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You are not 'behind'

zackkanter.com

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Re: You are not 'behind'

#111

Post by subwayclub »

corey_moncure wrote: post #89
foobarbecue wrote: post #19

Reading this made me realize that my regret usually targets the previous hours or day. Generally, if I look at the last month or year or decade, I'm impressed with what I've accomplished. And yet I'm always disappointed with my immediate past. I think this short-term regret may be the reaction mass I'm igniting to propel me forward. To borrow a phrase from finnthehuman above, this short-term regret is the fire lit un…

I didn't have any regrets until I sat and watched cryptocoin for 6 years and did nothing about it.

I have the corresponding regret of wishing I got in six years ago instead of four years ago. Not that I'm doing bad now, by any means. It's just a relative success kind of thing.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#112

Post by WalterSear »

ruleabidinguser wrote: post #77
jaggederest wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've felt like this my entire life. Turns out for me that it is a symptom of (undiagnosed) ADHD - an execution problem, not a motivational problem. Having gotten that diagnosed, it's a very significant change in my life. To be cliche, the first day of the rest of my life. For many people, "trying to bend their personality into the shape [they] want it to be" is fruitless, totally counterproductive. The first thing I…

What reason is there to think ADHD is just nice words for failure?

A huge body of scientific evidence.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#113

Post by neuland »

songzme wrote: post #110

In April I left google to teach people how to code. I teach for free and I focus primarily on low income adults who are making less than 30k / year in the bay area. Throughout their lives, my students have felt that they were 'behind' and they are not good enough. This mindset creates adults with low self esteem, which then prevents them from learning. Many times, they nod their head in understanding when they really…

> The ones who are slower will teach the next batch of students

Could you expand on the reasoning behind this?

Presumably, they are not teaching material that they are still struggling with. Are they teaching the previous material, which they have understood?

If you are having students teach each other, I would have thought that quicker-to-learn students would be better candidates to teach the material.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#114

Post by subwayclub »

tastyface wrote: post #44
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…

Oh man, I wish I knew how to better deal with that paralyzing regret . I'm turning 29 in a few months, and I've been spending the last ~5 years almost entirely trying (and usually failing) to work on major personal projects, solo. Sometimes I tally up all the months where I effectively did nothing and gape in horror. Usually I'm fine, but on some days, after seeing all the 25-year-old creators peddling their incredib…

I recognize a lot of myself from a few years ago in that (and I'm 32) and the main things that changed me in no particular order were:

* Adopting a more deliberately Stoicism-inspired philosophy - whether or not I'm succeeding at my goal there will be another struggle waiting after that, so there isn't really an endpoint here other than my death or permanent incapacity. * Buying into feedback loops over goal-and-achievement systems. Feedback is more important to doing good work than any other thing - if you don't have it then you don't know if it's any good. But also, it's easy to miss what forms of feedback are available and sometimes it's as simple as critically thinking about whether or not an expected result happened(e.g. write software, add a feature: did it actually do what you expected?) * Got a lot of money. I did this through crypto. I had no expectations about it, it was just a way of putting another iron in the fire. The amount of physical effort put in was, of course, clicking a few buttons, typing a few passwords. But the mental/emotional effort of "why bother" and "why study this" - that is why you aren't seeing everyone on the street talk about it(yet). I had to make a firm decision to get in for anything to happen. And there's a lot of random chance to that, just as with my game projects, which have hardly gone anywhere in years of trying. And now that I have the money my mind is rearranging things so that I will further devalue my work on games in a monetary sense.

A lot of "striver porn" - worrying about productivity and getting ahead and making Right Decisions - stops making sense post-success. If you end up with the success, great, but I wouldn't try to impose a narrative arc on it. The actual factors involved are just mindboggling. The feedback loops, on the other hand, those are something you can improve from nearly any life status. And they tend to vastly differ from productivity tropes because they're about optimizing a whole cross-section of life, not just quantifiable output. E.g. if you do less but your stress level is lower, do you end up ahead on health later?

