Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

Thanks for this. I also have this problem but haven't really recognized what the problem was until now, I think. I will have to try this.

It sounds like you might have an anxiety disorder. You should seek out a therapist or counselor to discuss this. It's unfortunate that there is such negative baggage associated with therapy -- I have found it to be immensely helpful in learning more about myself and how to manage my own anxiety and depression (key word being "manage" -- these are aspects of who you are and can't be changed, but you can learn to accept them and deal with them instead of just wishing them to go away). Best of luck.

This is not a story about programming. But it is a story about mastery, and surrendering that fear of not measuring up.

Back around 2000, I got my dream job: I started working at Spümcø, the animation studio responsible for "Ren & Stimpy". At one point I was working closely with Jim Smith, whose work is amazing - I normally don't give a shit about the big muscle dudes he loves to draw, but he does it with such grace and fluidity that these big beefchunks become beautiful.

I was in awe of his casual knowledge of every single muscle in the human body, and the ability to deploy that knowledge in his art. I would never measure up.

Then one day he brought in some old work. Kid work, teenage work. I looked at it and a lot of it was terrible - awkward posing, horrible proportions, a whole bunch of general classes of errors that I recognized from looking back at my teenage drawings.

I looked at the dates. These drawings were older than I am. And it was like a light was switched on in the back of my head: of course Jim could draw rings around me with half his brain tied behind his back; he'd started before I was even born.

Since then, I have looked at artists who are better than me at one thing or another with occasional envy in my eyes. And then it instantly dissipates, because I know I could learn to do what they do better if I want to spend a few years on it - do I want that in my toolset bad enough?

And that realization freed me. I was able to look coldly at my work and decide that, yes, I'm good enough to get hired, I'm better at cartooning than like 90% of the people out there. I had the confidence then to embark on a year-long art project (drawing a Tarot deck), and then to move on to a four-year project (drawing a graphic novel) that I'm almost done with. I can't say I've worked on the comic every day by any means. But more often than not, I make myself spend at least a half hour on it. There's always something I can do without having to load the entire story into my head to turn it over and think about the shape it should be. And if I've only spent a half hour at the end of a day, it's still a half hour closer to being done than if I'd just spent the day playing video games.

Step outside of the fear of failure, the envy of younger, more successful people. Look at them as things your brain is doing and ask yourself why; treat it as a programming problem if that metaphor works for you. And find a way to make time for your own projects, even if it's just a half hour in the morning most days.

Let go, slack off, unclench your brain.

Good to see Krishnamurti mentioned here!

I warmly recommend The First and Last Freedom and Think on These Things, both books that affected me deeply and improved my life.

Here is the table of contents (from a PDF) from the latter. I recommend getting a hardcopy — it is a short book, to read once a year.

  Authors's Note                                      3
  1. The Function of Education                        4
  2. The Problem of Freedom                           12
  3. Freedom and Love                                 19
  4. Listening                                        28
  5. Creative Discontent                              35
  6. The Wholeness of Life                            42
  7. Ambition                                         49
  8. Orderly Thinking                                 56
  9. An Open Mind                                     64
  10. Inward Beauty                                   71
  11. Conformity and Revolt                           79
  12. The Confidence of Innocence                     87
  13. Equality and Freedom                            95
  14. Self Discipline                                 102
  15. Cooperation and Sharing                         109
  16. Renewing the Mind                               119
  17. The River of Life                               127
  18. The Attentive Mind                              135
  19. Knowledge and Tradition                         144
  20. To Be Religious Is to Be Sensitive to Reality   153
  21. The Purpose of Learning                         161
  22. The Simplicity of Love                          169
  23. The Need to Be Alone                            179
  24. The Energy of Life                              188
  25. To Live Effortlessly                            197
  26. The Mind Is Not Everything                      205

You don't have an age problem or a distractibility problem, you have an anxiety and neurotic problem. Who cares what other people are doing, at what age? There's always someone better than you. And almost everyone would rather be lazy, that's not unique to you.

Just work on your project and be happy with your accomplishments. Find something to give meaning to your life like volunteering for a charity. It's vanishingly unlikely anyone will care about your (or the vast majority of peoples') legacies 100 years from now. Honestly, just enjoy your work, help others, and stop thinking it's a competition.

edit: I'm significantly older than you, so 1) I have some perspective on this and 2) sorry if this was less sensitive than what your generational peers might say or lacked trigger warnings.