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Man, hits home. 2020 is a bad year for 29, feel like the last of my twenties was stolen from me. I have so many things I wanna do, always wanted to do. Some of

Man, hits home. 2020 is a bad year for 29, feel like the last of my twenties was stolen from me. I have so many things I wanna do, always wanted to do. Some of it I got done! Like becoming an engineer, creating a decent career for myself, riding a motorcycle. Take a step back and look at my life and it's pretty much golden, I could coast for the remainder of it and live better than 99% of humankind throughout the ages. But it's not enough of course, cause I'm human and it never is. I want to start a business. I want to read every philosophy book ever. I want to solve consciousness. I want to be fluent in chinese, japanese, french, spanish, know enough vietnamese to fuck with people when I'm there. I want to be a god tier engineer, one of those strings-together-unix-tools-on-a-whim types that turns around and shits out an android app after, I want to be able to do high level math, I want to understand and contribute to physics, I want to invent AI, I want to be good at chess, I want to be a decent music producer. Jesus, look at that list. That's probably 25% of the things I really truly want for myself. Unrealistic? Probably. But am I living up to my potential right now? No. Absolutely not. If there's anything I've learned there's always another level. Our ability to make the previously uncomfortable and impossible, comfortable, has so far to me seemed limitless. But how do I do those things? Making trello boards and tracking progress like my life is an agile project? Looking in the mirror and doing affirmations? Meditating? Yearly goal setting? For me the biggest obstacle is the day to day. Time slips away just like dude says in the article. Looking at memes, trolling Nazis on Twitter with said memes, dicking around on news.ycombinator and justifying it by saying to myself that sometimes I learn some cool stuff here. Is it always going to be a battle against the distractions? Always little tricks like uninstalling the Twitter app, logging out of it in my browser? Having a habit tracking app? Is reaching my potential going to take a series of millions of bandaids? That seems wrong but I don't know what else to do.

_ah 6y ago
The biggest thing for you to realize is that you can absolutely do any of those things. But you can probably only do one or two of them. Spreading your efforts around is going to get you mediocre everything, which may be okay, but if you want to be truly excellent you need to focus and concentrate on what's important. Life is about prioritization. Somehow the message that "you can be anything you want" has gotten turned into "you can be everything you want" and that's just not realistic.
- jim_and_derrick 6y ago
  yeah the original comments seem kind of child-ish to me. In a good naive way. Maybe i'm being a doosh but that is how it reads to me. "Look i want to be a firefighter when i grow up, AND a policeman, AND a boat captain, AND a teacher, AND a 10x engineer. =) cheers all . look for small victories in life you dont have to solve world hunger to find satisfaction in your life.
- gjvc 6y ago
  This is excellent common-sense advice the kind of which we all need to be reminded about from time to time.
abhayb 6y ago
Hey komali2, why'd you have to go and describe me this sharply on a Saturday morning? Is it that I accidentally crowded you out at the Four Barrel pour-over bar and now you want your revenge? I've heard it said about running: it doesn't get easier, you just get better. I'm beginning to think that that is true of life in general. My greatest source of dis-ease (rather than literal disease) is the feeling that I'm not living up to my potential. Been with me since at least third standard/grade. While I've never been to Stockholm (heard Noma's a good local joint), I'm at the place where I'm more afraid of getting too comfortable than I am of never being at ease. I'm trying (and usually failing) to think of things one bandaid at a time rather that the whole million at once. Setting my goals real low: to suck less rather than to be good/great. Help's a lot that there's one or two things that I legitimately feel I'm damn good at. I'm curious, especially on the topic of stringing-together-unix-tools-on-a-whim, have you found any little tricks that apply to that area specifically rather than to the general concept of productivity?
- komali2 6y ago
  Hah it's good to suffer with company. Re unixy engineering stuff, I'm still a young engineer, the only thing I can think of is that I learn the most when I shoehorn it in during work, if I have time. So recently there was a fat data modification task, turn a bunch of CSV stuff into arrays and escaped strings etc, and rather than try to figure out how to have sheets do it which probably would have been easier and faster, I used it as an opportunity to upskill my vim knowledge. Picked up a couple new commands. That's only when I don't have a crazy deadline looming though sadly.
jim_and_derrick 6y ago
i hear ya. diff strokes, i'm 29. got a wife and child and could care less about really any job or work. seems like maybe adult-hood has ruined my aspirations b/c i dont want to do any of that shit you described. I just want to continue carving out a little slice of life for me, wife, kids. Helping change the world in small ways like nice human interactions, teaching my kid who will be more self aware than anyone we hope. You seriously want to do all those things you described? Or are you just naming things that sound fun? The list sounds child-ish to me. God tier engineer??? The hell is that? One of the 10-xers?? Please give me a break. Just be honest, communicate clearly, ask questions, dont be silent. Guess what, you are already better than like 80% of the people at my huge digital org that is a fuckin shit storm actually.

