[HN Gopher] Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what o...
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Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart
people are doing
I was watching a video game documentary about the history of the
RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise, a theme park management game that
had both an easy learning curve but with incredibly sophisticated
dynamics. What really impressed me however was the origins of the
first two titles: written by one man in assembly language. At that
point, I realized how mediocre and untalented I was. Nothing I'm
doing in my life are anything that people will remember me for.
Throughout my life, I've seen many awe inspiring projects done by
extremely talented people, way more intelligent than I am, come to
fruition. Over the years, I realized how shallow and dumb I really
am. I'm uninteresting. Most of my career revolved around software
development, something that I've done since I was 17 (now I'm 30)
until a few years ago. I found myself writing entreprise software
usually in the backend and that's all I really knew except for some
server administration and scripting sprinkled on top. Sat beside me
were full-stack developers with expertise in DevOps as well. They
knew how to do everything I could on top of so much else. As for
me, I can barely write basic HTML pages. I meet with incredibly
smart people with master's degrees and PhDs knowing so much about
their field of expertise while I'm a University drop-out. People
who know world history so well while being able to talk about the
hard problem of consciousness at the same time. YouTubers and
Twitch streamers who are so talented at playing games and
entertaining us along the way. There's people who have paved the
way for innovation and foresight that I don't have at all. Those
who make so much money due to their talents and bringing them to
life in this world of ours. I've watched so many documentaries
about all sorts of people from racing drivers, to game developers,
comedians, data science experts, cybersecurity nuts, music
producers, video editors, documentaries makers and so much more.
These are all things that come to mind thinking that I'll never be
able to do any of that. I'm mostly a self-taught person teaching
myself skills as I go along with my life. I generally don't pick up
much except for a few facts that I can repeat to others. I can
barely do derivatives anymore in math or draw like I used to. My
talents are shallow and honestly quite useless. Today, I don't do
much with my life other than binging on YouTube documentaries and
reading Wikipedia articles not helping my case. My motivation for
learning is shrinking slowly and would much rather stare out of the
window while I'm not doing my obligatory 8 hours of daily work.
Now, I'm an unimportant technical writer composing documents for
developers and users. There's no path for career growth if I stay
in this specialty. My work doesn't feel like it takes much talent
and I was hired a few times without having any credentials in
business writing. I've been told by previous managers that I'm
always in "learning mode" and quite "creative" but I can't convince
myself that these traits are actually true. I feel untalented,
empty and dumb. My dreams do exist but they starting to seem more
and more superficial. There's a lot of subjects and activities that
I'm really interested of getting into but I can't just dive into
it. I blame it on the lack of time and laziness but I have strong
time management skills and can conjure up much empty slots in my
schedule. I sometimes wonder if my mental condition or my
medication has had an effect on this: I'm bipolar schizoaffective
and borderline.
Author : cdahmedeh
Score : 198 points
Date : 2021-11-19 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
| tw04 wrote:
| Two things: The first step to happiness is not comparing yourself
| to others. You will ALWAYS be able to find something in the
| people around you to envy and you will NEVER be happy.
|
| This second one may not be helpful in your current state of mind,
| but has always helped me focus on the first point. That is: in
| the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter. 50,000 years
| from now it's likely that NOBODY from our current times will be
| remembered. The guy who wrote rollercoaster tycoon definitely
| will not be. Someone as infamous as Hitler is a solid _shmaybe_
| and that 's only if the human race continues to advance
| technologically and start settling the universe. If we don't go
| extinct and we don't make it off this planet, the odds are good
| we'll have driven ourselves back to the stone ages, at which
| point nobody will remember or care about any of us. So from that
| perspective, who cares? Just be kind to others, do things you
| enjoy, and try to be a productive member of society (whatever
| that means to you).
| bsd44 wrote:
| The greatest misconception about life is that you are ought to
| "achieve" something. You're not. Do what you want, not what you
| ought to do.
| d--b wrote:
| > I'm bipolar schizoaffective and borderline
|
| Not exactly sure what that is, but yeah that sounds like stuff
| that has an impact on everything.
|
| Otherwise, just remember that the Meaning of Life is: "Try to be
| nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and
| then, get some walking in, and try to live together in peace and
| harmony with people of all creeds and nations."
|
| Oh and super-achievers aren't less miserable.
| IndexCardBox wrote:
| First, I would say if you're worried about your mental health,
| don't wait, go get help. It does sound to me like you might be a
| little depressed, but don't take the word of a random internet
| stranger.
|
| With that being said, when I get like this, I take a step back
| and look at the bigger picture. First, there's plenty of people
| in the world who would look at your situation and be floored. "If
| only I could pay my bills / stay out of trouble with the law /
| stay off drugs / etc.". There's always someone better and always
| someone worse.
|
| Second, ask yourself what do you want. Would you be satisfied if
| you made the next Rollercoaster Tycoon... Or would you say yeah,
| but X developer did way more in a shorter time and made more
| money? Like, would it actually be enough? Instead chase what you
| enjoy.
|
| But it sounds like you don't know what you want. That's not bad,
| that's exciting! Try things! Maybe you always had an interest in
| cooking, or writing poetry, or hiking, or whatever. Or society is
| so obsessed with external validation, instead focus on intrinsic
| value.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I think everyone has these feelings. There is always someone you
| admire knowledgewise and there are just so many things to learn.
|
| Don't forget, the internet you are connected to contains hundreds
| of millions of people and we all follow the same 10 k top
| performers? And I think 10 k would even be generous, perhaps it's
| 5 per niche ( eg. dotnet, python, gamedev, unity, ... ). The
| dificult thing is to not completely compare to them.
|
| Eg. Scot Hansselman ( https://www.hanselman.com/ ) is a great
| evangelist of dotnet but also works for Microsoft. He has more
| easy access to many resources and he shares those.
|
| John Savill also teaches at Pluralsight and has a great youtube
| channel for Azure weekly updates ( Eg.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUcbSNK6LGg ). But he also works
| at Microsoft as a Principal Cloud Solution Architect, so it's
| also easier to accomplish what they are doing ( i'm not saying
| it's easy though)
| endymi0n wrote:
| Been there, thought that. Great stuff in the other comments as
| well, but adding the comment that stuck with me from my first
| therapist: ,,To compare yourself means to hurt yourself."
|
| Finding out _why_ I felt I needed to be ultra special was the
| first puzzle piece towards healing to me.
|
| Accepting myself as I am, loving my imperfect self and connecting
| to the needs I had as a child was the second one.
|
| And if you still think you need to be special after that, I'll
| leave this quote from Ira Glass for you for your way ahead:
|
| ,,Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone
| told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because
| we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple
| years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be
| good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing
| that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is
| why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past
| this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting,
| creative work went through years of this. We know our work
| doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all
| go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are
| still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most
| important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a
| deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only
| by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap,
| and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took
| longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met.
| It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just
| gotta fight your way through."
| zmmmmm wrote:
| 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.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I think if you recognize the genius in others, you're smarter
| than you think.
|
| Also, people with advanced degrees just may have worked harder
| than you and are not actually smarter.
| penjelly wrote:
| > What really impressed me however was the origins of the first
| two titles: written by one man in assembly language
|
| you arent alone, i think that is an impressive and time consuming
| feat.
|
| OP, youre in a much better place now skillwise then back at 17,
| sounds like youre unchallenged at work and maybe burnt out. Take
| some time off to contemplate what youd like to do, open all the
| possibilities that interest you. Remember you arent starting
| over, you have a relevant skillset already. Maybe build some
| personal projects of any kind, to remind yourself how fun
| building things can be and your motivation may return.
|
| that plus ensure youre getting daily exercise and sleeping well.
| Motivation follows those almost automatically at times for me. If
| i feel fulfilled, i have more energy
| candlemas wrote:
| You know what you don't know but can't see what other people
| don't know only what they do know. It is a skewed perspective and
| makes you think other people are demigods because they seem so
| fluent in one or a few subjects meanwhile they have huge gaps of
| ignorance.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I run an 8-minute mile.
|
| I feel dumb and weak because I used to run a 6:30 mile in high
| school. I tell this to other people, and they apparently can't
| beat a 10-minute mile (or have never tried).
|
| Its all relative. If there's one thing about "track", its taught
| me to enjoy whatever level you manage to get to. I wish I was as
| strong as I was when I was half my age (and I'll continue to
| practice for it), but I can accept that my level of effort has
| brought me to an 8-minute mile.
|
| When I started, my first run was a 12-minute mile. So I know I've
| improved. I felt really weak back then, and now I only feel
| kinda-weak.
| akanet wrote:
| It's okay to be average or below average. Most of us are. We just
| have to make peace with what we can reasonably do in this short
| life. History remembers almost no individuals, and to be one so
| lucky as to be remembered by history is beyond our right to ask
| for.
| [deleted]
| Ccecil wrote:
| One thing I have noticed in opensource projects is very often a
| lack of proper, well written technical documentation.
|
| Very likely some of the same developers who you are looking up to
| are stressed and having issues finding time (or the words) to
| express how the software/hardware is used to make things easy for
| the end user.
|
| Some of these projects are used to do very important things in
| the world. Joining up with a project which is attempting to do
| something you feel strongly about and seeing how the users and
| devs are gaining from your often overlooked work can be a very
| good boost to well being.
|
| Nobody is unimportant. Everyone makes an impact.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Me too. I'm just hoping to save up enough to get out of the
| industry before my skills rot to the point I'm (effectively)
| forced out.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| There's always a bigger fish. Always someone better than you, to
| such a degree you cannot imagine competing. There's only one
| thing you can always be better at than everyone though: living
| your life in a way that fulfills you, without the need to win the
| right genetic & environmental lottery to be the best of the best.
|
| A large amount of people at the very top of any field have
| problems in other parts of their life. That is because
| intelligence can also be a drawback. It leads to heavy
| introspection for one, which you need to control or enjoy heavy
| depressions and anxieties. That is not to say that many high-
| performance people are not perfectly happy too. They are, and
| that is fine: you can focus on making yourself perfectly happy.
