21–30 of 308 posts
do you really think your subconscious is capable of changing when this is the scenario it is presented with?
you say you're "pretty smart", i would say "you're just smart enough to get away with it."
start a company. force yourself into uncomfortable situations.
Of course, the bad part is that the working system forces everyone into the same bucket. You're probably only going to find happiness by getting outside of that system and building your own business where you can set your own work schedule.
I tend to get motivated by those crappy History/Discovery shows (especially the horrible Gold Rush Alaska). Binge watching that show helped me to get through a project that got too big and too boring.
I had the same problem. The standard school program was easy enough to just coast through, as were my first few jobs. At one point I was working on Monday and goofing off the rest of the week. What changed it? Probably some of it was age. Your outlook on life and what's important changes as you get older. I spent a fair bit of time talking to people 10, 20, 30, and 40 years older than me, and while I usually didn't a…
You're 21. Want to play more sports? Play them. You haven't even reached your physical peak. What, did you want to be a quarterback in the Super Bowl and it's not worth playing sports unless you are? Welcome back to 99.99999% disappointment.
You think that your procrastination and intelligence are unrelated. You think you're horrible on the inside, but you "get away with it" because you're smart. This is nonsense. You are bored. Maybe you didn't do the shit that was assigned to you in high school, but the SATs are not a genetics test. You learned it somewhere.
Don't feel guilty about the money you make. Don't think that you're a hamster on a wheel and you're worth nothing unless you're going at 100% speed. If your job doesn't give you enough work to interest you, be proactive and find some inefficiencies that need fixing. Fix them. Don't wait for someone to tell you to do it. After you fix it, tell everyone. If there isn't anything to fix, get a new job. And... to go against the grain of HN, consider a large company, one that has endless problems and technical debt. If you aren't happy in your own skin, working on a startup to change the world is probably not the best thing.
Also, seriously consider going to a therapist to discuss your issues. I hear that you can afford it. You're basically asking the internet to be your therapist. And the internet is not qualified (on average).
http://web.archive.org/web/20091019051014/http://pmarca-arch...
I typically write down one simple goal each day for whatever project I'm working on. Something that is easy to knock out, but meaningful. Day after day of tearing up index cards of simple goals, and sooner than later you've accomplished a lot while not worrying so much about drowning in the grand scheme of things (I typically get overwhelmed / overloaded by having too many things that need to get done).