacity set to 0 on the text? So that JS can be used to fade in the text... Why would you do this? You're just annoying people who do have JS enabled with annoying animations and barring people who don't have JS enabled from reading your content. It's not even that JS is used to dynamically fetch the content, all the content is right there in the HTML, it's just deliberately hidden with C…

There's a school of design thought that the FOUT (flash of unstyled text) is worse than delayed text loading so they hide the text and reveal it once the web font is loaded). Browsers even put in a default delay before using the fallback font to appease this point of view, but hacks to enforce it even on slow connections still exist from time to time. https://www.paulirish.com/2009/fighting-the-font-face-fout/ (Perso…

I don't think of it as insanity so much as a kindness -- they're generously signaling up front that they consider their content less valuable than their font choices.

This helps me value the content accordingly.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#33

Post by bluejekyll »

jblow wrote: post #23

The article as a whole is nonsensical. It is a little bit correct when it says that regret is not a useful reaction to a past you're unhappy with, but even that by itself is misleading. Regret is a useful emotion that helps you shape future actions. What is not useful is paralyzing regret, or any flavor of regret that keeps you wallowing in the past. When he says "you are not behind", that is mostly wrong. If you're…

> Being complacent and saying it's fine, I am only 25, no wait 26, no wait 27 until you are 40 isn't going to help either.

I don't think I read it that way. There are many reasons why someone was not able to or capable of doing something at age 25; finances, experience, whatever. Maybe you just didn't discover the thing you were passionate enough to follow. Maybe you had to care for an ailing family member for 10-15 years, should they not still not follow their own path?

The age at which you discover passion is irrespective of deciding to follow it. And you act like 40 is the end of the road, when in fact for many 40 is just the beginning of when they are financially secure enough to strike out on their own.

People should stop focusing so much on age, and if there was any good message in this article, that's it. Forget about what you haven't done, stop comparing yourself to others, and follow your own path.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#34

Post by aaron-lebo »

bluejekyll wrote: post #33
jblow wrote: post #23

The article as a whole is nonsensical. It is a little bit correct when it says that regret is not a useful reaction to a past you're unhappy with, but even that by itself is misleading. Regret is a useful emotion that helps you shape future actions. What is not useful is paralyzing regret, or any flavor of regret that keeps you wallowing in the past. When he says "you are not behind", that is mostly wrong. If you're…

> Being complacent and saying it's fine, I am only 25, no wait 26, no wait 27 until you are 40 isn't going to help either. I don't think I read it that way. There are many reasons why someone was not able to or capable of doing something at age 25; finances, experience, whatever. Maybe you just didn't discover the thing you were passionate enough to follow. Maybe you had to care for an ailing family member for 10-15…

Tesla was digging ditches for competitors at 27. Was digging ditches a waste of his talent? Yes. Would he have been capable of giving his name to a car company without that experience? How would we know?

(In comparison, fellow eccentric Howard Hughes had his entire public career - aviation records, hit movies, plane designs, business moves, social life, by the same age Musk is now).

Re: You are not 'behind'

#36

Post by rdiddly »

Almost right. I would say that telling yourself you're behind, and telling yourself you're right where you're intended to be, are both flavors of the same thing, which is telling yourself a story about the truth. You don't need the story, you only need the bare minimalist truth itself. You did what you did. You didn't do what you didn't do. Now pick another thing and do it. When it's done you can tackle the next one.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#37

Post by nxc18 »

jondubois wrote: post #8

For the past 10 years, I only spent about 4 to 8 hours per week on entertainment - All the rest of my time was divided between work and sleep (I only sleep 5 hours per day on weekdays). Financially, I have nothing to show for it unfortunately so I really feel like I'm behind and that I've missed the boat on many things. What makes it particularly difficult is that I was working really hard the whole time - When I rea…

If your worried about money, is suggest getting a job at a decent company (reading between the lines it sounds like you've put your time in ventures) and having a financial plan. A small dose of austerity and planning can make you a millionaire in a short time, with relatively little risk. It won't be more money than you know what to do with, but you'll be comfortable enough to retire and then be as lazy as you want. Or you'll have the financial security to pursue a venture comfortably.

