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I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

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Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#231

This is always a tough subject for me because everyone seems to have at least an idea of what they want to achieve. When I was younger I had these silly dreams of moving to another country, getting married, becoming a programmer to make games, have my own company and get rich (haha). I did become a programmer and got married, but never left the country or became rich. Now on my 30s I know how limited my options are.…

> I could try to focus on my hobbies, but you realize very quickly that to get good at anything, you need hundreds/thousands of hours

the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is right now. To continue with the QOTDs: today you're the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever be, get started.

Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#232
post #188
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> It's not too late to find the truth. What is the truth?

Seeking to find the truth may be something that is good for some people: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/idol-words

Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the point of it? Live for others. You (and I) are incredibly fortunate. We have our basic needs taken care of. We have more than that. There are many, many, people in the world who have problems that you can help solve. That could be - spending time with a lonely elderly person, volunteering with the homeless, building a website for a charity that can't afford to pay for a great one, building a startup that…

It's noble, but for me it's once again... pointless. I don't have the money or power to enact any meaningful change. I can give my time or some money to others, but I'm not really fixing anything. I'm just drying ice. Maybe I'm not selfless enough? I've never tried anything like that, so that's at least something new. Might give it a try

Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta was once asked during an interview how did you manage to help so many people? Her reply was: "I just started with one person".

You don't need to look far to find someone who is hungry; sure many people on this orange site may not be hungry of food but I bet there are many who starved of love. It really doesn't take much to offer an ear to someone in this lonely day and age.

Perhaps it's part of my religious background but I personally find that if the foundation of one's life is based on material things, then one is in a constant state of unhappiness. I come from a country that is considered poor but Western standards, however looking back I realize that the West is wealthy yet poor at the same time. Most are just busy worshiping money, sex, status or power. It's like we forgot about our humanity.

So yes, you may not be able to change _the_ world but you can change _one_ world at a time.

Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#234
Reading through this thread makes me wonder, what are achievements really? If it's not something that brings something to your life and helps you or others grow, then I don't think it's that much. Sometimes those things can even be things where the outright goal failed, because what really matters is something else, excellence of character, enjoying your life and helping bring that out in others as well.

I think of someone like Steve Jobs, I remember when he was alive how much he was idolised and how everyone wanted to be the "Next Steve Jobs" now it has been some years that has passed, I feel like that light is a little less and people have moved onto the next thing they want to be, the next Elon musk, mark Zuckerberg or just some level of crazy achievement.

But I wonder what it is worth really? Even those people that have achieved so much more than I ever have, did it really matter so much anyway? If those people were not around, everyone would find someone else to idolise, if those people were not around, the problems they solved in the world would likely just be solved by someone else or perhaps they would be solved in a different way at some point in a future and who is to say that that other future is not somehow better than what we have now? Due to the butterfly effect, we just cannot know what crazy alternative realities would happen if the people that we assume have added to humanity and given so much did not exist, somehow life would have continued and the fields in which they came would be just fine or perhaps even better as something else would have come along at some point, something that doesn't have to happen now because of the work they did, you cannot know that life itself is actually better because of them. You could cure cancer, but then the next evil dictator survives cancer due to the treatment and then nukes the entire planet into oblivion.

When you think of it like this and see that 1) It is very unlikely that you would be able to achieve at that level and 2) It doesn't really matter anyway, your perspective is forced to change on these things, you start to look at just enjoying your life, doing things in a more localised way than trying to change the entire world.

Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#235

This is always a tough subject for me because everyone seems to have at least an idea of what they want to achieve. When I was younger I had these silly dreams of moving to another country, getting married, becoming a programmer to make games, have my own company and get rich (haha). I did become a programmer and got married, but never left the country or became rich. Now on my 30s I know how limited my options are.…

This happens to everyone in their 30s. You realize that "dying someday" -- which seemed like a big distant hypothetical when you were a kid -- is actually a thing that will happen on a timescale you can reason about. Your career gets hard and you don't really know the point of it. It takes a while to get over it. Then you hit your 40s and you realize that since you're going to die anyway, why waste the time and die b…

So is this the famous mid-life crisis everyone talks about? I never assumed this was it because I don't explicitly think about mortality all that much. I don't particularly mind that I'm going to die.

I also haven't bought a Harley or have the will to do anything of the sorts.

