I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected • Hacker News Board

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#271

Post by taylodl » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

0815test wrote: post #72

hyperdeficit wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I relate to this and give a lot of credit to my father for teaching me work ethic that I never knew I would need at the time. School was easy and I never learned to work hard at academic work, but I sure worked hard finishing a basement, chopping wood, shoveling the driveway, and much more. I always hated doing that work, but I would see my dad just continue to power through any project no matter how difficult it got…

Being able to reach "flow" quickly when setting out to work on something is what matters, even more so than "work ethic" or "grit" alone. In the longer run, relying on the latter just sets you up for burnout and the stress of overwork; whereas the former is sustainable and even quite enjoyable. Physical activities such as shoveling snow and chopping wood are good at inducing flow, whereas it can take some effort to r…

That's a good point and brings up something I still struggle with - "flow." I'd never heard it put that way but that gives me another tool to help me up my game. Thanks!

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#272

Post by rb808 » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

jshaqaw wrote: post #36

Part of the issue here is defining what it means to “achieve”. I was a gifted child and graduated at the top of my fancy Ivy League university. Did I go on to conquer the world? No. And many days I stress and feel bad about that. But that’s mostly when I allow myself to judge myself by the external validation system of society. Society values a big bank account or fancy awards which is fine. A happy life spent with f…

I completely agree. I think a good life is balanced and not being the best for the sake of being the best.

I'm interested in Ivy League universities admissions though. From their point of view I think they want the best of the best

I wonder if they try to filter out the people who are smart but would rather enjoy life than change the world.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#273

Post by nestorherre » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

turk73 wrote: post #62

augustl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately I spent a lot of that free time playing video games. It was fun but i could've achieved way more. I'm currently beta testing a new optimization - I'm only allowed to play WoW Classic after my todo-list is done. One if the items on the todo-list is "do something productive for 30 minutes" (and currently, there's no shortage of things to fill those 30 minutes with). Maybe I can use the extreme gravitati…

You should throw out all the games. I'm serious. I never really began to succeed until I stopped playing stupid games and became a man. Now I'm managing younger guys who can't put down the controller. Last fall I had to fire someone who was clearly staying up all night playing video games and was never prepared for work nor doing an adequate job at it. Sadly, his own sense of privilege prevented him from being able t…

>You should throw out all the games. I'm serious. I never really began to succeed until I stopped playing stupid games and became a man.

I feel related to this comment and I think I know what you mean, and it's most likely that the other guys are misunderstanding you. And obviously, the guy "beta testing a new optimization to play and be productive" is having addiction issues.

What I relate to is that most of my life I just used games as a scape mechanism (of pretty much everything) and it was my default thing to do most of the day. Even when I was bored of playing, I just kept playing to pass time by and avoid doing anything worthy. I tried to leave them several times (unsuccesfully) because whenever I felt bad/sad/any negative emotion, I said to myself: "I'm just gonna play a little bit to get into a better mood", and guess what, before I knew I was all overconsumed again. At some point, I realized that if I wanted to progress in my life, I needed to go cold turkey on games, ALL KIND OF GAMES. I was mostly a PC gamer, but I know that console or phone games will drag me to the addiction again. So now I don't even consider gaming, it's completely forbidden for me (unless it's a social thing, with friends to hang out for example). I'm even considering doing the same with T.V., it's mostly wasted time.

So to sum it up, leave games all together if it doesn't help you progress in your life, can't achieve what you want to and are addicted to them; this will help you "become a man".

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#274

Post by Verdex » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

So much to unpack here.

1) Intelligence isn't linear. How could it be. Problems in the general sense are terrifying graphs of graphs with meta edges everywhere that are conditionally relevant depending on what "value" is at any given vertex. Being good at one type of problem doesn't necessarily translate into being good at another type of problem. Being gifted doesn't mean you're necessarily smarter than your peers it just means that you're better than they are at a particular type of problem that you aren't generally expected to be good at.

2) Problems get harder at an exponential rate while utility from intelligence improves at a linear rate. Example: Brain surgery is pretty hard. Fighting a gorilla is pretty hard. Now imagine trying to perform brain surgery while simultaneously fighting a gorilla.

If you are gifted as a child then you're solving problems that are harder than what your peers can solve. But as the set of problems you want to solve gets more difficult the value of your giftedness is going to be lessened.

3) Utility = effectiveness * alignment * time (more or less). Having your head in the game (alignment) can make a real difference in whether or not you're useful. Being able to commit more time can make a real difference in whether or not you're useful. And intelligence can affect effectiveness, but experience or having good mentors can also raise your effectiveness (sometimes more than intelligence can).