| It's not a zero-sum game.
|
| I hope this makes some sense, it's the best way I can put it.
| madacol wrote:
| I've had this feeling too, and I've found this hack to keep
| feeling hopeful of eventually being the top 100 of something
|
| There are ~8x109 people on earth, if you are at the top 99.99%
| percentile, that still leaves ~800.000 people better than you.
|
| But now lets see this from a different angle, and let's assume
| there are at least 100 different areas of expertise you can
| choose from, and you are young, you can still become an expert in
| more areas. If we calculate the combinations of 3 areas of
| expertise, we get 161.700 combinations, that leaves on average
| ~50k people on each possible combination, you are now competing
| against ~50.000 people instead of 8 billion!!!, if you become the
| top 98% percentile of that group, you are now in the top 100
| worldwide of that combination.
|
| Now try those calculations again but with 1000 areas of expertise
| peignoir wrote:
| Something that makes me feel better has been to read Einstein or
| Feynman or other physicist who helped advance mankind knowledge.
| They all share two things, first they profoundly understand their
| subject and explain it as simply as possible, two they have no
| shame talking about their weaknesses since they have nothing to
| prove. We re only human and what you perceive as you being dumb
| and other being geniuses is just an illusion. We all are
| knowledgeable about different subjects and the one on the top are
| their being some amazing alignment of luck...
| sitkack wrote:
| Me smiling in the corner. I could have written this, but am too
| shallow and dumb (joking, none of us are).
|
| Other folks sentiments like
|
| @foobarian in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29282781 I
| totally agree, same in the reply by @ksdale
|
| We are all in this together and should act like it.
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| This is called Imposter Syndrome. I had the same thing when I
| first got into a company where I was working with seriously smart
| and talented people.
|
| - https://www.verywellmind.com/imposter-syndrome-and-social-an...
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
|
| - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/imposter-syndrome
|
| Long story short: If you're hitting your goals and getting paid,
| don't sweat the extracurriculars.
| mcfist wrote:
| Second to this. There are a story I read about a very
| successful diplomat who was so hard on itself that one day he
| fainted from the stress, because he thought he wasn't good
| enough. As he found the hard way that this cannot continue, he
| decided to fake it, if he cannot make it, and que sera. Very
| surprisingly to him, noone noticed and he was no less
| successfull afterwards.
| moosey wrote:
| One of the most sure fire ways to accomplish nothing is too judge
| yourself based on your accomplishments. The other leading cause
| of procrastination, according to modern learning research, is too
| give up when frustrated... The belief that things should come
| easy.
|
| If you stop judging yourself on your accomplishments, then you
| can grow without goals, with just experimentation and whimsy. I
| guarantee that was the mindset when roller coaster tycoon was
| created.
|
| To help, accept that wealth is based more on luck (were your
| parents rich when they banged?) than any kind of skill. The vast
| majority of wealthy people did not work for it, and probably will
| never have to work at all.
|
| Also, just living day to day in a society that wants you to judge
| yourself on accomplishment is hard. Dump these ideas, meditate,
| calm, and then grow.
|
| Edit: I'm going to add another thing about labels, specifically
| when people call someone else "creative", and how harmful it is.
| Instead, label actions. Sometimes I do a creative thing, but that
| doesn't make me creative. Sometimes I do something cruel, or
| yell. They doesn't make me mean or cruel... That's the
| fundamental attribution error.
|
| I recommend seeing a counselor to help you with these negative
| thoughts.
| kokanee wrote:
| Watch out! You might be conflating success and happiness. We all
| know how common it is for professional outliers (be they
| geniuses, celebrities, athletes, etc) to struggle with
| depression, loneliness, anxiety, and addiction. In the 1900s
| becoming a world-class jazz musician was basically a sentence to
| death in your 40s. Consider the stereotype of the man who devotes
| everything to his career only to retire bitter, alone, and
| wealthy. It's all too common.
|
| People are happy when they have meaningful social time with
| friends and family, when they spend free time building or growing
| things with their hands, when they are able to be active and
| healthy, and when their basic physical needs are met. Once your
| career is able to reliably cover your basic needs, the next thing
| to optimize for is freeing up your time. Unless your passions in
| life are truly aligned with your career, and you're able to stave
| off burnout, I see few compelling reasons to make your profession
| your legacy.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| Do you have a few good friends? A wife or girlfriend? Do you get
| along moderately well with your family? If you hit 2/3 with this,
| let alone 3/3 you are in a place much better than the majority.
| Add to that you have a decent career, I'd say you're top quarter
| easy. Are you healthy? Add decently healthy to this and your lot
| in life is probably top eighth easy.
|
| Grow, improve your self, follow your dreams, but remember at
| least every now and again to count your blessings too.
| staunch wrote:
| It may help to consider that the most impressive human being ever
| is extremely shallow and dumb compared to what is possible.
|
| Future humans will have genetic engineering and computer
| augmentation, at the very least. They will (correctly) view all
| previous generations of human as comparatively primitive. That
| won't invalidate what they did.
|
| My thinking is that:
|
| 1. Some humans make large contributions to humanity's progress.
|
| 2. Almost everyone makes _some_ contribution.
|
| 3. A few unlucky people contribute nothing at all.
|
| 4. We should count ourselves lucky if we can contribute
| _something_.
|
| 5. There's no reason to spend a lot of comparing contributions,
| except insofar as it helps people contribute more in a healthy
| and productive way.
|
| 6. We should all contribute as much we can figure out how to, as
| one part of living a full and happy life.
| shane_b wrote:
| 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.
| cpr wrote:
| "Never compare the insides of your life to the outsides of
| someone else's."
|
| --My wife ;-)
| nell wrote:
| In the past if every city had one talented person, he would've
| been a celebrity. But no one felt bad since 99% of people around
| would've been average and there was one exceptional person. Now
| with the internet, we get to watch the talented person from every
| city and town in the world. Social media and google have become
| efficient in surfacing the most exciting/valuable content in
| front of us.
|
| Given our window of attention is limited, what we see all day is
| excellence and we feel mediocre.
|
| In short get out of your virtual world and go people watching in
| the real world to find that you are good enough.
| codegeek wrote:
| I know the feeling but I will leave you with this:
|
| "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man;
| true nobility is being superior to your former self.
|
| -- Ernest Hemingway"
| HWR_14 wrote:
| There are a lot of people who look at that past self as being
| something they fell away from. In some cases by choices they
| made and regret and in others where they suffered some
| accident. I'm not sure how the Hemingway quote is supposed to
| make them feel.
| tomrod wrote:
| That the future can still inspire, once they account for sunk
| costs being irrelevant even if emotionally difficult.
| Typhon wrote:
| This is one of those things that is both very true, and
| very much easier to say than do.
| mariodiana wrote:
| Thanks. The horrible thing is I came here to say that sometimes
| I find a project that I did a year or two ago and end up
| feeling shallow and dumb.
| rrauenza wrote:
| Embrace that feeling but reframe it. It means you've learned
| something and grown since you did that project a year ago.
|
| If you looked back on work you did five years ago and didn't
| see room for improvement ... you've had no growth in your
| skills and experience.
| freetinker wrote:
| This. Life is a constant process of reframing.
| codegeek wrote:
| You will be surprised how much you know. Comparing with
| others is almost always a losing game. Trust me because I do
| this a lot myself. There is _always_ someone whom you want to
| be like. But remember there are a lot of people who want to
| be like YOU. So just focus on yourself and keep becoming a
| better version of you and most importantly, keep an eye on
| your Goals whatever they may be. Remember that there is a
| cost to everything. You may look at someone and say "Wow
| they are so smart or successful or whatever". But do you know
| what they don't have or what they truly desire ? You will
| never know. May be what they truly desire, you have it.
| genjipress wrote:
| Don't compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to what you
| were before.
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| The only thing, and I mean that literally, is how you feel in
| your head. That's it. Your legacy doesn't matter. Your
| contributions don't matter. Not really... They only matter if you
| let their perceived omission make your life in your head feel
| worse. Find a way to be happy in your head, and you will live a
| better life than almost all of the people you think are better
| than you.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| I understand these thoughts and feelings 100%. All I can do is
| leave you with some fighting thoughts (in the sense of fighting
| for a meaningful life):
|
| * Compare and despair.
|
| * What good do these thoughts and emotions do you? Yes of course
| perhaps you need these feelings to be driven to achieve what you
| want. But if you dwell on them for too long then you'll just
| waste more years not doing the things that you really feel to be
| meaningful, and then you'll be in an even deeper hole.
|
| * Furthermore I'm skeptical that these "compare and despair"
| thoughts really will succeed in driving most people to "go out
| there and make it happen". I personally have found it much more
| invigorating and inspiring to acknowledge/praise/bless my fellow
| people. "Wow! They created that. Good for them. What can I learn
| from them?" Yes I know this reeks of "growth mindset" lingo but
| it works. At minimum it's a thought/emotion pattern that makes me
| not miserable day-to-day.
|
| Also it's very interesting that you're a technical writer! I have
| been one myself for 9 years. At first I had major inferiority
| complex to engineers. I wonder if it's a common problem that is
| maybe specific to our field? Happy to chat about our industry 1
| on 1 if you think that will help. Find my contact on my website
| (link in bio).
|
| And last I will say that I know sometimes people just need to
| vent and need support so I feel a bit rude giving unsolicited
| advice to strangers. But this is a forum and I only share my
| thoughts in the spirit of hoping that something clicks for
| someone and helps them breakthrough.
| andkon wrote:
| Y'know, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder both
| are things that are hard to handle. The latter is usually
| connected to having had a childhood that was so chaotic and
| confusing that it was hard to tell good from bad.
