7 ms·

This is very familiar to me. In college I often procrastinated until 3 days before an exam and only then opened the books. I didn't have the best grades because

This is very familiar to me. In college I often procrastinated until 3 days before an exam and only then opened the books. I didn't have the best grades because I made a conscious effort to get through with as little work as possible. I felt good about it as other classmates were studying for weeks before. Unfortunately I spent a lot of that free time playing video games. It was fun but i could've achieved way more. But in the end you have to ask yourself what actually matters to you in life. The end goal is to be happy. I knew I wanted to have kids and enjoy life with friends and have fun. I could have been one of the best in some field, but for what purpose? Scientific achievements are hard, im not ready to commit my life to working at some problem which I may or may not solve. It's not about what you achieve, it's about what you choose not to. Jack of all trades is a sensible choice even though it's sometimes frustrating.

augustl 7y ago
> Unfortunately I spent a lot of that free time playing video games. It was fun but i could've achieved way more. I'm currently beta testing a new optimization - I'm only allowed to play WoW Classic after my todo-list is done. One if the items on the todo-list is "do something productive for 30 minutes" (and currently, there's no shortage of things to fill those 30 minutes with). Maybe I can use the extreme gravitational force gaming has on me to do good..
- turk73 7y ago
  You should throw out all the games. I'm serious. I never really began to succeed until I stopped playing stupid games and became a man. Now I'm managing younger guys who can't put down the controller. Last fall I had to fire someone who was clearly staying up all night playing video games and was never prepared for work nor doing an adequate job at it. Sadly, his own sense of privilege prevented him from being able to even comprehend why we were firing him. He was falling asleep in meetings every day and the code he was turning in was not only sub-standard, but often just non-existent.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    How did you know he was playing games? Did he say that was why he was staying up all night?
  - foobarian 7y ago
    The way I know I made the right call to quit WoW was when I would come home in the days after, and was like 'Oh phew I don't have to play today'.
  - apatters 7y ago
    As a counterexample, I attribute much of my success to being a compulsive World of Warcraft player in my 20s. True, founding and being the Guild Master of a hardcore raiding guild wasn't great for my ability to focus on my real job. Main Tanking and leading 40 players through endgame content 3-4 nights a week didn't do any favors for my social life. But the skills I developed ended up transferring pretty well over to founding and running a remote web dev agency. In fact it turned out that managing paid employees over the Internet is easier than managing volunteers in many regards. When you screw up, your employees tend to go easy on you, because they like their paychecks and changing jobs is a lot harder than changing Warcraft guilds. I was young and kind of a loser at the time and there was little chance anyone was going to give me anything important to manage. WoW gave me an opportunity to develop a valuable skill set at an early age.
  - TheBeardKing 7y ago
    You should throw out [addictive behavior X] is what you really mean. I'm 35 and have multiple hobbies and kids, gaming is one that I just limit to a few hours a week. Anything prohibiting you from fulfilling your responsibilities is a problem area.
    - rhcom2 7y ago
      Exactly, the dose makes the poison.
      - munificent 7y ago
- dwild 7y ago
  > do something productive for 30 minutes I love that part. I may try that some time. 30 minutes could also be a good breaking point where it's worth it to keep doing that productive thing instead of doing something else.
  - augustl 7y ago
    For sure! It's very important that I actually make sure I'm happy if I manage to get 30 minutes in though. It's important that I'm able to trust myself. If every session turn into a 45 minute session and I start feeling inadequate because I "just got 30 minutes in today", then I'm back on a downwards moving spiral again.. More than 30 minutes is great, but so is 30 minutes. Way better than my default mode, which is wasting 100% of my time :)
commandlinefan 7y ago
> I made a conscious effort to get through with as little work as possible I did a lot of that, too - and although I was (and probably still am) a bit lazy, there was more to it than just laziness. I had in some way convinced myself that studying all the time was sort of "cheating" - I was too smart to be doing such mundane things as showing up for class, reading the material and working the exercises. I didn't come to my senses until my senior year of college - and even then, when I took the GRE I actually bought a test-prep book and read it and the whole time I felt like I was going to get "caught" and thrown out of the testing center for being too prepared.
plutonorm 7y ago
I did the same thing. Got by without really trying. Never went to lectures, studied for a month before the exams. Got 1st class marks. But I didn't do it because I was lazy or because I wanted an easy life. I did it because I was afraid of failure, utterly terrified. For smart people who come from less than loving families, fear of failure is the hardest thing to overcome. It's such a shame because what I really wanted to do was research... Dreaming up new ways of doing things, but I just didn't stand out enough to get the chance because I did no work. Now I am a jack of all trades who knows a little about a huge range of things. But I could do so much more if I didn't have to build crud apps every day, uch, kill me now.