Re: You are not 'behind'

#115

Post by coldtea »

closeparen wrote: post #98
coldtea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes it particularly difficult is that I was working really hard the whole time If working hard made a difference by itself, tons of minimum wage workers will be rich by now... > In retrospect, being lazy isn't too bad. Money isn't everything, especially "success" in the BS way the US rat race defines it. You don't need millions, heck not even one million. 99% of the world, and most of the US live their liveσ…

You probably need at least one million to avoid poverty conditions in retirement.

Or you know, a country with actual pension plans, like most of Western Europe at least.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#116

Post by pitaj »

neuland wrote: post #113
songzme wrote: post #110

In April I left google to teach people how to code. I teach for free and I focus primarily on low income adults who are making less than 30k / year in the bay area. Throughout their lives, my students have felt that they were 'behind' and they are not good enough. This mindset creates adults with low self esteem, which then prevents them from learning. Many times, they nod their head in understanding when they really…

> The ones who are slower will teach the next batch of students Could you expand on the reasoning behind this? Presumably, they are not teaching material that they are still struggling with. Are they teaching the previous material, which they have understood? If you are having students teach each other, I would have thought that quicker-to-learn students would be better candidates to teach the material.

The best teachers are the ones who had to learn the most. People who just "get it" are bad teachers because they didn't have to go through a process to understand.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#118

Post by mooreds »

bluker wrote: post #97

I love this story about Charlie Munger which can be found here: https://www.joshuakennon.com/if-charlie-munger-didnt-quit-wh... In the past five years, I've started and sold a company. Bought a house on a golf course, purchased expensive foreign cars and went on insane trips all over the world. Last year, my wife woke up one morning and told me that she no longer wanted to be married (that's a story for another time)…

Nice perspective from Gary V. Thanks for sharing.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#119

Post by closeparen »

coldtea wrote: post #115
closeparen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably need at least one million to avoid poverty conditions in retirement.

Or you know, a country with actual pension plans, like most of Western Europe at least.

Oh, plenty of people have government pensions. It's just that when city & state governments made those promises, they were lying. It is the will of the people of Illinois, for example, not to pay retired government workers what they're owed, and we'll see that enacted shortly. Social Security will similarly implode when the total needs of Boomers surpass the total income-producing capability of Millenials in the next couple of decades.

Having a pension is not in any way, shape, or form an excuse to not have private retirement savings. Other people can and do routinely decide to render pensions worthless, and there's nothing you can do about it.

If you aren't the sole signer on the account where it's held, the money isn't yours. If anyone has the ability to pilfer it for their own purposes, they will, and you should act accordingly.

Accepting a pension in lieu of additional income is a staggeringly bad idea that no one should ever under any circumstances dream of considering. You wouldn't accept salary in a way that can be retroactively withdrawn, you shouldn't accept retirement savings that way either. As long as we live in a world where Republicans are allowed to exist, trusting a government to pay you is phenomenally stupid.

It's extremely good news that the US has mostly discarded the idea of giving out pensions.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#120

Post by neuland »

pitaj wrote: post #116
neuland wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ones who are slower will teach the next batch of students Could you expand on the reasoning behind this? Presumably, they are not teaching material that they are still struggling with. Are they teaching the previous material, which they have understood? If you are having students teach each other, I would have thought that quicker-to-learn students would be better candidates to teach the material.

The best teachers are the ones who had to learn the most. People who just "get it" are bad teachers because they didn't have to go through a process to understand.

That's an interesting observation. This hasn't been my experience. I think it may partially also just be misunderstanding, though. There are obviously more than just 2 groups of students: those that get it with no studying and those that struggle with the material.

I'll agree with you that the top part of the distribution that "just get it" are not going to be the best teachers. But, I doubt the bottom portion are either. Rather, students in the middle, who struggled to understand the material, but ultimately came to a good understanding are the best group.

Granted, I'm just speculating and leaning on my own experiences. So, I really am interested to hear otherwise.

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