|
| That's likely gonna give you all sorts of feelings about the
| stuff you're interested in for your own reasons. The truth is -
| knowing that your own dreams do exist is the biggest step anyone
| can take. And unlearning all the things you learned that insisted
| that your dreams are superficial and worthless compared to what
| other people are doing... that's something you owe it to yourself
| to do, so that you can live your own life.
|
| The neat thing is that when you learn how to allow yourself to
| live your own life, the things other people are great at aren't
| such a threat anymore. It's actually really neat that the guy
| wrote Rollercoaster Tycoon in assembly, by himself. Wild! And
| that also says nothing about you, or what matters to you, or
| whether you're deserving of your own wants and interests.
|
| The trick is learning why you came to believe that these things
| are reflections of your own perceived incapacity and
| unworthiness. The only way I know to do that is in therapy, and
| it's tough, but it's worth it. You get to unlock your own self,
| that way. Good luck!
| biggestlou wrote:
| There's no such thing as "raw" intelligence.
|
| Those people you find so incredibly impressive who have done such
| worthwhile things? Every single one of them sucks ass at a
| multitude of things. Every single one of them would see something
| in your set of capabilities that would astound them.
|
| It takes a vast constellation of capabilities, including yours,
| to create and sustain our world.
| flatiron wrote:
| What really impress me are people who are great at many varied
| things. The creator of Stardew valley drew every image.
| Composed every song. Coded every line. It's an insane
| accomplishment.
| sitkack wrote:
| Also super rare (currently), I am extremely curious what the
| ratio of nurture to nature is for these folks? Having crossed
| paths with a couple of folks like this they don't seem much
| different than other people. Humans are basically wonderful
| all purpose organisms, with the right interest and enough
| time on task they can do almost anything.
|
| Maybe a unique perspective or a deeply ingrained and
| unflappable "lets try this or how does this work?" attitude
| is all it takes.
|
| Stay curious!
| callesgg wrote:
| Yes there is, with that said it is not what matters in his
| examples.
| carnitine wrote:
| John von Neumann could multiply eight digit numbers mentally
| and hold conversation in multiple languages by the age of six.
| How could that be attributed to anything but raw intelligence?
| Had his parents somehow stumbled upon the perfect formula for
| child rearing in 1900s Hungary?
| krumpet wrote:
| I've always felt that if one can point to themselves as kind,
| thoughtful, and willing to listen to and help others, they can
| count themselves among the very best society has to offer. Those
| are skills anyone can foster and use to brighten someone's day
| and make the world a kinder, happier place.
| foxhop wrote:
| I love you.
|
| These feeling are not unique to you. These feelings are a product
| of the times.
|
| There are many doors. The internet let's you see them all. Some
| are wrong to open. You have free will and creative spirit inside
| you.
|
| Whatever you do, do it out of love and what feels good.
|
| You know what good feels like. Do more of that. Things that make
| you feel good. Figure out what makes you feel good and do that
| when you have spare time. Try to reinterpret something.
|
| Be thankful for what you do have. Be general at first, you have
| air to breathe.
|
| Now just play and have fun creatinf. Even if it fails. We
| wouldn't be growing & learning without failure, now would we?
|
| Figure out how to move quickly and interate.
|
| Reduce the time to recovery from mistakes. Make failure cheap.
|
| Share it with the world and try to find collaborators.
|
| Rinse and repeat.
|
| Remember we all have the power of creation in us.
|
| I AM
| achenatx wrote:
| read up on stoicism. In the grand scheme of the universe all of
| us are completely insignificant. In the context of our society,
| only a very few will be remembered 20-30 years after they are
| dead and even fewer 100years.
|
| I could achieve so much more if I was willing to put forth the
| effort, take the risks, or make the sacrifices. Im not though,
| and I have come to grips with that. Ultimately everything is a
| choice. Every day you choose to do what you do. The key is to be
| happy with the choices that you make instead of wishing that you
| would make other choices. Whatever I do, I choose and I accept
| it. (Im aware of the discussions of lack of true free will)
|
| Does creating a new software language, a new backend, social
| media site really matter in the grand scheme of things? Does
| being mayor, governor, or even president? Are you willing to make
| changes to achieve goals that are out of your reach? If not, why
| be upset with yourself?
|
| This thought process of the ultimate meaninglessness of life can
| lead to nihilism or contentment.
|
| I am fortunate that I have always been happy with my choices. But
| many people have to work a bit to come to acceptance.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| > There's a lot of subjects and activities that I'm really
| interested of getting into but I can't just dive into it.
|
| I mean you could pick one of these and try to get in. If it's
| about SW dev, it would probably make things easier if it's
| backend related or at least including backend like fullstack.
| Actually backend stacks are also evolving quite slowly. What
| usually impresses people is something that you built with
| technology that you really like. E.g. once at an interview there
| was someone presenting I think a web based managing tool for
| music albums. Like end-to-end working, not many feature but just
| worked. This kind of software exists hundreds of times, it's not
| about the idea but the execution. Or like one time I applied for
| a job and showed them my self-hosting stack (Email, Web server,
| Wiki) written entirely in Ansible. You could pick a stack that is
| both in demand and that you like, pick a possible idea and
| realize it. I guess learning by doing is anyway easier. You could
| then host it on Azure or Heroku for free. (Or EC2 or EKS if you
| want to include DevOps) Also basic design can be realized with
| Bootstrap or whatever is the current go-to-framework for that.
| And then perhaps put it on Github in a single commit once you're
| done. Most devs don't involve in Opensource activity and get fine
| very well anyways. FWIW I appreciate working with
| fullstack+devops because of the changing tasks but don't expect
| any badges because of the broader knowledge which is then not
| necessarily very deep. Also it's just work after all :-) But I
| admit it's easier to find new jobs.
|
| So yeah, learning by doing and there are blogs
| posts/Stackoverflow/YouTube videos/forums/Discord chats for
| everything if you're stuck.
| tehjoker wrote:
| It's probably also helpful to join a community of people doing
| the activity. It's easier to stay motivated (and learn faster!)
| if you have a bunch of friendly people to talk to.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| There are people 10x smarter than you who feel like schlubs, and
| people 10x dumber than you who feel like rock stars. I fail to
| see your point.
| DantesKite wrote:
| One book that helped me in this respect is "Mastery" by Robert
| Greene.
|
| Go through this Twitter account and if anything resonates with
| you, I definitely recommend reading the book.
|
| https://twitter.com/masteryquotes
|
| Envy is a capricious emotion.
| crookshanked wrote:
| Both penjelly and pgruenbacher mention great points. Personally
| feeling very similar to OP as well.
|
| The things I need to do better are sleep better and exercise
| more.
|
| Counseling helps address some of these feelings but only go so
| far to motivate one to take care of themselves...
| atdrummond wrote:
| I have the same diagnoses as you. I also became a Heroin addict
| after cancer/Crohns treatment and being kicked out of my own
| startup.
|
| I can't encourage you any more heavily to explore CBT if you
| haven't already. Changed my life for the better.
|
| (Same with Vipassana meditation but I'm hesitant about how some
| adherents/practitioners treat it as a cure all salve.)
| vorteux wrote:
| It's not so much imposter syndrome. It's that research-based
| graduate experience matters, not in what one learns, but that it
| forces a person to go through 4 to 7 years of deeply focused
| introspection, often on fundamental reality.
|
| I suspect similar experience can be gained in a monastery or deep
| spiritual processes. It's not that PhD is a requirement, people
| gain this ability in different ways, just it's the most standard
| way to set aside 5-7 years to focus nowadays.
|
| It's not the kind of experience that one can gain from undergrad,
| or in a regular 9-5. Also when we are older, it's difficult to
| find the kind of time to do deeply focused introspection on a
| single topic.
|
| Without this process, it's easy to get trapped into superficial
| learning, and confuse regurgitating factoids with knowledge and
| insight.
|
| The key to do this once again is that instead of trying to learn
| everything, focus on a singular topic very deeply for a non-
| trivial amount of time.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| This was strangely motivational. Given how you write and your
| degree of introspection you can get to where you want to be.
|
| One thing I realized lately, is the hard work you put in today
| may not bear fruit for a while. There's also a power of
| compounding. Ultimately it all starts with what you are
| passionate about.
|
| Not to be rude, it's good you feel shallow and dumb, because it
| shows you perceive the absence. So now it's a question of what
| you do with that feeling.
|
| What gets you excited today? How can you start making baby steps
| towards that? Start small, and remember if you make 1% towards
| something every day, that will really quickly start to add up.
|
| The worst thing you can do is nothing! And then you'd grow old,
| look back at your life, and feel the regret of what you could
| have done, when now you are old, graying, wrinkly and dying.
|
| Isn't life too short to have that regret? And you are only 30!
| dougSF70 wrote:
| I would add that the internet doesnt help either. It is full of
| people's success stories, by and large, that can really eat away
| at your soul if you look for too long.
| vorteux wrote:
| It's not so much imposter syndrome. It's that research-based
| graduate experience matters, not in what one learns, but that it
| forces a person to go through 4 to 7 years of deeply focused
| introspection, often on fundamental reality.
|
| I suspect similar experience can be gained in a monastery or deep
| spiritual processes. It's not that PhD is a requirement, people
| gain this ability in different ways, just it's the most standard
| way to set aside 4-7 years to focus nowadays.
|
| It's not the kind of experience that one can gain from standard
| undergrad education, or in a regular 9-5. Also when we are older,
| it's difficult to find the kind of time to do deeply focused
| introspection on a single topic.
|
| Without this process, it's easy to get trapped into superficial
| learning, and confuse regurgitating factoids with knowledge and
| insight.
|
| The key to do this once again is that instead of trying to learn
| everything, focus on a singular topic very deeply for a non-
| trivial amount of time.
| redact207 wrote:
| I think you're underestimating your talents. A technical writer
| with a development background, when applied correctly, is a
| powerful force.
