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Partner, I know exactly how you feel (except in my case, my partner is my mom, lol. And I run masterrace ember-on-rails instead of plebian angular on node), and I completely agree, sometimes it really is too much. We see the other people in our industry, folks like jashkenas, wycats, our benevolent overlord Linus Torvalds, and the host of other celebrities and we marvel at their productivity; we hear stories of how ninja-hackers build their entire business working 24 hours straight over a hackathon and come out with an amazing business like Cloudflare; we look towards folks like Zuckerberg, Ohanian, Poole, etc. and seethe with envy at how they can build amazing products that not only scale to massive size but also actually do it all part-time while going to school or whatnot.

And then we look at ourselves, at our own handiwork, at the small handful of shoddy projects we have under our belt (most of which probably are ignored because of their incompleteness), and feel frustration.

"Why am I not as good as they are?"

"I should be better than this!"

"I need this done by X or else I'm going to lose this opportunity forever"

"Why am I not making money yet?"

If this describes you in anyway, then congrats, you're a workaholic passionate about your craft. Me too, actually. But unless you enjoy irreparably wrecking your health, and dying of colon cancer at 40, you need to temper that fire in your heart. Here is what I did to help me get out of my own emotional hellhole some time ago:

1. I admitted to myself I am not a "code-ninja", "programming rockstar", "chief-architect", or even "senior-level programmer". Despite the fact there are plenty of people (some younger than me) who can make software happen overnight, I am not one of those people; whatever I do will take time and often I will make mistakes.

2. I admitted this to my partner (aka my mom) and accepted her disappointment in me, but asked her to nevertheless bear with me as I slowly get better. I also admitted this to my investor, who didn't mind too much because he was well-diversified against my (no doubt) imminent failure.

3. I accepted the fact I am not Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or any other likely-to-be-invested-in-by-union-a16z-yc candidate going at a break-neck pace to change the world. I'm happy learning about and doing js, web, css, and programming at my own pace and if my works will one day be appreciated by society, then great, but if not, that's okay too.

Those 3 realizations helped me fix my attitude and improve my lifestyle, hopefully, they can help you too.

A disclaimer: Some may read the above as saying "don't have ambition, don't try to push yourself, don't achieve". I'm not saying that at all; instead, I'm saying to temper your ambitions with patience, and if you wish to overcome your weaknesses, then the first step is to accept them. Life is long and not as fast-paced as the media makes it seem, nor is it a competition to see who can succeed earlier / faster, so go at the fastest pace you can while still managing to enjoy your work.




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