4) As far as I can tell, some people like to unify all of their experiences into a singular framework of understanding the world and some people like to compartmentalize their experiences into different spheres. To some extent we all do both. Unifying as a child can make you look gifted because you'll start to understand complicated topics where your peers only mimic competency (think having an algorithm that calculates outputs versus a lookup table that just gives out memorized results). However, often in the real world (tm) mimicking is more than effective enough for what people want to get done. So the compartmentalizers are completely adequate. However, the compartmentalizers also can deal with incompatible scenarios much better than the unifiers. If you try to unify the cold logic of a computer with the fuzzy interpersonal relationships of office politics, then you aren't going to be making any progress without years of studying both. However, if you can compartmentalize the two, then you can start being productive and advancing on day one. There's going to be some cap to what you can do as a compartmentalizer, but that cap is probably far above what you need for nearly all domains that most people are likely to encounter.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#275

Post by lostmsu » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

madengr wrote: post #96

bradleyjg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hypothesis that at least in the US smart people that want to continue with the same sort of “do the work you are assigned and be rewarded” become doctors. There are entrepreneurial paths in medicine but an excellent student that wants to can go from medical school to a residency, followship, and then a hospital position and earn enough to be in the 1% without ever needing to fight for it in the office politi…

That path will barely get you to 1% income, and definitely not in all areas. Just another working stiff. The Dr. who runs the LASIK place near me drives a Lambo, and he probably has 10 Drs working for him. It’s rare to strike it rich on your own labor.

He might not earn an obscene amount of money: there was an article here recently about spending habits, and doctors seemed to be the worst.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#276

Post by sanxiyn » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:44 PM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #267

sanxiyn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Being smart is good. Why wouldn't you let your kids know?

> Why? Being smart is good. Why wouldn't you let your kids know? http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/index.html tl;dr: praising them for being "smart" counterintuitively ends up discouraging them.

Of course, don't praise being smart. How is it praiseworthy? But do tell they are smart.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#277

Post by sanxiyn » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #220

sanxiyn wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say having false belief (believing oneself not to be smart, when in fact, one is smart) is more harm than good in the long run.

I answered this elsewhere, but... I think it is ideal to just exist without putting smartness on a scale. Smart is not an inherently good or bad thing IMO. It just is. What you do with "smart" matters, so we focus on doing and effort in my house, not on inherent capabilities. Also, maybe you as a person just don't want to do "smart" people jobs when you grow up? Probably you will, but if you are holding yourself to s…

Being smart is inherently good. It is ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#278

Post by sbov » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #212

peteey wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge the distinction between hard work and smart work. You cannot be smart without hard work. Amassing knowledge and mental ability requires years of effort and work. It is easier for gifted/clever people, but not inherent. gifted =/= smart

I'd read that as 'pick your battles well'. You can work hard at things and get nowhere, you can work hard at other things and make a ton of progress, and these things can sometimes be estimated beforehand. You can keep churning out spaghetti code (hopefully the uncooked kind) or you can learn and apply better methods, for example.

If you're working in a bubble self reflection is definitely important. If you have colleagues hopefully they will help you.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#279

Post by scruple » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

hestefisk wrote: post #84

bradleyjg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hypothesis that at least in the US smart people that want to continue with the same sort of “do the work you are assigned and be rewarded” become doctors. There are entrepreneurial paths in medicine but an excellent student that wants to can go from medical school to a residency, followship, and then a hospital position and earn enough to be in the 1% without ever needing to fight for it in the office politi…

As someone who is very close to two doctors, I can tell you that networking and elbows matters just about as much as any other career.

Absolutely. A couple that my wife and I are dear friends with are both in the medical profession. Nuclear medicine and pediatrics. They spent the first 8 years of their careers in NYC, establishing themselves / their careers. He's now in SoCal and she's in NorCal. They have 2 kids. They anticipate that they'll be split up for a couple of years in this manner because of their work situations. He's flying back and forth to be with his family. He's tried to get positions near their new home but he's either over-qualified or he's not getting bites.

They have to play networking and social games with their careers to a level that is well and truly beyond anything my wife and I have ever had to deal with as software engineers.

My wife and I have board game nights and that qualifies as networking. We're playing board games with folks from FAANG companies, triple A video game developers, interesting start-ups, etc... who I've met through this group. Our friends in the medical profession can't get away with something like that.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#280

Post by cheez » Fri, May 31, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

dm3 wrote: post #158

cheez wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is possible to push it too far the other way. The immigrant culture that pushes academics very hard simply needs to be amended to add on the part of life that is fun. I pushed my kids hard, encouraged them to have fun and enjoy life, and now they do that on their own. They make their own goals, set out plans to achieve them, getting parental help along the way, but also encouraged them to have fun. For example…

Do you mind giving an example or two of how you push or pushed your kids in a positive way?

I didn't say I pushed them in a positive way :) Sometimes they need their heads pounded figuratively.

But generally, I talk to them about their goals and ask them if they really want them. Usually the answer is yes.

Then I say something like "Are you willing to give up some play time with fortnite (or equivalent)" to achieve your goal? Usually the answer is yes.

Then I ask them how they will know they are getting closer to their goals. Usually they'll say something that makes no sense (because they're kids) and so we'll google characteristics of getting towards said goal.

Then I'll ask them what do they think they should do on a weekly basis so that in 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, they will be at the level they should be in that time. They usually have a good answer based on aforementioned googling.

Then I ask them when they plan to make the time for this. Usually they have a good answer for this since they manage their own schedule.

Then, my job is just to remind them if they forget and if they are not keeping up, ask them if their goals have changed or why they are not keeping up with their plans. This is the part where sometimes I need to pound them on their heads figuratively.