Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing

> the one thing that you should do

You are not being brutally honest, you are just trying to crash this party with your own particular mindset.

I have these kinds of feelings a lot. It is hard to feel useful in this day and age of a ubiquitous globally connected society because for anything you attempt to do you have instant access to the top 0.0001% of the Bell curve who you have no hope of ever beating.

I find comfort in that I am not alone, thinking of all the peasants and regular workers across history who didn't amount to much either, but still mostly fought on and had a good life. Plenty of examples in immediate family as well.

And lastly, I found that there is one thing that one can do that is absolutely unique that nobody can match anywhere in the world, and that is - as corny as this sounds - kids. It may be a touchy subject or not for everybody. But raising a human with the best possible effort you can muster is an accomplishment at least one person will remember and value 100000x more vs. any world champion in solving IOI problems or writing clever functional code :-)

Sounds a little like you’re dealing with burnout. I’ve known these feelings well. Can I suggest two things that helped me? 1) Make sure you find hobbies outside of work that you enjoy, your professional life doesn’t define you and 2) rather than comparing yourself with others, try to be 1% better at something than you were the day before. That’s not only possible but will get great results in the longterm.

There are some conflicting currents in your description above. On the one hand you sound quite unhappy and dissatisfied and on the other you express that you lack motivation to change. You need to join those dots.

I actually do suggest youexplore your thoughts about the medication and whether it affects this. I say this from knowing someone who, during the course of my knowing them went onto anti-depressants, and I saw their personality change in a somewhat similar way. It made them more stable but it took the edge off their passion and their motivation to change. I saw a similar contradiction where they somewhere inside wanted to change but their motivation to do it was blunted and they couldn't "connect" that desire to action.

This is only a thought and obviously you need to work through such a thing with professional guidance.

I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself. I know what you are feeling and have felt it myself.

One key is although you have many years of experience professionally, on any individual project, you are a beginner. Anything substantial, like you mentioned, takes consistent effort over years to build the complexity. I’m sure all of those projects started with hello world just like you will.

Try not to compare your beginnings of any skill or project to someone else’s middle and definitely not their end.

You’re fully capable of doing any of the things listed with time and it’s exactly that, a function of time.

To me, the harder problem is deciding what to spend consistent effort on. After that, focus and enjoy the ride.