The great thing about living frugally is you can actually have a great lifestyle while doing it. For example, I could re-create a fancy $10 breakfast sandwich from a local coffee shop in 10 minutes and for less than $1 per sandwich. You can eat like a king for a fraction of what eating out costs, and you'll probably get better quality.

If you're in the bay area, you should probably get out unless you're being paid enough to make it worth it (most aren't).

In ten years you can have far more security, money, and free time than the average person can even think of. And its really not that hard. For a techie, living paycheck to paycheck is very much a choice.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#38

Post by nxsynonym »

jblow wrote: post #23

The article as a whole is nonsensical. It is a little bit correct when it says that regret is not a useful reaction to a past you're unhappy with, but even that by itself is misleading. Regret is a useful emotion that helps you shape future actions. What is not useful is paralyzing regret, or any flavor of regret that keeps you wallowing in the past. When he says "you are not behind", that is mostly wrong. If you're…

>>If you're 25 and aren't yet doing anything individual and attemptedly groundbreaking with your life, you probably are behind, if that kind of thing is your goal.

I think this is the biggest take away. Feeling "behind" is always relative your goal. The feeling is also influenced by a "success bias" in which the examples/role models you see or hear about are the successful ones. Yes, compared to where Bill Gates was at your same age you're probably behind - but what about the other countless number of people your age with similar goals? How do you stack up to them? That should be your real metric rather than the 1 in a million success stories.

I agree in that regret is a useful emotion. But only as, as you said, a tool for evaluation and recalculation. Personally I believe it is better to make decisions based on asking your self "if I do/don't do x, will I be closer or further from my goals?" rather than making decisions based on "oh man if I only did x or y 10 years ago I would be where I want to be".

I think it can nicely be summed up with: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

also - I know it's become a bit of a meme at this point, but "pivoting" or changing your goals isn't as bad of a thing as people make it out to be. I don't find there is anything wrong with re-evaluating and changing future goals based on progress and failure. I find it's better to change your goal based on a previous failure rather than give up completely or become stuck in the paralyzing regret phase.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#39

Post by jblow »

nxsynonym wrote: post #38
jblow wrote: post #23

The article as a whole is nonsensical. It is a little bit correct when it says that regret is not a useful reaction to a past you're unhappy with, but even that by itself is misleading. Regret is a useful emotion that helps you shape future actions. What is not useful is paralyzing regret, or any flavor of regret that keeps you wallowing in the past. When he says "you are not behind", that is mostly wrong. If you're…

>>If you're 25 and aren't yet doing anything individual and attemptedly groundbreaking with your life, you probably are behind, if that kind of thing is your goal. I think this is the biggest take away. Feeling "behind" is always relative your goal. The feeling is also influenced by a "success bias" in which the examples/role models you see or hear about are the successful ones. Yes, compared to where Bill Gates was…

> but what about the other countless number of people your age with similar goals? How do you stack up to them? That should be your real metric rather than the 1 in a million success stories.

I disagree with that. Most people are not successful, so if your target is the average, you are aiming at a data point that represents lack of success. It is important to understand that most successful people are not normal, and the higher the level of success, the less normal they are.

> "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

Totally.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#40

Post by CM30 »

It's probably also worth noting that a lot of these stories of teen geniuses and young billionaires and what not are ones you're hearing about because they're noteworthy and unusual. That's what gets them media coverage, what inspires people to constantly discuss them on social media and why so many people are discussing them in general.

Most people won't end up in that situation (as a prodigy who'll change the world before they're 30), and that's perfectly fine. Go ahead and put in more effort if you think you're not doing as well as you could be, but also remember that one in a billion success stories are outliers rather than the norm. Remember that what's in the news is there because it's unusual. Man bites dog stories are obviously going to be more common than the other way around, despite the other one being a few thousand times more likely.

TLDR: Don't compare yourself to extreme outliers, at least if you don't want to feel like a complete failure.

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