|
| You have the ability convey complicated concepts in a concise
| manner. You can do so much with that. Is there something in your
| tech world that you're interested in, that's hard to grasp, that
| you could start your own blog/YouTube/ebook/course with? Perhaps
| you'll become the goto expert on it.
|
| I often wonder how the oracles in our industry get to where they
| are, and everyone starts and persists - often for years - before
| being recognised as such. Small consistent progress over a long
| period of time is what makes an overnight success.
| rl3 wrote:
| Layperson here in a similar boat.
|
| So, on the face of it you have imposter syndrome. Many kind
| commenters have already offered up a bunch of platitudes to help
| in that department. It's a surprisingly common thing, actually.
|
| What's less common is low self-esteem or self-hatred to a degree
| that it becomes a major impediment in your life. Your post is
| littered with language that suggests this. I know, because I've
| lived that reality my entire adult life. It ain't fun.
|
| But you know what? While as real as that feeling is, to say it's
| not exactly rooted in truth would be an understatement. Your
| brain's biochemistry has an outsized effect on your perception of
| reality, which includes both how you view yourself and what
| thoughts tend to percolate into your mind.
|
| There's something called the Default Mode Network[0] which is
| often mentioned in pop-sci neurology and psych articles. I'm not
| qualified to speak on it from any scientific or medical point of
| view. However, what I can tell you is that for me, understanding
| it on a relatively simplistic level has served as a fantastic
| metaphor that has allowed me to both forgive myself, and
| understand that my own negative self-image often times isn't
| necessarily rooted in truth.
|
| When I've taken medication known to suppress, affect or otherwise
| normalize the DMN, the difference is so dramatic to the point of
| being: "Wow, I.. I don't hate myself right now." as if it's
| something novel I barely have a concept of. Not hating yourself
| is of course the first step to having any sort of foundation you
| can build on.
|
| I'd say "don't compare yourself to others", or "love yourself",
| but platitudes like that are more detrimental than helpful when
| whoever you're saying it to someone who couldn't if they tried
| due to overwhelming biochemical forces at play. I don't know if
| that's true in your case, but it seems like it could be a
| possibility.
|
| > _I sometimes wonder if my mental condition or my medication has
| had an effect on this: I 'm bipolar schizoaffective and
| borderline._
|
| Yes, it probably has everything to do with it. With that
| diagnosis, you play life on hard mode and don't really have a
| choice in the matter. In my opinion, you should be congratulating
| yourself for doing as well as you are. This isn't to say you're
| somehow inferior to others; on the contrary, you seem very
| intelligent.
|
| I would show your post to your psychiatrist and see what they
| think. It's likely that they have a very good idea how to help
| you, because they see that kind of thing a lot.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I sometimes wonder if my mental condition or my
| medication has had an effect on this: I'm bipolar
| schizoaffective and borderline.
|
| Hey, I don't know if anybody has told you lately but maintaining
| a successful career with these challenges is fucking spectacular,
| _and you 're doing it!_
|
| Be proud, friend!
| dvh1990 wrote:
| I'll be brutally honest because I used to be in your situation.
|
| Each and every person you admire has poured thousands of hours
| into some project. For some that's a degree. For some it's a game
| they wrote, for others it's company that they've started...
|
| Have you done that? Spent thousands of hours on a single thing?
| Focused on a project long enough to actually see results? I'm
| guessing not, because if you would have then this would have been
| a Show HN post.
|
| Ask yourself why you are content with doing anything besides the
| one thing that you should do: Commit to some project and don't
| give up until it is done?
| 63 wrote:
| What's interesting is that most of these people didn't start
| with OP's mindset. They didn't say "I want to pour thousands of
| hours into this one thing until I see results so I can compare
| myself against other people and feel satisfied." Starting from
| that mindset is already putting you behind. Doing something
| because you love doing it and not because you have any
| expectations will get you there faster, but only if you can do
| it. It's all survivor bias.
| dvh1990 wrote:
| I agree with that, but I had to learn this lesson the hard
| way: By trying to do things I hate.
|
| If you have that belief, sometimes the way to get out of it
| is to play it out to conclusion.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This gets at the crux of my angst along the OP's line: When I
| look at people who have dedicated themselves to that thing that
| they pored so many hours into, what I always wonder is, "How
| did they make the decision to put so much of their time into
| _that thing_. " Like, I agree with OP that the Roller Coaster
| Tycoon one man project is really impressive. But there's no
| world in which I could possibly care enough about building a
| roller coaster video game to put that time in. And besides a
| precious few things that are ludicrously hard to break into -
| contributing to cancer research, working on nuclear fusion,
| space travel, etc. - it's hard for me to imagine pouring my
| soul into things that require so much commitment.
| emerged wrote:
| It would most often be a Show HN post which then went nowhere.
| Just because you dedicated a massive amount of time on
| something doesn't mean it will be a success. OP perspective
| still holds even if he's done the thousands of hours thing
| multiple times without it panning out.
| dvh1990 wrote:
| You can't guarantee results, but you can guarantee a good
| attempt to get results because the latter is under your
| control.
| knuthsat wrote:
| This attitude is nice, but unfortunately in most cases it does
| not apply.
|
| Many people have different sensibilities and tastes. Those that
| become great alone are extremely talented, gifted and innately
| know what to filter and how to improve.
|
| Most of us do need some guidance and there's not enough hours
| of piano playing for us regular folks to discover all of the
| learning tricks with which we become insanely good.
|
| Programming is hard and just putting in the hours won't help
| that much, especially now when the whole internet is polluted
| with unnecessary stuff.
| dvh1990 wrote:
| I understand where you're coming from, but a person in the
| situation that the OP is in has only two options: Do nothing,
| or do something.
|
| Yes, achieving "greatness" is sadly not in the cards for most
| of us. But to try is a choice anyone can make. In the end,
| would you rather have tried and failed or not tried at all?
| interfixus wrote:
| > _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.
| dvh1990 wrote:
| Perhaps, but I believe it is a mindset worth pushing forward.
| elteto wrote:
| I don't know if you will get to see my comment by now but you are
| an incredibly good writer. Miles above the email churn I deal
| with daily.
|
| I found myself reading and just flowing over your ideas. Your
| pace is good, your writing is simple yet thoughtful. Your
| sentence are not too short or too long and your paragraph
| boundaries make sense to me. Honestly, you are a good writer.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| Jeez, dude, don't be so hard on yourself!
|
| Comparing yourself to other people is a losing game - no matter
| how awesome you are you'll always find people that are "better"
| than you at whatever, as they would to, unless you're Michael
| Jordan.
|
| Find things you like to do that make you happy and do those
| things. That works for me. I'm a college drop-out/software
| developer with skeletons in my closet just like you.
| toto444 wrote:
| Funny that you use Mickael Jordan as an example because one of
| his quote is quite popular these days :
|
| > I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost
| almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game
| winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over
| again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > no matter how awesome you are you'll always find people that
| are "better" than you at whatever, as they would to, unless
| you're Michael Jordan.
|
| You mean failed minor league baseball player Michael Jordon?
| Remember that even if you are the best in the world at one
| thing, outside of your specialty people are going to be better
| than you.
| shane_b wrote:
| Even at basketball, Michael Jordan was bad in high school and
| only at his first couple years of college did he build the
| work ethic to make him what he is. He's not inherently
| exception.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| A lot of bad advice here generally trending to a defeatist
| attitude. The simple fact is that when you work on something for
| an extended period of time, persistently, it grows and grows.
| Give a solid hour of work every day for a year and you might be
| surprised what kind of things you can build. Now, think about
| doing this full time for years on - there are a lot of smart
| people but more often than not, aforementioned persistence is
| masquerading as genius.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If you had been born in the middle of the 1960's or so you too
| probably would be a crack assembly programmer, you didn't really
| have a choice in 1982 if you wanted your stuff to run at an
| acceptable speed.
|
| The good news is: retrocomputing is a thing and you can set up an
| environment like that for pennies nowadays. But it will take time
| and you will have a lot of frustrating experiences, nothing more
| humbling than computer from four decades ago that does _exactly_
| what you tell it to do, no more, no less (which is rarely what
| you intended it to do...).
|
| Best of luck getting your feeling under control, I am _very_
| happy that I 'm not forced into todays' fast moving environment
| where skillsets usefullness has a half life that is short enough
| that you will have to retrain many times during a single career,
| something that in the past was much less of a problem. And this
| pace is still accelerating, people born today will likely have it
| worse.
| csw-001 wrote:
| When I feel this way I volunteer locally in my community. I am
| immediately reminded there's more work to do helping our fellow
| humans than can ever be done - and it makes me feel proud and
| useful when I would otherwise be frustrated and burned out.
| meesterdude wrote:
| Intelligence is what you make of it. It sounds like you're at a
| point where you're satisfied to stare out a window, and there's
| nothing wrong with that; unless you want otherwise for yourself,
| or if you feel that's not your authentic self. Its up to you how
| much you want to engage with the world - and the people you
| mention earlier sound like highly engaged individuals. Likewise,
| your medical situation could totally be impacting things as well!
| So worthwhile to look into that too.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I feel you. I've been to programming since I was a kid and made a
| career out of it. Nowadays, I see kids doing shit that would blow
| many (most?) professionals out of the water, a seeming experts in
| very difficult domains. For as long as I've been programming, I
| haven't made or done anything notable or worthy of any sort of
| intrigue by my standards. Most people I have immediate
| relationships with would probably consider me pretty damn
| successful, and most people on places like here would consider me
| middling hack. I don't really want either of their ideas of
| "success", but the dumb ideas I have of it.
|
| Don't get me wrong. I know a little about _a lot_. Mostly things
| that are of no value whatsoever, and only enough to make me sound
| like I have some level of expertise. But if I real expert stepped
| in I'd likely get schooled immediately (as had happened many
| times).