augustl 7y ago

> Unfortunately I spent a lot of that free time playing video games. It was fun but i could've achieved way more. I'm currently beta testing a new optimization - I'm only allowed to play WoW Classic after my todo-list is done. One if the items on the todo-list is "do something productive for 30 minutes" (and currently, there's no shortage of things to fill those 30 minutes with). Maybe I can use the extreme gravitational force gaming has on me to do good..

turk73 7y ago
You should throw out all the games. I'm serious. I never really began to succeed until I stopped playing stupid games and became a man. Now I'm managing younger guys who can't put down the controller. Last fall I had to fire someone who was clearly staying up all night playing video games and was never prepared for work nor doing an adequate job at it. Sadly, his own sense of privilege prevented him from being able to even comprehend why we were firing him. He was falling asleep in meetings every day and the code he was turning in was not only sub-standard, but often just non-existent.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  How did you know he was playing games? Did he say that was why he was staying up all night?
- foobarian 7y ago
  The way I know I made the right call to quit WoW was when I would come home in the days after, and was like 'Oh phew I don't have to play today'.
- apatters 7y ago
  As a counterexample, I attribute much of my success to being a compulsive World of Warcraft player in my 20s. True, founding and being the Guild Master of a hardcore raiding guild wasn't great for my ability to focus on my real job. Main Tanking and leading 40 players through endgame content 3-4 nights a week didn't do any favors for my social life. But the skills I developed ended up transferring pretty well over to founding and running a remote web dev agency. In fact it turned out that managing paid employees over the Internet is easier than managing volunteers in many regards. When you screw up, your employees tend to go easy on you, because they like their paychecks and changing jobs is a lot harder than changing Warcraft guilds. I was young and kind of a loser at the time and there was little chance anyone was going to give me anything important to manage. WoW gave me an opportunity to develop a valuable skill set at an early age.
- TheBeardKing 7y ago
  You should throw out [addictive behavior X] is what you really mean. I'm 35 and have multiple hobbies and kids, gaming is one that I just limit to a few hours a week. Anything prohibiting you from fulfilling your responsibilities is a problem area.
  - rhcom2 7y ago
    Exactly, the dose makes the poison.
    - munificent 7y ago
dwild 7y ago
> do something productive for 30 minutes I love that part. I may try that some time. 30 minutes could also be a good breaking point where it's worth it to keep doing that productive thing instead of doing something else.
- augustl 7y ago
  For sure! It's very important that I actually make sure I'm happy if I manage to get 30 minutes in though. It's important that I'm able to trust myself. If every session turn into a 45 minute session and I start feeling inadequate because I "just got 30 minutes in today", then I'm back on a downwards moving spiral again.. More than 30 minutes is great, but so is 30 minutes. Way better than my default mode, which is wasting 100% of my time :)

commandlinefan 7y ago

> I made a conscious effort to get through with as little work as possible I did a lot of that, too - and although I was (and probably still am) a bit lazy, there was more to it than just laziness. I had in some way convinced myself that studying all the time was sort of "cheating" - I was too smart to be doing such mundane things as showing up for class, reading the material and working the exercises. I didn't come to my senses until my senior year of college - and even then, when I took the GRE I actually bought a test-prep book and read it and the whole time I felt like I was going to get "caught" and thrown out of the testing center for being too prepared.

plutonorm 7y ago

I did the same thing. Got by without really trying. Never went to lectures, studied for a month before the exams. Got 1st class marks. But I didn't do it because I was lazy or because I wanted an easy life. I did it because I was afraid of failure, utterly terrified. For smart people who come from less than loving families, fear of failure is the hardest thing to overcome. It's such a shame because what I really wanted to do was research... Dreaming up new ways of doing things, but I just didn't stand out enough to get the chance because I did no work. Now I am a jack of all trades who knows a little about a huge range of things. But I could do so much more if I didn't have to build crud apps every day, uch, kill me now.