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

25 is not old. The industry is somewhat young-people-worshipping now, but that's because computation has gotten incredibly popular now, and that is the age of a lot of people - most of the people I've worked with are older than that, and that's fine. Experience is great. There will be a ton of older folks making awesome things long into the distant future. I find the idea (it seems a little bay-area centric) that 25 is old to be, well, insane, but perhaps that's just what people of every generation do.

I started my first startup at 33 or so, really, there's nothing magically about this (many parts of it totally suck!), and it's just as good to work for a large company. Because someone started something at an earlier age is really meaningless. Heck, just thinking about a great idea for 5 years and then finally making it into a thing is valuable, so your time isn't wasted. We are basically a culmination of all of our experiences, and how we use that information. More experience is better.

The best thing you can do is build cool things that you enjoy, but there's also no point in trying to "win" the game or be better than anyone else.

I think the general ideas about attachment or desire for greater things breeding suffering are more or less correct. Build things that you enjoy, and enjoy them for you. It's similar to "more money, more problems". Fame from past projects or accomplishments will fade too, technology gets replaced daily. You can be happy with today, but if you are always focusing on tomorrow, you really can't be. Also, if you don't enjoy building things, do something you do enjoy as well. Helping people matters. Everything else? Building a really shiny ecommerce webpage? Not so much.

I guess what I'm saying is, those things don't matter. There's no benchmark. There's only whether you are happy, and you can actually change what makes you happy. And it's also ok if you don't know what that is yet.

But yeah, if you want to do good stuff, keep doing more stuff. Better just happens. (And to bring it back to the quote -- everybody takes bad photos, the trick is to just not upload the bad ones. Everybody writes bad code too!).

Ultimately I think HN focuses on people who get lucky and make the big bugs on startup exits or big CEO salaries WAAAY too much. It messes up people's value systems. Money is not all that matters - not by a longshot. It's also true you can do really well without being one of those extremely lucky people.

instead of analysing you and give you some meta advice, i will give you some hands on things to do. (my quaterlife crises lasted a whole decade, but it laid the groundwork for the awesome life i have right now)

a) stop with whatever you are doing now, just stop, don't tell yourself you can't as you have to do so much stuff, just stop.

b) and then start travelling. 9 months, a year, the longer the better. do not prepare too much, you will not need it, travel alone.

only take a kindle and a crappy underpowered smartphone with you (i.e. a firefoxOX device),

if you haven't travelled before, start with thailand, it's a safe and easy country to start travelling, take it from there.

c) do not talk to the same people as you would talk at home, if you are american, don't talk to americans, if you are european, talk to americans, .... relax this rule after some time

d) return

you will not be the same person as you have before, and you will laugh at the person you were before

the whole process is called "getting some perspective"

you can do it at home, too, but well, it's easier if you are physically away and on the road

> Every day, I read an article by some hot-shot young dev who has a handful of fancy projects behind his belt (not to mention a great website and design sensibility) while I have exactly zero

This is going to keep happening. The only thing you can do is find something you love and grind it. That's what most of them have done. They (or at least most of them) don't just pop out a new smash hit every night. Most of those articles still take time to put together.

I didn't even start my career until I was 28 (while I was working on my MS). My daughter was born a year later, and it took me 2 years to get my blog going. (I foolishly thought I could write a CMS. I ended up building something clean and minimal with a static site generator.) It takes me forever to get a post together, but that's ok. I work at the speed I can. I'm happy because I'm still making progress.

Not everyone gets to be a rockstar all the time, and you have to jam in the garage before you get to take the stage.

Have you considered that you might have an anxiety problem?

You mention being crippled by fear. You mention a constant gnawing. You mention a daily rehearsal of a major anxiety, your always feeling behind, frequently feeling exhausted and terrified, an endless state of panic, and being endlessly haunted. That is a whole lot of anxiety, and there are other kinds of anxiety disorder besides social anxiety.

My tip for you: find a therapist you like and go regularly. You've got two problems here: you are trapped in a behavioral loop, struggling for context. And, being young, you don't have enough life experience to see as many patterns as somebody older, especially somebody who spends all day talking with people. Regularly seeing a good therapist will help with both of those. They can also help you consider whether your level of anxiety is unusual, and what your options are.

I should add that when I was your age, I was too arrogant to do that. I was sure that by dint of raw smarts I would figure it out on my own. Which was both true and dumb: reinventing psychology from scratch would in some sense be an achievement, but like most reinventing of the wheel, it's not an achievement that anybody cares about, not even me.

Anyhow, I have worked out an anxiety-related checklist over time. Now when I notice anxious feelings, the things I wonder:

* Am I getting enough exercise? 30-60 mins cardio 3-4x week is about right for me.

* Am I carrying a lot of stress in my body? Yoga, massage, and hot tubs are helpful.

* Are there environmental factors? E.g., noisy environment, messy living space.

* What am I eating? My mood is most stable on foods with low glycemic index, worst with junk food.

* Am I getting enough sleep? I do best with ~7.5 hours on a very regular schedule.

* What's my drug intake? More than 100mg caffeine or 2 drinks alcohol and my mood will be less stable the next day.

* Am I taking my vitamins? This could be placebo, but I take a B-100, a sublingual B12, and some fish oil. My doctor recommended them for reducing the effects of stress.

For me, my procrastination is directly driven by feelings of anxiety. The more chill I am, the more I get done.