|
| I don't think I'll be able to do more with my career in software
| than I already have, nor drive it in the direction I'd like. And
| frankly, I'm getting tired of the "a little more money, same
| bullshit" stuff. I still have love for programming, but the way I
| inherently approach it and work are just not going to ever get me
| anywhere.
|
| I too, have spent some years bouncing across a handful of
| interests, typically only to find out I don't have what it takes
| to even get a few inches deep into it (whether that be cognitive
| ability,focus, or whatever). I've seriously thought about going
| into academia for a bit to get the thrill of working on edge of
| something, hoping that the structure and resources provided might
| show me something new, but that's mostly because of the
| implementation), but it feels like a distant pipe dream more than
| anything. By the time I'd be able to do to, I'd likely be to old
| to fit the profile of what that type of organization wants from
| somebody, and me doing anything remotely novel or innovative
| feels so alien. I don't even want recognition or immortalization,
| or even money really. I just want to have worked on something
| that I'm proud of.
| treebot wrote:
| Hey I have bipolar and borderline too! But I just want to say,
| life isn't about achieving things; it's just about being happy.
| And a little secret: achieving things doesn't actually make you
| happy. Maybe temporarily, but anyone who achieves great things is
| never satisfied. Otherwise, they never would have put in the work
| to achieve what they did in the first place. It's sort of a
| prerequisite.
|
| I was really good at a sport through high school and college. And
| one thing I noticed very early is that how good I was didn't make
| me happy. Sure, in the instant I won, I was happy. But then I
| went back to practice the next day, and was just focused on the
| next opponent. And then when I lost, I was crushed. I didn't
| become any happier as a person or enjoy my life more or anything
| as I got better at the sport. I cared a lot about getting better.
| What actually made me happy was just doing the sport itself,
| especially in the moments where I let go of the outcome. It's the
| old, appreciate the journey, not the destination. It's really
| true!
|
| I also know a lot of people who are really good at things. They
| are no happier than anyone else. It's not something to be jealous
| of, or feel bad that you are not like them.
|
| I also will say that I started to focus on achievement a lot less
| when I had a kid. It became obvious to me that what I did for my
| kid was infinitely more important than what I achieved for
| myself, and pursuing success for myself was really just a kind of
| game.
| i1856511 wrote:
| Consider human evolution and human psychology. What has been most
| important to most individual humans, for all of history? Having a
| safe and satisfying individual life, providing for and
| integrating with those friends and family in our immediate
| presence.
|
| That's the biological firmware running in your brain. The
| Internet screws with this perception. It can be a "make yourself
| feel bad" machine under the right circumstances.
|
| Hold those 0.0001% up as personal heroes (keeping in mind most
| people have no connection at all to writing Corkscrew Follies in
| Assembly) and use that inspiration to live your life to your own
| satisfaction. That's what Chris Sawyer was doing too.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I have to say that HN is toxic if you are suffering from Imposter
| Syndrome. Clicking the stories on here is always going to make
| you feel bad. Take some time off from HN. Most of the human
| population isn't doing the things that the people on here are
| doing.
| locallost wrote:
| Don't fall into the trap thinking that the Rollercoaster Tycoon
| person is merely talented, and a kind of measuring stick for what
| talent is. They are extremely gifted and if you're not that then
| you can still be OK and impressive in your own right! There are
| many other things that can be said, but start with that.
| trafnar wrote:
| This feeling is familiar to me as well, I'm sure almost everyone
| feels it.
|
| It reminds me of drawing advice, people always want to know how
| to get better at drawing, and the answer inevitably is just
| "practice more", I'd bet drawing skill matches very closely to
| "time spent drawing" and programming is probably the same way
| too.
| post_break wrote:
| We're on a rock floating around. An asteroid took out the
| dinosaurs, we could be next, no one going to remember anyone if
| that happens. What's the point of being remembered, when at the
| end of the day none of it will really matter in the future. Kind
| of a downer but I just do what makes me happy, even if I know I'm
| not smart enough to write code.
| leto_ii wrote:
| You should remember that whenever you see things people put out,
| you're usually seeing their best, most polished work. It's true
| that if you follow hn for example you'll see lots of impressive
| work done by really motivated and talented people. This, however,
| is the tip of the tip in many ways.
|
| Don't judge yourself harshly and try to detach from comparisons
| with the world. In your spare time do whatever you find
| meaningful because of the thing itself, not because of how
| impressive it is.
|
| Also note that building things, even if they're basic, is more
| motivating and useful than going over endless tutorials, wiki
| pages, online courses etc.
|
| And again, do what is meaningful to you, not what is fashionable
| or impressive to strangers, hn, recruiters etc.
| topicseed wrote:
| Genius is to be found in many shapes and forms.
|
| From the incredible empathy my partner has towards colleagues
| going through personal situations (when many literally wouldn't
| care, let alone waste brain juice), to those smart programmers
| committing to open source whilst struggling to make ends meet
| when they could easily get a high-paying job, to those mustering
| the strength to work three jobs to pay bills, and so the list
| goes.
|
| There's always somebody different doing great. To quote the great
| J Cole -- "love yourz"
| interroboink wrote:
| My recommendation: feel your feelings, all the way through.
|
| There might be some tendency, when you feel small, to feel bad
| about feeling small -- as though it is further evidence of your
| worthlessness -- and that itself makes you feel worse, and down
| the spiral you go... Been there (:
|
| But if you make space for (or even _welcome_) those feelings,
| even if you don't like them, then in my experience you end up at
| a better place.
|
| I only mention this because you seem to be beating yourself up
| about this ("I feel shallow/dumb"). You can feel bad and still be
| a good person; it's an easy mixup to make.
|
| (I am reminded of this funny image:
| https://i.redd.it/9ubhqov2u9k01.jpg [1])
|
| Also, not that this makes your feelings go away, but looking at
| people who are rich/smart/influential/famous is looking at
| outliers, and people who likely had a lot of luck in their
| background, upbringing, genes, education, being-in-the-right-
| place-at-the-right-time, etc. etc. to achieve their success, on
| top of their hard work. For every succesful indie video game,
| there are 1000 people who worked just as hard on theirs but
| didn't get a big break. The same is true in all sorts of areas of
| life, big to small. And just in general, FWIW, I don't recommend
| judging your self-worth by comparing to others, whether they're
| outliers or not (:
|
| But sorry you're feeling down; *internet hug*.
|
| [1] (in case the direct link dies)
| https://old.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/comments/82lny8/i_wa...
| baby wrote:
| I have a hard time understanding what you mean by welcoming
| them, or feeling them through. But if I interpret that as
| "accepting it", as in understanding that it's totally fine and
| that pressure is always created from comparing yourself, then I
| agree. Feynmann himself is famous for saying "disregards".
| interroboink wrote:
| > what you mean by welcoming them, or feeling them through.
| But if I interpret that as "accepting it" ...
|
| I think acceptance is the right idea, yes.
|
| There can be some urge to deny one's own emotions, perhaps
| push them aside as some sort of inconvenience or character
| flaw. Some might inwardly shout at themselves "stop whining!
| you're selfish to wallow like this!" (or any number of
| variations, both quiet and loud). That tends to just create
| more misery down the line, IMO. So, "welcoming" was meant as
| the opposite of that.
|
| And processing emotions takes time, so by "feeling them
| through" I just meant allowing that process to run its
| course, rather than trying to inhibit or deny it. I don't
| think there's any stopping it, you just have to ride the
| wave.
|
| YMMV of course, I'm no psychologist (:
| bluefox wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Erikson#Erikson's_theory_...
|
| Welcome to stage 7. (Don't mind the age ranges, which shift with
| time and place.)
| megameter wrote:
| It's very hard to compare oneself to others.
|
| There's an arcade bar I frequent to play DDR. If I go later in
| the evening when it's busy I will always get someone who is a bit
| awestruck and says "I've never seen anyone so good at that game"
| and I'm like "yeah, there are better people than me" or "the
| machine tells me exactly how bad I am". But it does not really
| matter to this audience that my technical skills are less than
| perfect because what they saw was astonishing regardless. And for
| me, it's a personal journey in returning to a game that I played
| for a while when it was new and then returned to many years
| later, after realizing that having it there filled in a "missing
| piece" of life and the actual thing of being good at the game was
| not really important.
|
| More recently, I've been doing some digital illustrations for fun
| and have gradually built up a process that is hugely digital in
| its design: composite reference images together, do some tracing
| over them to study the proportions and planes, then redraw as
| needed with a simplified design, using art fundamentals to guide
| me. Doing this has largely eliminated "guess and check" and gives
| results that are extremely accurate and detailed in their
| representation, more than any freehand from-imagination result.
| But that's just one measure of success in the imagery. I'm still
| going to be a bit jealous of artists who have great control over
| their freehand lines, but I can finish work this way instead of
| sitting and dreaming. So it's a great step past the creative
| bottleneck.
|
| With stories like those of a Chris Sawyer, there's a combination
| of obsession with the craft and coherence of purpose. That is,
| Chris spent a huge part of his life thinking about assembly code
| and its applications towards games, and then eventually put it
| towards a project that had few contradictions to it, which became
| RCT. There are many people, myself included, who put years into
| their game and then realize they were kidding themselves and had
| an incoherent approach to the design that ensured it would never
| feel finished or focused. And when that happens the craft ceases
| to matter - the project is just a timesink.
|
| Failing in that way, putting in a huge amount of time on a game,
| really made me despair for a bit, but then right as that happened
| the cryptocurrency portfolio I had made a few years prior
| achieved moonshot gains, which is like, "oh, well then, I guess I
| succeeded anyway?" That moment really clarified how arbitrary
| succeeding can be; the comparative effort/return of the two
| endeavors is enormous.
