Ask HN: Please, help me understand what I am doing wrong.

Why would you quit eating fruit, or "carbs?"

I totally sympathize with you. Does this sound like you "You can't make any decisions because you don't know what you want. And you don't know what you want because you don't know who you are. And you don't know who you are because you're allowed to be anyone you want." What you are experiencing is called a quarter life crisis (this is great read http://www.eyeweekly.com/article/55882).

I had the exact same feeling, at the exact same age, it might have even been at the exact same time of the year. So what did i do about it? I went to Culinary School, i needed to prove to myself that i could actually accomplish something i set my mind too. Cooking is perfect for that, i'm not talking about working from a recipe, i am talking about creating your own recipe, having your own idea for what will taste good together. The parallels between recipes and businesses are amazing. You start off with a concept/idea, you begin to do research (this is usually where people get stuck in business), you actually do something and finally you see if your initial idea was successful. In cooking the definition of success is clear, either your food tastes like shit or it doesn't. In business the definition of success is a little more convoluted but if you look at success from a monetization perspective then its either making you money or not.

So what does culinary school have to do with feeling like shit? Accomplishing something makes you feel great, it builds your confidence especially within a group of peers. Not everyday will be your shining moment but once-in-a-while you will be better then everybody else and you will understand success. From that point onwards you will continue to drive towards that feeling because you know understand what it tastes like.

What can you do? 1. Find something like culinary school. Not a business idea, something else that you think you are good at but haven't really focused on. Something that has a lot of small tangible results. Things that have a lot of tangible results can equal a lot of little victories. 2. Find something where you will compete against others because if you cant measure yourself to someone else, how do you know you have succeeded. 3. Don't worry about commitment, when you start succeeding all the rest of the stuff will go away.

I hope that helps. For me my whole life changed i met my wife, i built an ego, learned how to cook like a chef and finally understood what success really felt like.

I have two suggestions. First, realize that this:

My early twenties are over, and I haven't really done anything. The idea of looking back when I'm 30 and having these same thoughts makes me literally shake with terror.

... is very much a young man's worry. I remember being tormented by thoughts like this as well. How old was so-and-so when he wrote such-and-such and all that. My experience has been that the sting goes out of this naturally as you just live your life. It's not going to be that big of a deal in the long run. So while by definition you can't stop involuntarily torturing yourself, you can at least stop freaking out about it. Seriously, it'll be ok.

The second suggestion is, when unsure what to do, consider Christopher Alexander's question: What feels more alive? The more attention you pay to that, the easier it is to get unstuck. The trick is to not prejudge the answer. Turn down the volume as best you can on the "I should be doing X" and just attend to what feels more alive. You don't even necessarily need to do anything about it; once you start to get a handle on what your soul (Edit: I need to add a third. The pain you feel about other people (e.g. on HN) doing great things is mostly an illusion that comes from making the big mistake that Hugh Macleod calls comparing your inside to somebody's outside. For heaven's sake try to stop doing that, or at least realize that it's a big mistake while you're doing it.

It's not the environment that matters, it's the change of environment. Switching things around gives you a reset button. Over a few years in a particular life circumstance, you usually learn a lot about what you want in life. But you also acquire a lot of inertia and old habits. A move, new job, and new social circle gives you a reset button that you can use to pick up a new set of habits.

Of course, it's up to you to actually press that reset button.

One of the best things I ever did with my life was to found my own company. The company failed - it just petered out and never went anywhere. But it got me off the "Java developer for a small financial firm" track, helped me learn a whole bunch of new skills, and those skills got me a job all the way across the company.

Nassim Taleb had one obvious idea that he milked for two books. I'm not sure why he's qualified to comment about anything outside of derivatives trading. (or derivatives trading, either, since his funds melted down when he was actively involved with them)