Guess I just have to figure out how to come out of it. It's been a slog and right now I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, hehe.

Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#236

If most people feel this way, does it mean that it's "normal" to feel this way? I torment myself with similar thinking. 1. Objectively speaking I have achieved a lot in my life, from where I started to where I am now, I am living the American dream, and then some. 2. I KNOW that I have a lot of unfulfilled potential. No, it's not the sugar-coated way to say that I am a loser, my "problem" is non-crippling anxiety: wh…

I think people that were told that they were special and that they'd amount to something great as children are the ones that suffer most from this mentality. The expectation of performance was artificially inflated which leads to difficulty dealing with failure and constant feelings of dissatisfaction.

Maybe. I have mixed feelings about your statement.

Growing up the messages to me were quite the opposite (without going into details), and now here I am, fully grown adult, full of doubt, uncertainties, fears, full of Anxieties that prevent me from achieving my full potential.

I guess your overall principal is correct, we all know people that fit your statement; at the same time individual experiences and reactions to those experience are also big contributors to outcomes.

Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#237
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: how do you find these goals in the first place? Do you just randomly put them out there and work for it so you can tick that checkbox? Take for example starting a company. I had that goal before and today I know that'd take an enormous amount of effort and would take me away from my family and the few hobbies I have. All that doesn't guarantee I can make it, since the majority of companies fail and…

Another key aspect you need to consider is that (pseudoscience/hand-waving incoming) your brain is very good at taking all of your prior experience and extrapolating it forward, and telling you "if you do this thing, this will be the outcome". My point is, you're not considering all of the things you don't know, because you can't. It isn't just about "start a company that will probably fail based on the % of companie…

I had never really thought about it in that sense. This is a very interesting take that honestly made me a bit emotional.

Thank you for this.

Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#238

This is always a tough subject for me because everyone seems to have at least an idea of what they want to achieve. When I was younger I had these silly dreams of moving to another country, getting married, becoming a programmer to make games, have my own company and get rich (haha). I did become a programmer and got married, but never left the country or became rich. Now on my 30s I know how limited my options are.…

> I could try to focus on my hobbies, but you realize very quickly that to get good at anything, you need hundreds/thousands of hours.

The point of hobbies is not "getting good at them". It's enjoying them for their own sake. Otherwise they turn into ... work.

> I'm just a blip in the universe and when I'm gone it will be unchanged, the same as if I had never existed.

Yes. The Universe doesn't expect or have any special plans for you.

But hey, that is not that bad. Consider the opposite. The Whole universe having a plan for you. The whole infinite Cosmos. Just thinking about you and having a plan for you.

I don't know about you. But it would give me a panic attack.

It's ok that the Universe doesn't have a plan for you. This frees you to assign your life whatever meaning you want - and to change it at any point! You can also feel gratified about fulfilling your self-assigned potential or feel extremely disapointed if you did not. Or, change them again. Some hold that the secret to happiness is having the right expectations about oneself.

> And now what?

Therapy worked for me.

Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#239
post #106

Growing up, the idea of a career in computing was implausible. The only computing course my school offered was scheduled against doing a full science course, and they had nothing for the 16-18 range. The local night school programming class I signed up for was cancelled because I was the only person who signed up for it. My parents made it extremely clear that the idea that I could ever make money writing software wa…

> this is a great time to find a therapist who can help you work through that

this is probably the best advice i've read so far. Think about how, when faced with a hard technical problem, an SME is a treasure trove of answers. A good therapist is an SME in this problem space.

Re: I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible you’re setting your threshold for meaningful change to high? I have friends that have made it their life’s work to get their city to install more bike lanes. They’ve been pushing for a decade and the city has installed a few lanes in particularly dangerous places. They have likely saved a bikers life. I have friends that volunteer at a crisis center and all they do is talk with people who need help. Th…

Yeah I think this is a problem with modern life. Our ancestors knew only of their surroundings and their tribe. Helping someone near you was obviously meaningful. Now the scale that our minds grapple with is infinite: We know we’re a tiny part of an infinite universe, our tribe is billions of people. My solution is focus. Reduce the scale of your concern to where you can have an impact. You can certainly have an impa…

> Reduce the scale of your concern to where you can have an impact.

Nice. That’s going in my quote collection.

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