> When you're young you don't know what you're good at or what different kinds of work are like. Some kinds of work you end up doing may not even exist yet. So while some people know what they want to do at 14, most have to figure it out. That just gave me an idea for a phone app: Something that helps teenagers explore their interests and aptitudes (but not skills of course) Thoughts?
These vary greatly in “real life” but are almost always restricted in education systems. For instance, simple things like “there is a right answer to this question”, “you can finish this task in less than a week” and of course “an older more experienced person will judge your work” are true in school but vary greatly in the wild.
I’ve found that people’s true passion axes mostly aren’t aligned with specific sub-fields (like say theoretical astrophysics, improv jazz saxophone), but tend to orient themselves towards higher level features. As someone who used to think that narrow specialization is paramount, this realization is incredibly liberating (also kinda missing from PGs post – I think he’s missing or glossing over an important aspect here).