|
| You're only 30, and that's actually fine. Between 30 and 40 often
| marks a shift in attitudes because you're getting out of the
| feeling of being a "young striver" trying to get ahead of the
| crowd in a highly visible space. You can fall into a depressed
| state if where you are isn't where you saw yourself, but it's
| also easier to give yourself leeway to pursue things nobody else
| cares about, which means it can be creatively fertile. It just
| rests a lot more on continuing to build yourself up beyond your
| personal issues - health, finances, character development,
| virtues and all of that. Maybe you don't have the fortitude to
| make a huge game project or research cutting edge techniques, but
| you can do more modest things and still find admiration as with
| my DDR sessions.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Don't forget that while you're having these feelings some people
| are shooting heroin in their veins.
|
| It could be better, but it could be much worse.
|
| You were not born to be the best, but the best version of
| yourself. If you don't have the genes, social conditions etc
| there are a lot of things you can't reach. But you should try to
| reach what you can so when death comes you will be satisfied by
| what you have done with your life.
| jrsdav wrote:
| You sound a lot like someone I know. And like someone I know, I
| gave them lots of advice like the kind you're getting here that
| never really took with them. Then I realized something. The way
| you experience the world is different from "most people", and
| thus the advice for "most people" will just make you feel more
| empty as you struggle and fail with it.
|
| Here's what I can tell you about yourself. You are probably much
| smarter, much more talented, and have more good qualities than
| you realize. You have to constant challenge these messages you're
| telling yourself (use CBT as a framework). Start digging _deep_
| for your good qualities, remind yourself of them constantly.
| Start "doing the opposite", and work on radical acceptance. Get a
| good coach/therapist who can understand you, and help you see
| yourself.
|
| You can find joy and happiness in life, once you accept that what
| that looks like for you is different than how it looks for other
| people. Acceptance is key.
| Cilvic wrote:
| I feel OP is painting very black & white, but a little
| exaggeration might help convey the importance. Also I'm
| currently more in a white phase, than a black one.
|
| That being said, I was drawn to the thread for helpful replies
| and enjoyed feeling that I'm not alone in feeling like OP.
|
| Your reply resonated most with me personally. I even told my
| wife about it specifically and would like to explore it more.
|
| >Start digging _deep_ for your good qualities, remind yourself
| of them constantly. >Start doing the opposite, and work on
| radical acceptance.
|
| I have a fundamental feeling, that I should do this even more.
| I have been seeing a therapist a couple of years back who
| helped me there. No that I'm OK, I struggle to go there more in
| order to go from OK to GREAT, it feels entitled.
|
| >You are probably much smarter, much more talented, and have
| more good qualities than you realize.
|
| One part of me, knows that on a "for a fact" level. But another
| part immediately spoils the party by calling that "arrogant",
| "full of myself". It's all relative as others have said pick
| the general population in my city, country, planet and I'm
| "successful". Pick the 0.00001% NBA-all stars and I'm not.
|
| I was trying to research more about what "insecure
| overachievers" can do to help accept/unlock themselves.
|
| >You can find joy and happiness in life, once you accept that
| what that looks like for you is different than how it looks for
| other people. Acceptance is key.
|
| Again this is hard for me personally to internalize.
|
| My first reaction is dismissing that statement as "entitled".
| "Oh do you think you're so special you need a special
| definition of joy and happiness and success?"
|
| Probably, because (i) I have been taught and (ii) I'm telling
| myself and (iii) teaching my kids now that "entitlement" is not
| good.
|
| Having re-read the statement over and over, it's less clear how
| it can spark these negative emotions against myself.
|
| Of course we are all beautiful snowflakes, that's also
| something I learned, believe and teach my kids. Why is it so
| much easier for me to grant that privilege to every human being
| than to myself?
|
| Thank you for reading.
| jrsdav wrote:
| Thanks for your thoughts!
|
| A note on the one about entitlement:
|
| Everyone is _entitled_ to have their experience of reality
| acknowledged (this opens up a can of worms, but bear with
| me).
|
| Someone who is neurodivergent (like OP) experiences reality
| differently than someone who is neurotypical. It's
| subjective, and hand-wavy, I know. But to some greater
| extent, we have to respect _and accept_ what people tell us
| about themselves.
|
| I liken it to being a parent, when you see your child
| worrying about something, or saying something you disagree
| with. Instead of trying to force your viewpoint on them by
| telling them how they _should_ feel, why not ask them _why_
| they feel like that? You gain understanding, and through
| understanding discovery, which leads to acceptance and a
| deepening of empathy for individual experience.
|
| I've personally discovered that what comes across as well
| intentioned "advice" can often feel a lot like shame. And
| shame, is the death of joy. It only leads one direction --
| downwards.
|
| Anyways, that's what I was getting at. Hopefully this helps
| add clarity.
| InexSquirrel wrote:
| I think all of us have these thoughts and feelings. I'm in an
| engineering team, surrounding by incredibly skilled, experienced
| but most of all _committed_ (embedded) engineers - and I'm the
| only guy on the business side. If you've ever felt stupid, just
| think how the sole marketing guy feels in an otherwise fully
| engineering focused company. It's not a nice feeling.
|
| Anyway. I've come to realise (suspect?) a few things:
|
| - People who achieve _Great Things_ are, more often than not,
| unidimensional. They focus most of their lives one single thing
| (or a small select set of related things). What this means is
| that they achieve highly in one area, but are somewhat useless in
| many others (even somewhat basic ones). It's a personal choice
| whether you think this is OK or not. The book Range by David
| Epstein is an interesting read (or if you like horrible business
| buzzwords, 'T shaped people')
|
| - None of the extreme achievers would be able to do what they do,
| without the rest of us. I don't feel this is some new age woo-woo
| stuff to make us minions feel better, but in reality if the base
| of society doesn't exist or function well, you can't go do the
| cool 'big think' stuff. Without farmers, Elon would probably
| either starve or have to go grow his own crops (bad example
| maybe, whatever).
|
| - The people that do achieve _Amazing Things_ sit at (I believe)
| a very special intersection of inherent capability (e.g. ability
| to integrate information quickly), personality (often very driven
| and quite selfish, just lucking into very beneficial mindsets
| early on, don't suffer from depression), familial advantages
| (wealth, exceptional early education), geographic advantage (not
| just first world wealthy country, but even micro-geographic
| advantages, such as say Silicon Valley vs a small rural town) and
| probably a few others I don't have a grasp on.
|
| So in my mind, the combination of the above factors not only
| enables _some_ people to achieve wildly, but also puts them on a
| path that they almost can't stray from. This strays into pre-
| determinism I suppose, but (in my mind) it's more related to a
| series of environmental and personal factors playing out, as
| opposed to Some Large Guiding Force.
|
| I dunno, that's my current view at least.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| A couple years ago, I came to terms with the fact that I wasn't
| going to be a Beatle. My family and friends had come to terms
| with that fact 30 years earlier - it just took me a little
| longer...
|
| "but I can't convince myself that these traits are actually true.
| I feel untalented, empty and dumb."
|
| They probably are 'true' in some sense, but that doesn't mean you
| can't feel untalented/empty/etc at the same time. Appearing to be
| 'creative' and 'in learning mode' is how other people see you -
| feeling untalented/empty is how you see your self. They can both
| be true at the same time. But your feelings about yourself aren't
| the whole truth, and they can (and will) change over time too,
| just like other people's views of you may change, depending on
| you, the other people, and other factors outside of everyone's
| control.
|
| Maybe you _should_ stare out of the window for a while - I don 't
| mean forever, but it seems like you're trying to engage in some
| self reflection, and that can take time. And 'wasting' time is
| often not seen as a good thing by others, or indeed ourselves. I
| struggle often with trying to give myself some 'time off' for
| anything.
|
| With all that said, you dropped a bomb in the last paragraph
| about medication. There's no doubt in my mind that this is a
| contributing factor to your mental health state (it might be a
| positive factor, but it's certainly in the mix). and as such, you
| should also be seeking out some folks with experience with these
| medications.
| goldcountry wrote:
| I consider myself a person of above-average intelligence,
| insight, and drive. But working in Silicon Valley, I find myself
| constantly surrounded by people who are complete outliers. People
| who I consider close friends who I think are absolutely smarter,
| more creative, more driven, more knowledgeable than me.
|
| And you know what? You can choose to compare yourself to them
| (and find yourself lacking) or you can choose to use it as
| inspiration. Look to those people for the traits you want to find
| and nurture within yourself. Actively choose to include those
| people in your life and let yourself become better for having
| them around. It's never too late to change how you look at
| things, or to become something different than what you are right
| now.
| errantspark wrote:
| I vibe with/have been through a lot of what you're talking about.
| HMU if you want another friend, email in my profile.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Don't feel bad. Don't forget that a lot of opportunities in life
| are positional: there's a contest to get them, and the loser can
| lose for entirely different reasons than competence. A tiny bit
| of noise is all it takes to change the winner from one person to
| another. And for every contest where there's a line, there are a
| lot of people who are really close to the line.
|
| And every opportunity that someone gets tends to give them more
| down that path later on. All those smart people doing stuff get
| to do more smart people stuff. That guy who scraped into medical
| school is a doctor, and the guy who almost made it isn't. Same
| goes for almost every profession.
|
| What you can do however, is to learn those things that are not
| subject to competition. Basically everything that you can learn
| academically is that kind of thing, until you need to get a PhD
| advisor to take you on. With a bit of intellectual maturity, you
| can also know whether you understand something. The satisfaction
| is entirely your own.
|
| Ultimately, positional goods aren't actually all that satisfying.
| Do you even want the respect of someone who respects you for
| being rich or accomplished? You can have all the friends in the
| world regardless.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Have you tried censoring your negative thoughts? I edited your
| post to subtract self-deprecating language. The result was really
| cool - it looks like you may have some exciting changes coming up
| in your life.
|
| ---
|
| I was watching a video game documentary about the history of the
| RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise, a theme park management game that
| had both an easy learning curve but with incredibly sophisticated
| dynamics. What really impressed me however was the origins of the
| first two titles: written by one man in assembly language.
|
| Throughout my life, I've seen many awe inspiring projects done by
| extremely talented people come to fruition.
