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Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

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Re: Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

#31
I have a few pieces of advice:

Your feelings are just normal youthful listlessness. It will pass. You could try getting REALLY DRUNK, but it won't really help. In a year or two, things will be a lot better.

Modeling the stock market is REALLY HARD. No one has done it yet. Don't fret over it. In fact, I'd say don't try.

You will probably have to wait a few more years to get research internships. That's just the way things are. Keep trying though.

Starting a company will get easier as you get more work experience.

Program committees for Academic conferences and Journals are not "double blind". The people reviewing your papers know your name and your institutional affiliation when they review your paper. Getting accepted without someone else's name attached is hard. Just keep at it.

Don't worry about the school you go to. Being an entrepreneur is more about persistence than anything else. Just be stubborn.

What year are you in school? Most of the Code you write as a Freshman is going to suck. You might not know it yet, but it does. Even if your code is the best in the class, it still probably sucks. Just keep hacking (and learning) and you will get better at it.

Blogs are free, both to produce, and to consume. That means the barrier to entry is low, and their are a lot of them. As a product, blogs are commodities. The difference between your blog, and most other blogs, is imperceptible to the average reader.

Think of it like tomatoes. If you grow a small plot of tomatoes in a community garden, what makes your tomatoes different than the one's at the supermarket? People know where the super market is. They don't know where your garden plot is. And even if they did, the only difference between yours and theirs is that you grew yours in a garden. What's the difference between your garden tomatoes and your neighbor's garden tomatoes? Most people don't know.

If you want people to read your blog you have to:

1. Make sure they find out about it

2. Make it very obvious why your blog is different from everyone else's, and why it's worth reading. "But I'm smart and I wrote it" is not an obvious reason, because no one knows who you are.

3. Build something people want. People have to want to read what you are writing. What need does your blog fill?

In any case, you should do 3 things:

1. Focus.

2. Relax.

3. Find your own path.

Re: Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

#32
Dude, almost same story as mine. But I fall very short at the number of items on your list :).

But still I believe that it's all about experience.

All those things on your list will help you someway or other, on the right time. Just keep it going and more importantly _balance your life_ (AKA numairs comment :) ).

May the force be with you!

Re: Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

#33
Sounds like a good summary of most successful people before they became successful.

But if you want to get that real sense of accomplishment, I recommend getting a fairly blue collar job either next summer or at night during the school year.

What you need to figure out is whether you're facing bad luck or you're just not as talented / determined as you'd like to think. In most of these examples, it's somebody else's fault: your professors bailed, your friends bailed, the schools rejected you, etc. One of the reasons people work so hard in startups is that those excuses just melt away once it's all up to you.

Re: Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

#34
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why, but it seems that few people here are interested in any of the same things I am. It's not like my interests are narrow; indeed, people criticize me for being too much of a dabbler (I am interested in math, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, politics, history, computers, and a whole bunch of other stuff). People just tend to talk about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff. Why do so…

Youth is carefree, where responsibility doesn't bear down you like a hammer. Youth is a time of learning, one of my favorite activities. Once you get older, you've got bills, jobs, internal politics, disappointments, and in some ways less freedom. And while you are happy, you are not happy in the way that you were in college. More does NOT equal or mean better. The startup world is a great example of that. P.S. - The…

From an evolutionary psychology perspective 18 is exactly the age one wants to prove his worth. I understand him perfectly. And I don't think all this motivation should be wasted.

Re: Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

#35
post #6
post #5

Dude, you're 18. The more important question is, are you carrying out meaningful social experiences with people your age? Are you making really great friends who have nothing to do with your career? Are you engaging in dramatic, possibly-hopeless romantic endeavors with cute 18 year old girls (or boys!) that you'll enjoy thinking about when you're 60? You can't buy back your youth, kiddo.

I don't get why, but it seems that few people here are interested in any of the same things I am. It's not like my interests are narrow; indeed, people criticize me for being too much of a dabbler (I am interested in math, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, politics, history, computers, and a whole bunch of other stuff). People just tend to talk about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff. Why do so…

>>have more of everything

Including responsibility and lack of freedom. All that stuff they have more of costs.

Re: Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

#36
It seems like you are dabbling in a bunch of areas and improving your overall intelligence. Your improvements will eventually cross-pollinate and patterns will indeed emerge, and you will begin to start thinking rationally about your behavior, instead of acting haphazardly.

You have to ask yourself what you're aiming for. What you want. And then formulate an attack plan. Sorry, but you're not going to be able to get a finance internship and a research internship and a coding internship at the same time, while also becoming a writer. Mastery takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice (practicing, and then immediately implementing conscious corrections based on masters' recommendations regarding the technique).

What do you want... Social status? Peer recognition? Parental recognition? Access to high-quality sexual partners? Money to buy toys? Happiness?

Carefully evaluate if you are working on any of the above things as means to an end, or ends in themselves. If you aren't, it's OK: just try to figure it out what it is you really want, so you can attack it directly. Spend time investing in understanding your emotions, and it will pay dividends later.

If you really really just want to do math physics chemistry biology economics politics history computers etc., you can. You just have to focus on improving your skill levels in each domain in order to create a meaningful impact. e.g. Improve your social intelligence in order to understand how to build something people want (figure out why people like talking about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff...hint: it happens for a reason, try to be open-minded and understand that everyone is human); improve your coding skills in order to understand how to actually make it. Read history books. Take advantage of all your free time in college to do more reading. Optimize your sleep schedule to use polyphasic sleep and spend all your time reading and working if that is TRULY what you care about. That is one good attack plan if you analyze your emotions and find out what is really important to you. But my guess is that it isn't.

My guess is that you just want to fit in and seem recognized as a contributing human being. Who doesn't?

Re: Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

#39
It reads like an amazing list of accomplishments. Actually though, you have accomplished close to nothing (please read on, I don't want to put you down; I had the same problem). Sure, you are interested in a lot of subjects. That's nice. But that's never going to translate into any success. Stop the dabbling, determine which field you really want to put work into and do that for some years. You can later change fields anyway. But there is no use doing 10-15 things sub-par if you could do a single thing outstandingly.

Stop using dabbling around as an excuse for real, hard work.

Re: Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

#40
post #6
post #5

Dude, you're 18. The more important question is, are you carrying out meaningful social experiences with people your age? Are you making really great friends who have nothing to do with your career? Are you engaging in dramatic, possibly-hopeless romantic endeavors with cute 18 year old girls (or boys!) that you'll enjoy thinking about when you're 60? You can't buy back your youth, kiddo.

I don't get why, but it seems that few people here are interested in any of the same things I am. It's not like my interests are narrow; indeed, people criticize me for being too much of a dabbler (I am interested in math, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, politics, history, computers, and a whole bunch of other stuff). People just tend to talk about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff. Why do so…

Believe me pal, you will really mis whatever you are doing now, or what you have not. So take some breaks and do what ever you may imagine to do now. I don't say break everything you do, just take some time doing other things you may wish you should have done when 18.

Because there is no turn backs in time (for now at least). Stucking in the things you like now and not trying else may lead to not even know what you would like to do.

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