Strongly agree with this. Travelling the world, doing an ambitious programming project, learning a new language or starting a hard weight lifting program is a w

Strongly agree with this. Travelling the world, doing an ambitious programming project, learning a new language or starting a hard weight lifting program is a whole lot of work. It's moving your ambitions away from one type of work that society says you should do, and moving it into another type of work that society says you should do. The moral of this story is: Have the guts to take a step back from your goal systems for a few months. Don't worry. Be happy. Chill out. Relax. Have sex or whatever. Complete Portal 2 in one sitting. Eat more chocolate than you should. Way too many of us have been overachievers our whole lives, and keep overachieving even when we have the opportunity to refrain from doing so. This article, which I found brilliant, says that you should try to stop doing this for a while, and see how it makes you feel. If you can feel the existential angst come on full bore, you might want to take a step back and think about what that means.