|
| Most of my career revolved around software development, something
| that I've done since I was 17 (now I'm 30) until a few years ago.
| I found myself writing entreprise software usually in the backend
| and some server administration and scripting sprinkled on top.
| Sat beside me were full-stack developers with expertise in DevOps
| as well. They knew how to do everything I could on top of so much
| else. As for me, I can write basic HTML pages.
|
| I meet with incredibly smart people with master's degrees and
| PhDs knowing so much about their field of expertise. People who
| know world history so well while being able to talk about the
| hard problem of consciousness at the same time. YouTubers and
| Twitch streamers who are so talented at playing games and
| entertaining us along the way.
|
| There's people who have paved the way for innovation and
| foresight. Those who make so much money due to their talents and
| bringing them to life in this world of ours. I've watched so many
| documentaries about all sorts of people from racing drivers, to
| game developers, comedians, data science experts, cybersecurity
| nuts, music producers, video editors, documentaries makers and so
| much more.
|
| I'm mostly a self-taught person teaching myself skills as I go
| along with my life. I generally pick up a few facts that I can
| repeat to others. I used to do derivatives in math and draw as
| well.
|
| Today, I watch YouTube documentaries and read Wikipedia articles,
| but I'm slowly starting to look for a new activity.
|
| Now, I'm a technical writer composing documents for developers
| and users. I have maxed out this career path despite how I was
| hired without having any credentials in business writing.
|
| I've been told by previous managers that I'm always in "learning
| mode" and quite "creative" too.
|
| I have dreams. There's a lot of subjects and activities that I'm
| really interested of getting into. I haven't decided to start
| yet, but when I do, I have strong time management skills and can
| conjure up much empty slots in my schedule. All this despite
| having mental condition and being on medication: I'm bipolar
| schizoaffective and borderline.
| bloqs wrote:
| I wont detail how similar my situation to yours is, but you don't
| realise how lucky you are for having got to where you have got.
| Some people never even got their career footing. I know its
| boring to hear, but it's true.
|
| I became fairly obsessed with "natural talent" and what it was,
| where it came from, and if everyone exhibited a dimension of it.
| Success is interesting, fascinating almost. I was more interested
| in the people than the end results and rewards of the success
| itself.
|
| After basically browsing the same 4 websites and gaming a lot for
| about 9-10 years, I suddenly found a video, by Jordan Peterson
| teaching about personality, IQ and lifetime success likelihood.
| Initially, I assumed this was some "self help" life coach type
| person holding their own lecture stacked with sycophants. I was
| wrong, and this was at a major university.
|
| I continued watching, and found that within an hour, I had
| several fundamental pondering I had sustained for over a decade
| answered. I wasn't looking for answers, and all the evidence for
| the phenomena he had described was readily available online. He
| was very obviously joining dots in some places, but he clearly
| noted when he moved into the realms of speculation.
|
| I discovered that he sold tests, and self help suites, but that
| most of these types of tests were simply standard practice in
| psychology, and were freely available online. I cant fault a man
| for being a businessman I guess.
|
| I ran one of these tests, and ruminated on the results so much
| that it kept me up for multiple days over the next few months.
|
| I discovered that simply from understanding the Big Five
| personality traits (much more scientifically backed and
| practically useful than the Myers-Briggs tests I had done at
| school why I felt a certain way about certain things.
|
| It turns out, some of us were raised with very dysfunctional
| parents, that shaped our view of the world, our view of others,
| and our view of how we integrate with others by performing
| societal duties (work). This helped cement our personality traits
| from a young age, and past the age of roughly 6 they are very
| difficult to change, without sudden trauma, or with consistent,
| motivated work to change them over many years.
|
| Your first weakness, was that you were taught at a fundamental
| level is that you were taught to fear failure. It is also likely
| that you were taught that the things you instinctively liked were
| wrong, and that you should pursue something else.
|
| Because of the artificial nature of civilised society, we make
| certain trade offs against instinctual behaviour to achieve
| certain functions. One such example is monogamy - without it,
| society becomes far more unfair, and far more violent, and less
| stable. It was considered the lesser of the two evils.
|
| Another one of these trade-offs, is your natural instinct for
| competition doesn't encapsulate all the factors of your
| competitive environment, unlike when you just had to look and see
| how many skulls your fellow caveman had collected. Usually, it's
| mostly inspired from wallowing in self comparison, accelerated by
| modern technology. How much help someone else has had, how much
| fear they live with on a daily basis, or how fundamentally wrong
| they are and how it's all pure chance that they are there. So the
| trade off for that, is that you must learn to compete only with
| yourself. It's a tough balance to strike - the outside world
| clearly matters to you, otherwise we wouldn't want to be
| impressive and all-achieving. But you must only provide yourself
| with targets that have proven honest in their validity. Only
| competing with your past self qualifies.
|
| Additionally, the power of increment is utterly arresting. Do
| small things over time and they compound into terrifying pits of
| wasted life and time, or beautiful mountains of stacked
| achievement and competence. Finding a meaningful pursuit, is
| hard. Meaning to you lies exactly where you have one foot in the
| familiar, and one foot in the unknown. What causes it to happen
| is still a mystery. But think of it like the page of a book. If
| you woke up in an unfamiliar room, you would instantly be
| motivated to discover more. That motivation is natural
| exploratory behaviour. But you cannot develop interest based on
| loose jealously. Pursue what you find meaningful, and only you
| can discover where that meaning is, and you are probably being
| too lofty. Compete with your past self, and incremental interest
| pursued at your own pace will soon spiral into a powerful
| narrative you cannot help but follow, it is your duty to your
| short existence on this earth in a position of stability and
| ability (neither of those things are permanent) to attempt to
| find meaning. Good luck.
| m0zg wrote:
| > I realized how mediocre and untalented I was
|
| Read Peter Thiel's "Zero to One" and rejoice then. One of the key
| ideas in the book is that to be successful you have to avoid
| competition, and build a monopoly on something to the extent
| you're able. The monopoly will be temporary, but you must have it
| to avoid race to the bottom which just makes everyone poor and
| depressed. The monopoly can be a technology, or a brand, or, in
| the case of a person a set of skills and a track record. In fact
| it could also be all of the above, but you _must_ have it in
| order to really succeed.
|
| It is very unlikely that you're talented at nothing. It is very
| likely that you're fairly talented at 2-3 different things in
| fact, you might just not know what they are. So if you find those
| things and get good at them, you'll very likely to be one of the
| few people in the world who are good at those 3 things at the
| same time. And unless those three things are "watching Youtube",
| "shitposting on Twitter" and "scrolling Instagram", this skill
| stack could be very valuable, and someone would look at you much
| like you look at others and wonder how it is they themselves are
| so worthless next to your greatness.
|
| For me the reason of the past 30 years or so, even the smartest
| people are not uniformly good at everything, and you can easily
| be better than them at a myriad of things outside their field of
| expertise. And that's why teams work better than individuals, no
| matter how talented that individual is.
|
| > Now, I'm an unimportant technical writer composing documents
| for developers and users.
|
| See, you're good at something others aren't good at. Most
| engineers can't write docs normal humans can read. Add a few
| things to the mix, change jobs 2-3 times to establish an upward
| trajectory, and you'll be unstoppable.
|
| > My talents are shallow and honestly quite useless
|
| Well, deepen them and make them useful then? You must
| differentiate to succeed, either through the quality of your
| skills, or through your skill stack, or preferably both at the
| same time.
|
| > I blame it on the lack of time
|
| Based on what you wrote, I blame your lack of time on excessive
| use of social media and the internet in general. You know it's
| true. Give it up, and you'll be able to focus again, have better
| relationships, better sleep, more confidence, deeper thoughts,
| more skills.
|
| And for the love of god don't tell other people you're "bipolar
| schizoaffective". I'm sure it's a real problem for you but others
| don't want anything in common with that. Paraphrasing a vulgar
| Russian proverb: "Why would I want a Dick without a dick if there
| are plenty of Dicks with dicks?" ("Nakhuia mne bez khuia, kogda s
| khuem do khuia?"). Don't ruin your chances out of the gate if
| your disease is manageable. And also don't use your disease as an
| excuse to not succeed. Plenty of people overcame much greater
| adversities than you'll ever experience.
|
| Above all, if I could leave you with one thought: nobody will
| respect you until you learn to respect yourself. Do not self-
| deprecate. Do not use false modesty. If you're good at at least
| anything (such as technical writing), put it front and center and
| develop more skills in your skill stack.
| baby wrote:
| I think people in general have periods of intense creativity,
| followed by long period of learning or living. The more you
| invest in your "learning periods", the more often you'll be able
| to enjoy these creativity periods.
| DixieDev wrote:
| I personally feel that as long as you are above a certain
| aptitude threshold (one that's closer to the average than the
| best) in some field, you can achieve a lot more than the average
| person through the power of routine daily work. Actually creating
| sticking to that routine seems to be the biggest hurdle.
|
| For example, I know many devs (myself included) that work
| professionally on big and successful projects as part of a team.
| We often work on projects in our spare time but they tend to get
| dropped within a few weeks and never really go anywhere.
|
| It feels a lot more like a battle of willpower than one of skill
| in these situations. With the willpower to stick to a project and
| work on it for even two hours a day for a full year, I have no
| doubt it'd end up as something to be proud of.
|
| At some point, I read a blog post about how we have a finite
| amount of willpower per day, and focusing on a task costs a large
| chunk of it. However, once you do something regularly enough it
| becomes a habit/routine, and the willpower cost decreases making
| things easier. I'd like to believe that's true, though have not
| committed hard enough to my own work to know if that's really the
| case.
| pengaru wrote:
| The vast majority of software ever written is not only not
| executing on any computers today, but is completely lost to the
| ether.
|
| Get used to your contributions in this field being irrelevant to
| the world at large, especially in the long-term. It's a
| statistical probability.
