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Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

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Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#191

Post by bckr »

kixxauth wrote: post #96

My advice is to not focus. At least not yet. I'm in the 40-45 year old range and assuming you are much younger. Apologies if we are closer in age, since this advice will carry less value. I have often been envious of people who were more focused than I am. I feel they have been able to make more progress in a given amount of time. I worked as a mover in Boston into my mid twenties, spent a bunch of time trying to bec…

To add a scientific perspective here, there is a study on "hot streaks", periods of continuous success in a person's life. The main conclusion? Trying a bunch of different things is what leads to a hot streak. Focus comes after the start of the hot streak, in other words after success has been found.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25477-8

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#192

Post by the_jesus_villa »

Don't find your talents, cultivate your skills. You likely will never just "find 1 thing you are really good at", but if you find something that's worth getting good at and stick with it even though you suck, eventually you will become good at it.

That's my approach, anyway!

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#193

Post by Apocryphon »

bradlys wrote: post #159
grepLeigh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD is the inability to regulate attention. There are a couple ways this presents: 1) Hyperfocus for hours at a time, often forgetting about physical needs like food/drink/bathroom. 2) Extreme trouble getting started on a task (inability to overcome inertia) and constant distraction once started. 3) Switching hobbies, jobs, roles, spouses, etc because the initial stimulation of something new is more rewarding than o…

The first two sound like ADHD but the third doesn’t at all. That sounds like most people in the world. Everyone complains of the mundane, the same things, day in day out. We don’t hear “I love how nothing has ever changed in my life”. I’ve yet to hear someone describe ADHD in the third way and this thread is the only time I’ve seen folks ever mention it.

3) can just be rephrased to mean continuous novelty-seeking or stimulation chasing. The way it was worded in the post does seem a little dramatic.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#194

Post by Apocryphon »

algoatecorn wrote: post #155
photochemsyn wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD is at best greatly overdiagnosed, and the business of providing ADHD diagnoses is quite analagous to the opiate pain pill clinic debacle, in which 'physicians' got kickbacks from the industry for providing opiate prescriptions. With ADHD, it's 'the medication' that is being sold. Often, the doctor's client is actually the amphetamine derivative supplier, and the product being sold (on a commission basis) is the…

I hope this viewpoint becomes a bit more accepted. The human brain is so complex and we love to put ideas in little boxes, hence the term ADHD. In X number of decades, there's a very good chance we will all look back and realize how dead wrong we were about ADHD, attention, and our extremely crude methods of "curing" it. It blows my mind that especially in American society we are so accepting of putting millions of p…

Surely there are other treatments for ADHD beyond the simple pharmaceutical cures, and it would be salutary to diagnose people so they can try those strategies and get the help they need.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#195

Post by dashmeet »

herdyderdy wrote: post #182
hirvi74 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize if my response is kind of all over the place. I am somewhat of rush this morning, but I wanted to throw my hat into the ring. To contrast the other user who replied, I have been on stimulants for 8 years now. I will say that there is a very notable drop in efficacy. Not enough to justify stopping them all together, but I'd say I get about 50% of the benefit on my best days. I would consider my current exp…

Thank you very much for your perspective. This is useful to know. I've basically found some methods to cope with my weird attention issues but since my methods are so unusual and essential for me to be focused it makes it difficult to work with others or keep up my own self-motivation. I was wondering if there was a magic pill to solve some of these problems, but you've cleared up that it's a double-edged sword.

Would you be willing to share your coping mechanisms? Or is there a way I could reach out and ask?

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#198

Post by Mockapapella »

baxtr wrote: post #143
kixxauth wrote: post #96

My advice is to not focus. At least not yet. I'm in the 40-45 year old range and assuming you are much younger. Apologies if we are closer in age, since this advice will carry less value. I have often been envious of people who were more focused than I am. I feel they have been able to make more progress in a given amount of time. I worked as a mover in Boston into my mid twenties, spent a bunch of time trying to bec…

Oh man. Thanks for sharing. This text could be coming from me. I also struggle with myself for not having a clear focus. I am interested in a wide range of topics. I also wanna start my company. But I wonder: Will I ever stick? Will I have the grit and the passion to pursue one topic for the next 5-7 years. What's your thinking on this? Btw, they call us "multipotentialites"...

I've had those thoughts in the past. I would do a trial run of something with much less importance t o prove to myself that I could commit to something for a long-ish time. For example, one time I used the Borderlands 3 story line as a benchmark. If I could sit through that entire story line (something I hadn't done with any game in many many years), then I would have some modicum of confidence that I could stick to something more important.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#199

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

the_jesus_villa wrote: post #192

Don't find your talents, cultivate your skills. You likely will never just "find 1 thing you are really good at", but if you find something that's worth getting good at and stick with it even though you suck, eventually you will become good at it. That's my approach, anyway!

It's important to focus on WHERE you want to cultivate your skills.

You're probably not naturally good at anything in any meaningful sense.

You're going to have to work hard to be good (in a meaningful sense) at anything worth being good at.

So what things do you enjoy cultivating your skills?

If you don't enjoy practicing guitar - you're never going to be a guitar virtuoso - because you're never going to want to pick up your guitar and practice.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#200

Post by lnwlebjel »

jstrebel wrote: post #60
kthejoker2 wrote: post #38

Separate comment: this question is framed with a fixed mindset and an unhealthy sense of what self-discovery is.l You "are" "good at" nothing. You are not a block of marble with David inside, something to be chipped away at until it is apparent for all to see. You are a ball of clay, malleable, reshapable and shapeless, fluid and formed, able to absorb new bits and grow into something wildly different, day by day if…

That is a blatantly false answer. Of course, there is an ongoing debate about nature vs. nurture, which means that the genetic makeup of the individual strongly influences the individual's life. Look at musicality, look at sociopathy, look at general intelligence - all areas where genes exert their influence (as an example). So yes, you can try to grow around your talents, and develop strengths there. But by the same…

Your response carries much too much confidence. There is no debate any longer - the story is pretty well worked out [1][2]. Nature only gets you so far. See for example how much top pro golfers practice (or musicians, or whatever ..). (Not that it matters but I learned this late in life and was able to apply the knowledge to make it near the top of my admittedly very narrow field). Sure, at the top 0.1%, maybe even 1%, your nature really matters, but you still need to practice.

You, meaning anyone, could probably practice hard and join the upper x% of just about anything (setting aside things like the NBA that overvalue nature). What x is, well that is subject to debate. So is the source of motivation, and that is almost the most important thing.

[1] Peak, by K. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool [2] talent code, by Daniel Coyle

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