You're not an idiot and everyone reaches this moment. The shock of the post-school world will fade; don't worry about it. Everyone who achieves great things exp

You're not an idiot and everyone reaches this moment. The shock of the post-school world will fade; don't worry about it. Everyone who achieves great things experiences it too. * Move fast and break things.[1] To learn what you like, what suits you, what you are good at and what you aren't, the only option is to try things and fail, as much as possible. You can't read about your life in books, you can't find out from Hacker News, and you certainly can't rely on your friends or family to tell you. The only real option is try-fail-try-fail-try-fail. If you aren't failing hard, you aren't trying hard. (In both careers and relationships.) Now you can afford to take these risks, before big commitments take priority (mortgages, employees, family depending on your financial and emotional stability, etc. etc.). The most important thing to learn is about yourself. 5-10 years from now, you'll need to make life-long decisions: Marriage, career, etc. You'll need to know yourself well enough to promise someone, at 29, that you'll still love them at 69. Knowing yourself is crucial to choosing things that will make you happy, and 90% of your life will be spent with your spouse and at work -- getting them right enables you to live up to the commitments you make to all those people (spouse, children, business partners, etc.), and can feel like more joy than any human deserves. If you don't know yourself, how can you make a promise to anyone else? Finally, believe in yourself. No matter what you do, there always will be idiots telling you that you are doing it wrong. Smile and ignore them, feeling sorry for their limitations. Like stopped clocks, they will be correct occasionally in a literal sense (that you will fail) but wrong in every way that matters (that you are moving forward with each failure while they stand still, the managing of risk, etc.). Everyone is doubted, from Einstein to Jobs (remember that he was fired) to Lincoln to MLK to prophets to saints. You won't be any different. Embrace the adventure! Life is what's happening now. [1] There are many analogies. e.g., use the Agile to work out your life; Waterfall just doesn't work -- you can't possibly know enough ahead of time.