|
| My personal happiness went up substantially when I started
| building things in the real world. Writing software is a great
| way to earn money, but making a lasting positive impact on the
| general public is a lot easier to achieve if you do something
| tangible, like build/restore housing.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > Nothing I'm doing in my life are anything that people will
| remember me for.
|
| I've played RollerCoaster Tycoon, and I'm sure I've seen the
| developer's name more than once, but don't remember. You didn't
| repeat it in your post, so you probably saw it and immediately
| forgot. That's the extent of fame they got from that.
| qrybam wrote:
| Don't be so hard on yourself. This isn't an uncommon feeling. The
| people that develop extraordinary skills are often quite
| ordinary.
|
| YMMV but this works for me...
|
| Have an interest in some topic? Develop that interest,
| deliberately. Build it into a passion over time. Allot a small
| amount of time every day to learn and think about it. Everything
| we love to do has an ugly side. Embrace it. Accept it as the cost
| of doing what you love/want to do. Most of the time spent
| developing skills and interests can feel like complete drudgery.
| Or it can feel like a journey, with moments of enlightenment
| along the way.
|
| If at all possible, never let your personal situation be an
| excuse for feeling this way. Just go for it!
|
| Edit: a word
| ultimoo wrote:
| Thank you for opening up and sharing this. Don't let others or
| even the industry set the standard for what "smart" and
| "accomplished" means. Every one of us is on a unique journey and
| we're all accomplished in our own ways -- even a stay-at-home
| parent without a college degree!
|
| If I may, do look into building your own brand either by starting
| a newsletter or a freelancing writing practice -- you're clearly
| great at it!
| ydnaclementine wrote:
| Do you mind sharing the documentary? Sounds interesting
| suction wrote:
| The goal is to have a pleasant life with as little worry as
| possible. Nothing else.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I have two comments. One is, why do you feel the need to be
| remembered and be great in the first place? Most people won't.
| Maybe the problem is your desire, which is something you may be
| able to change. Acceptance in combination with my second comment
| may be a good way forward for you. I'm personally not that
| productive despite broad and deep knowledge and I accept that I
| won't be great because I enjoy what I do.
|
| Second, you say you're self-taught and you probably have a lot of
| experience. Why don't you start learning computer science online
| at this point? Not just another skill to stack on but something
| to contextualize everything and broaden your horizons while
| deepening what you already know about (not something unrelated:
| keep specializing.) I've done this with some things and it can be
| really mind-blowing to fill in some gaps, more than you might
| expect.
|
| Make sure you take care of the relationships in your life too.
| You may just be looking for what you need in the wrong place
| here.
| foobarian wrote:
| 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 :-)
| achillesheels wrote:
| Children are the ultimate creative project. Beyond that, proper
| child-raising is promoting the well-being of the future of the
| human race. This is the 99%'s highest fulfillment and should
| not be looked down upon as being incomplete. Indeed, it is a
| wonderful testimony to the abundance of giving life to promote
| more life-giving.
| xattt wrote:
| I once heard someone suggest that "settling" for where life
| might be now as generally good, because it brings you peace and
| absolves you from guilt of not being good enough.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Family, kids -- I agree. I stopped giving a shit about
| "changing the world" when my kids came into my life. They
| became my world. And you _will_ change their world.
|
| I suspect they'll remember me forever.
| passer_byer wrote:
| This! I was constantly looking to grab the next rung up on
| the career ladder. Having kids made me rethink my priorities
| on helping them mature into happy, productive members of
| society. Sure, we made a pile of mistakes along the way in
| our child rearing efforts. I'm hoping the same, that they
| will remember me and my wife forever. I think they will.
| mathnmusic wrote:
| > I stopped giving a shit about "changing the world" when my
| kids came into my life.
|
| Does that mean we oldies should be okay with tech employers
| showing a preference for young workforce?
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| nah. employers like young people because their desire to
| "change the world" can be exploited
| mylons wrote:
| there's a great bit from Louis CK on this
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1-7AKx_4Ug
|
| "You get to read to kill a mockingbird." when he says it is
| hilarious and I often remember that when moments seem shitty.
| ksdale wrote:
| This is a delightful sentiment, and I'd go further and say that
| things as simple as being kind to the people around you,
| cleaning up after yourself, etc. are similarly important and
| impactful. They sound trivial compared to acts of "genius" but
| a _ton_ of people are jerks, every day. It 's not trivial at
| all to make the people around you feel better, it's not easy to
| do it every day, and if _everyone_ actually did it, the world
| would be a vastly different place.
| nelblu wrote:
| I find kids overwhelming, in fact, if I had kids (I don't yet)
| I would be constantly worried about making sure they get the
| best of life. I have a dog and he is already a lot of work, I
| even feel bad on days when it rains and I can't take him out as
| long as I would like to. I feel bad when I go out for dinner
| with friends and have to leave him alone. The feeling of
| raising a dependent is not fun (for me at least). It definitely
| gives me a sense of purpose every day but the thought of going
| away from him makes me very anxious.
|
| I almost feel it is a happier life to have lived like a nobody.
| I can relate to the OP because I feel exactly like him many
| times. But then I remind myself that we are all stardust and
| there is inherently no purpose to life. Somehow that makes me
| feel very calm.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| The accomplishments of others do not in any way diminish your
| value. Enjoy the people in your life, give back what you can, and
| know that your accomplishments stand on their own and don't need
| to be measured against anything else.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| The power of the patch is with you.
|
| Incremental, small changes are how you go from good to great.
| Nobody started out by shipping liquid gold code. It was a
| refinement process, done over years of commits.
|
| Start today. The amazing thing about coding is our unit of
| measurement is incremental improvement. Each patch does something
| better than the last.
| dvh1990 wrote:
| Reading through the various comments, I wonder what happened to
| good old-fashioned ambition. Other than my post, all I can see
| are "it's ok, I feel the same way, don't change" replies.
|
| We used to admire our heroes and try to emulate them, and if
| fortunate enough, come as close to them as our talents and
| circumstances would allow. And we did that through hard work,
| through having lofty goals and working hard to achieve them. Yes,
| many failed to reach their goals, but ambition and hard work is
| what built this species, this civilization.
|
| Why are we forsaking that in favor of a "you don't have to try so
| hard, it's ok to be mediocre" mindset?
|
| Why did we stop trying?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| You might find this comforting: https://overreacted.io/things-i-
| dont-know-as-of-2018/
| exdsq wrote:
| 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.
| pgruenbacher wrote:
| I mean everyone is unaccomplished compared to chris sawyer for
| roller coaster tycoon :)
|
| Most software projects are forgotten pretty quickly though, so if
| you're looking for a longer impact on life in general, consider
| the community you live in. plant a tree. clean a highway.
| Software dev is ephemeral, and most software rockstars aren't
| even known outside a small circle.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Nothing I'm doing in my life are anything that people will
| remember me for.
|
| I never expected to be remembered beyond my generation and it
| always surprises me to find out that some people DO expect that.
|
| I'd argue that 99% of people are entirely unremarkable and will
| be forgotten entirely within 2 generations of their death. The
| sooner you come to terms with that and accept it, the better.
| nlh wrote:
| To build on this: Why does being remembered matter at all? It
| doesn't. It's a weird trait in the human brain to want to be
| remembered.
|
| The instant you die you will have no memory of yourself, your
| life, or anything really :) So it's a fool's errand to care
| about what people think of you after you're gone, because you
| won't be here to know about any of it.
|
| The only thing that matters is to make the most of the life
| you're living NOW. Do things that make you happy, feel
| productive, ARE productive, are enjoyable, etc. If doing
| something now will leave a mark on the world and make it a
| better place, then by all means do it and go for it.
|
| The moment you realize that It. Just. Doesn't. Matter. what r
| whether people think or care about you after you're gone, the
| moment your life will take a turn towards more satisfaction.
|
| BTW: Note that "making the most of the life you're living now"
| doesn't necessarily mean "do whatever you want" or "do what
| makes you happy". I'm not trying to give pedantic greeting card
| BS advice that many people know is impossible to achieve.
| Sometimes living your best life means struggling in a bad job
| to provide for your family, build wealth, etc.
|
| Just make sure you're doing things with agency, that you're
| doing the best possible thing for you/your family, and that
| your aiming to maximize the time you have here regardless of
| your life circumstances.
| mikaelsouza wrote:
| This is one of the best HN posts I've read in a while. It feels
| so close to home, and I think it's amazing that people are
| sharing their feeling about this topic.
|
| Sometimes I feel the same as OP, but then, when I encounter a
| post like this one, I remember that most people aren't going to
| do super-duper gigantic world-changing stuff and that's ok.
| Really!
|
| Don't beat yourself because you didn't create RCT using assembly
| by yourself. As others said, people are so different and we all
| live under different circumstances.
|
| The thing that I always try to remember when I feel like I am
| "nobody" is to do things that I enjoy and that matter to me. I
| don't need to change the entire world to feel accomplished. I can
| do what I feel is important and be happy with the impact it makes
| on my own life and other people's lives.
|
| Don't worry OP, you're not alone. :)
| irateswami wrote:
| > I sometimes wonder if my mental condition or my medication has
| had an effect on this: I'm bipolar schizoaffective and
| borderline.
|
| Good Lord what the hell are you doing on HN then?!?!? Go talk to
| your therapist/doctor for God's sake and get off social media.
| korijn wrote:
| Although it may not seem like it, the people you look up to most
| likely also have these thoughts to some degree. Especially as you
| get older, the challenge is to learn to appreciate what you do
| have, instead of focusing on what you do not have. I would
| recommend speaking to a therapist to help you reflect.
|
| One method to assist in developing this thinking habit, is to put
| a notepad on your nightstand, and every day, before going to bed,
| write down a couple things that you appreciate.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I felt the way you did at 20. Now, at 44, I still feel this way.
| I'm much closer to accepting that it's all OK, though.
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