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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.

#11

Post by ramanujan »

Hey -- as someone who thought similar things at that age, you probably have quite a few skills from all those bruises. Very few people are writing multiple web apps, multiple papers, etc. at 18.

My advice to you would be to seek out a mentor who sees themself in you. That could be a graduate student, a young prof, or an entrepreneur.

Forget all that shit about "socializing". Completely agree that things get better as you get older. Clubs are overrated. Work out hard and get a decently hot girlfriend if you want. But then get back to work.

PS: stay ambitious. Read Richard Hamming on ambition. PSS: Look for a mentor that is where you want to be when you are their age. You need to find someone who you respect technically and who wants to teach you, to give you their wisdom to help the young version of themselves avoid all the mistakes they've made.

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

#12

Post by carpo »

Maybe you're trying to do too much? Perhaps you could find something which you are really passionate about and work at doing it the best you can.

Looks like a lot of the time you've been doing things for or with other people. Why not think of something you are really passionate about and do it exclusively for a while. Do it for yourself, not anyone else. That way you only need to be persistent to succeed. And you never know, there might be other people out there that like it and want to use it too.

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

#13

Post by Mystalic »

anewkid wrote: post #6
numair wrote: 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…

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. - There is nothing wrong with parties, dating, sports, and clubs. In moderation of course.

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

#14

Post by codexon »

You are not focused.

If people gave up after one or two failures, nothing would get accomplished.

- Wrote a program to model the stock market

Everyone wants to do this, but unless you have insider information like Goldman Sachs or some rare mathematical insight that a million PhDs have overlooked, you are likely to fail. The stock market is a zero-sum game where most of the profits go to the high end of a Pareto distribution. This is too ambitious for you.

- Worked on a paper with a professor.

Unless you are a genius, I doubt any of these professors would be working with you seriously instead of just being free lab labor. Your knowledge is most likely too shallow to be useful in high-tech research that gets all the grants. However, this might be your goal if you want to go to grad school.

- Tried to start a company over the summer.

Keep trying.

- Applied for X internships

You are too young. There is also a recession so you can lower your expectations.

- Half a dozen math/science contests

There's something wrong with your plan if you have the time for half a dozen of them.

- Tried to start a blog, worked on it for two years.

Link?

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

#15

Post by fuzzmeister »

To be honest, I say keep trying and don't get discouraged. While joecode is correct that you might need to be more realistic about some of your goals, if you keep trying, you will find success, even if it's modest.

If you're interested in doing another webapp, I say do one start-to-finish completely on your own. That way, you don't have to rely on the dedication of other people for it to be successful. Also, try to reach out and find other people interested in tech entrepreneurship at your school - I've found a surprising amount here (Washington University in St. Louis) just by poking around.

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

#16

Post by thaumaturgy »

It's hard to tell just from your post, but so far it sounds like you're more of a "starter" than a "finisher" -- you're not following through enough on your projects to keep them going. I'm not an expert on your life, so this is just a guess.

However, the one that really stands out for me is: "Did another webapp for one of the student clubs. (Someone else also wrote one and theirs was better, so everyone (including me) just used that instead.)"

In your other examples, there were external factors that created large barriers to finishing the project. That happens sometimes, but with this one, you simply ... gave up.

There's not necessarily a negative connotation there; you could have made a perfectly logical decision after factoring in your interest in the project, the amount of work it would take to compete with the other webapp, and whether you had any immediate ideas that would make your version better. But, it looks like you're asking why you haven't been successful yet, and here's a case where there really wasn't anything stopping you.

Aside from that, I think most folks here have a pretty big stack of failures and dead projects. I sure do -- I've even lost track of them. I've got failures in inventions, big what-if ideas, political ventures, software projects, business leads, and on and on.

As long as you're able to get something valuable out of those failures, some lesson or some insight or some social connections or something, then it's not really a failure.

It's just more experience.

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

#17

Post by bk »

1. It's a good idea to partner with people, but pick projects where you don't depend on your partners to finish. Pick a problem/domain where if everything else failed you could at least push out a minimal version to see if you can get traction.

2. For abandoned projects, salvage the scraps - publish the drafts or parts of them, open-source your code (unless it still holds significant value, but don't overestimate the potential value).

3. You seem ambitious and not easily discouraged - both valuable characteristics. So keep trying, but be on the lookout for blind spots, and patterns in your failed projects. Distill your strengths and preferences and see how you can apply them best, and work around your weaknesses.

4. Make sure you're not someone else's "useful idiot" (and obviously, don't exploit others).

5. As others have mentioned here - enjoy your life, seriously! Don't race to the presumed finish line. (Read Philip Greenspun's article on early retirement). You should always strive to pursue something that you find personally meaningful. What's the big picture of what all your efforts are really for? Sitting in a vault of cash by yourself like Scrooge McDuck won't make you happy.

6. Unless you want to become an academic or consultant/i-banker, don't worry too much about your GPA, but meet and work with as many people as possible. Make friends and test-drive them for productive pursuits. College (and I guess grad school) are statistically almost the last stops for finding co-founders. Just look at startups you respect, and look up the founders' stories - the vast majority met at the latest at university.

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

#18

Post by revorad »

Can you give links to those webapps you made? Have you tried figuring out why no one uses them? If you worked on either of them for another year, will they still not be successful? If not, why not?

Sometimes, you have to plod your way to success, for years.

Unlike most people, you are smart enough to have made a start. Don't give up in first gear.

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

#19

Post by jey »

Keep it up, you're doing fine. You're learning a lot from your projects, and even if you don't "finish" them, you benefit greatly from them. That's a good place to be when 18, and you're already aware of the usefulness of finishing stuff, so keep doing what you're doing but keep an eye open toward finding projects that you can/want to stick with.

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

#20

Post by baguasquirrel »

lsc wrote: post #9
anewkid wrote: 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…

perhaps because they don't remember? As far as I can tell, life gets better as you get older and gain more control over your life. Childhood was miserable for me. I mean, physically, yeah, it's pretty much all downhill from there. but everything else gets much better. I would not worry too much if your social life doesn't pick up until you are a little older. Mine did not. Also note, if you don't connect with your pe…

perhaps they don't remember

Yea it's funny the way that happens. Perhaps this occurs more often than we'd like to think. For starters, just look at all the parents who don't seem to understand why their kid wants to be popular in school or why they seem unmotivated to study the subjects the parents want them to study.

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