121–130 of 426 posts
Too late because you're 26? More like too early. The way you deal with the gnawing in your chest is to correct your view of success with a healthy dose of reality. The 21 year old success is almost exclusively a lie, little more than a media fabrication; don't buy what they're selling. Here's a nice list, and the age at which they got their big hit: Paul Graham (31, Viaweb), Jan Koum (33, WhatsApp), Brian Acton (37,…
> It's been getting better. It's not, it's getting worse. You are in a cycle of slave-driving yourself. You remind me of Jiddu Krishnamurthi's assertion that "Influence acts strongest when you don't realize that it is acting". I would venture that most of your accomplishments are a result of being told what you should do, what you should be. You will NEVER have the energy that the people whom you compare with have. B…
This isn't kindergarten where you can just show up and start scribbling. Even if the actual act of coding (or painting, or martial arts, or writing, or watering roadside plants) is effortless, there's a hell of a lot of effort that goes into just getting yourself in a position to do it. Example: perhaps painting is effortless for you, but putting yourself in a position to paint involves a lot of mundane things that r…
But the quality of energy will be different when you are shovelling the coal if YOU chose where the ship is going, if the dream of what lies on the other shore is yours. That vision (in your case, of starting your own business) is what fuelled your efforts, IMHO.
Why does he want to waste time on HN? Somewhere inside his heart is screaming a voice, "No, I don't want to do this". He's not lazy (CS top 10 school). It's just that the self-flagellation stops working for many people once they hit 20.
The difficulty is that the outer actions of someone like you (self-motivated) and someone like him (self-flagellating) may be the same. So the poor guy (or gal) tries to be like you and suffers.
I think the rest of HN can give sufficient answers to your direct question, but I truly encourage you to think now about the underlying worry you mentioned of what you will have accomplished at the end of your life. Your priorities at that time are highly unlikely to be related to what you have coded.
Age doesn't matter. You're making up a reason to feel inferior.
Stop thinking about work. Start thinking about life. You're in your 20's. You have the rest of your entire life to think about work. Take your savings, grab a friend/family member, or go it solo, and go travel.
Right now. Before you get a second older. Before you start another job or think you don't have enough money. Before you have kids. Before you think about more work. Tomorrow you'll wake up and be 30 something, with kids, a fat mortgage and real life expenses and you won't have the freedom you clearly do at this point.
Take the chance of a life time and go travel. Go recharge. Go create a life altering experience. Do it with someone you love. Because when our time is at an end the things that matter are the people you love and the experiences you shared. Not what you built, not your HN posts, not your code, not your company or projects.
People remember people and maybe along the way you'll learn about yourself. This is the goal everyone shares.
It sounds like you have developed an irrational fear around the concept of ageism. The less you worry about what others think the more productive and creative you will be.
> CS degree from a top-10,
> nough savings to last a few years
> and he's half a decade younger than me! How will I ever be able to catch up? Experience-wise, I'm still a junior dev.
> ...
Dude, are you joking? ... and who the heck contributes to this waste of HN frontpage screen estate?
This is a whiny humblebrag post about 1st world problems by a spoild teenager in his twenties ... are you kidding me? Come back when you have interesting problems.
Age doesn't matter. You're making up a reason to feel inferior.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the mark of genuine flow :) wow...you should start your own "do whatever you want" university. Pretty sure all the young impressionable minds around here will enjoy it.
College student here. I've read a lot into the "do your own thing" mentality, especially the "don't go to university just do stuff", such as at Thiel summits, startup events. I personally love the idea of founding a startup, so I've given it a lot of thought. It's important for me to work on my own terms and to do something I find meaningful, and so I enjoyed riding along with the crowd that follows the above mentali…
I agree with a lot of your points. The "don't go to university" / "dropouts are successful" meme is particularly alarming to me. Unless your achievement are stupendous, most employers, even startups, judge you based on your level of education, your Uni's ranking, etc; Why discard that data?