You Are Your Own Worst Enemy - thoughts on ego protection and self-sabotage

That's why we on HN say: 'Build it and ship it'. Everything else is 'could have, should have' noise.

I disagree with the author. Handicaps are real, very real, they are not mere excuses to protect our sense of self-worth. If anything, what the handicapped/troubled person desires is to lift and be free his burden - and not to use it to fail repeatedly.

Apart from that, yes subconscious fear of failing, of being not good enough, can paralyze you and demolish your productivity. You spend time searching for that perfect design, then you stumble upon someone's else work, feel inferior/get jealous - go back to the drawing board, and your project gets never completed, not even halfway done. You can never be perfect enough.

So, striving for perfection is not a good ally, striving for providing solutions is.

But please keep real problems/issues out of that, you don't have the right to insult troubled people and call them under performers, and diminish their burdens to "excuses for failure".

"We all tend to overestimate the situational factors in our failures and overestimate the individual factors in our successes."

I recall reading somewhere that attribution of the factors differed by culture, with the people in the US generally blaming themselves for what happens in their life, and Europeans tending more toward external factors. Unfortunately I couldn't find the source, so take it with a grain of salt.

Very interesting read. I have to admit that I have been guilty of this self handicaping on more than one occasion. The self illusion of being able to achieve great things if you just put in the time is very difficult to overcome. To me I believe that the difficulty comes from a mix of complacence & fear of discomfort.

One thing that still bugs me to this day, is why this types of issues seem to be more prevalent in the software industry than anywhere else. Has anyone have an idea as to why this is?

Regarding eating seconds as a self-destructive act is short-sighted. The same man can both eat seconds and not be or look "like a pig", i.e. overweight, He just needs to exercise.