_ah 6y ago

The biggest thing for you to realize is that you can absolutely do any of those things. But you can probably only do one or two of them. Spreading your efforts around is going to get you mediocre everything, which may be okay, but if you want to be truly excellent you need to focus and concentrate on what's important. Life is about prioritization. Somehow the message that "you can be anything you want" has gotten turned into "you can be everything you want" and that's just not realistic.

jim_and_derrick 6y ago
yeah the original comments seem kind of child-ish to me. In a good naive way. Maybe i'm being a doosh but that is how it reads to me. "Look i want to be a firefighter when i grow up, AND a policeman, AND a boat captain, AND a teacher, AND a 10x engineer. =) cheers all . look for small victories in life you dont have to solve world hunger to find satisfaction in your life.
gjvc 6y ago
This is excellent common-sense advice the kind of which we all need to be reminded about from time to time.

abhayb 6y ago

Hey komali2, why'd you have to go and describe me this sharply on a Saturday morning? Is it that I accidentally crowded you out at the Four Barrel pour-over bar and now you want your revenge? I've heard it said about running: it doesn't get easier, you just get better. I'm beginning to think that that is true of life in general. My greatest source of dis-ease (rather than literal disease) is the feeling that I'm not living up to my potential. Been with me since at least third standard/grade. While I've never been to Stockholm (heard Noma's a good local joint), I'm at the place where I'm more afraid of getting too comfortable than I am of never being at ease. I'm trying (and usually failing) to think of things one bandaid at a time rather that the whole million at once. Setting my goals real low: to suck less rather than to be good/great. Help's a lot that there's one or two things that I legitimately feel I'm damn good at. I'm curious, especially on the topic of stringing-together-unix-tools-on-a-whim, have you found any little tricks that apply to that area specifically rather than to the general concept of productivity?

komali2 6y ago
Hah it's good to suffer with company. Re unixy engineering stuff, I'm still a young engineer, the only thing I can think of is that I learn the most when I shoehorn it in during work, if I have time. So recently there was a fat data modification task, turn a bunch of CSV stuff into arrays and escaped strings etc, and rather than try to figure out how to have sheets do it which probably would have been easier and faster, I used it as an opportunity to upskill my vim knowledge. Picked up a couple new commands. That's only when I don't have a crazy deadline looming though sadly.

jim_and_derrick 6y ago

i hear ya. diff strokes, i'm 29. got a wife and child and could care less about really any job or work. seems like maybe adult-hood has ruined my aspirations b/c i dont want to do any of that shit you described. I just want to continue carving out a little slice of life for me, wife, kids. Helping change the world in small ways like nice human interactions, teaching my kid who will be more self aware than anyone we hope. You seriously want to do all those things you described? Or are you just naming things that sound fun? The list sounds child-ish to me. God tier engineer??? The hell is that? One of the 10-xers?? Please give me a break. Just be honest, communicate clearly, ask questions, dont be silent. Guess what, you are already better than like 80% of the people at my huge digital org that is a fuckin shit storm actually.