
You are not 'behind' - mooreds
http://zackkanter.com/2016/01/13/you-are-not-behind/
======
jondubois
For the past 10 years, I only spent about 4 to 8 hours per week on
entertainment - All the rest of my time was divided between work and sleep (I
only sleep 5 hours per day on weekdays). Financially, I have nothing to show
for it unfortunately so I really feel like I'm behind and that I've missed the
boat on many things. What makes it particularly difficult is that I was
working really hard the whole time - When I read articles about
(comparatively) lazy people who feel that they are behind, it makes me upset
because it reminds me that I should be feeling worse than I'm actually feeling
- Because I actually tried and I could have been having fun or procrastinating
instead - I would be happier overall because I could accept my predicament
more easily (and my mind wouldn't be burdened with ambition).

If you're behind because you were lazy, you can laugh about it. If you're
behind because the stars didn't line up for you (E.g. the carpet got pulled
from underneath you several times) then it's hard to laugh about it.

In retrospect, being lazy isn't too bad.

~~~
tastyface
For me personally, "being lazy" is awful because I'm stuck in a constant
battle between my personality (which wants to mould to the shape of my couch
and watch TV forever) and my mind (which desperately wants to leave a mark on
the world). Every day I spend couch potatoing feels like a complete and utter
failure of the soul, and it seems like most of my effort is actually spent on
trying to bend my personality into the shape I want it to be. If you try and
fail, at least you're still left with that invaluable experience! Most
accomplished people have a repertoire of failures behind them; most don't seem
to have years of dicking around.

~~~
jaggederest
I've felt like this my entire life. Turns out for me that it is a symptom of
(undiagnosed) ADHD - an execution problem, not a motivational problem. Having
gotten that diagnosed, it's a very significant change in my life. To be
cliche, the first day of the rest of my life.

For many people, "trying to bend their personality into the shape [they] want
it to be" is fruitless, totally counterproductive.

The first thing I had to learn was that in order to change my behavior, I had
to change my environment, not my attitudes. My attitudes are fine, indeed,
perhaps excessively eager.

It's possible that other people could take something away from that, ADHD or
not, it's better to accept and appreciate who you are and the value you bring
to the world, and instead seek to make changes to _where_ you are, what is
around you, and how you relate through that to the rest of the world.

~~~
kakarot
Ha. I once heard ADHD described by a behavioral scientist as "making a list of
chores and putting it up on the fridge so you'll see it every day, and every
day you see it but forget the moment you're out of the kitchen" (not verbatim)

Having severe ADHD, coupled with a seemingly unalterable indifferent outlook
on life due to manic depressive disorder and childhood trauma has given me a
morbid sense of satisfaction in making time to squander my time here on
Earth... And intense salf hatred. I just hope I can consolidate these two
aspects of my personality in a reasonable timeframe. One half of my role
models are all polyglots, men of science and patrons of the arts, and the
other half are all dead from speedballing or suicide.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Wait a second. Future me?

Ok, so there's time travel in the future. But why did you come back? Did our
goals all fail? Was global warming _that_ bad? What are you trying to alter in
the timeline?

Use the code-phrase I'm logging in my private folder on Keybase and get in
touch.

(But seriously, damn our lives sound similar. Any advice for dealing with the
problem?)

~~~
kakarot
I came back in time to prevent us from ever going back in time. Sounds
complicated, and trust me it is. All will become clear soon.

I wish I had some smidgen of life advice, but we're even more fucked up in the
future than we are now, I'm afraid.

Jokes aside, what I've been doing is finding fun ways to strengthen my
discipline while picking up useful skills. I picked up the Rubik's cube about
a year ago, I'm now under a minute and a half and won't stop until I'm under
ten seconds. Then I will learn how to balance things on my fingers and other
body parts. Then I will learn how to juggle.

No, I'm not training to become a circus clown. Just noticing my weaknesses
(visualization, dexterity, coordination, etc) and finding fun ways to mitigate
them. The discipline involved in my incremental daily progress will hopefully
carry over to other aspects of my life.

I keep a pack of index cards and a pen within arms reach, and make tons of
lists and notes and keep them around my monitor so I see them ten hours a day.
I try to take care of at least 1-3 things on these lists a day. I condense my
daily soul-crushing feelings of loneliness and desperation to between 3-4am.

I have a million and one great ideas and I write them all down, but I only
allow myself to focus on 1-2 projects at a time. This creates a small sense of
embarrassment, as I love to work through my ideas by discussing them with
others even if I don't actually plan on implementing them any time soon, but I
worry it comes across to others as me talking about doing all sorts of things
that I will never do, simply because I don't bother communicating that I'm
just talking through these ideas to find their flaws. But that's ok,
eventually I will have things to show for it.

I'm not satisfied with the speed of my progress, but that's ok. If I was, it
means I'm not aiming for lofty enough goals. I should never be satisfied with
the person I am, because I should never settle for what I have.

Anyway, that's what works for me for now, hope some of it helps.

------
songzme
In April I left google to teach people how to code. I teach for free and I
focus primarily on low income adults who are making less than 30k / year in
the bay area.

Throughout their lives, my students have felt that they were 'behind' and they
are not good enough. This mindset creates adults with low self esteem, which
then prevents them from learning. Many times, they nod their head in
understanding when they really meant (I have no idea what is going on, but
I'll burn the midnight oil and learn it on the Internet after the class). This
mindset is incredibly destructive and forces people to memorize things instead
of taking the time to understand things.

Recently, we have switched to a curriculum where everyone learns at their own
pace. The ones who are ahead are tasked with teaching and helping others. The
ones who are slower will teach the next batch of students and take their time
to really learn the material. This works for us.

~~~
zeta0134
It's interesting that you bring up learning pace as such a strong signal. Most
of the material I've read focusing on learning types and effectiveness seems
to gloss over the speed that one learns (which I imagine must vary with
material) and a great deal of coursework is very rigid with regards to
schedules.

I wonder, ignoring for a moment the practicalities of this, if a freeform
educational system, allowing students to "rank up" at their own pace, might be
worth persuing. What's the benefit of forcing slower students to rush through
their work, and requiring that faster students move only as fast as the rest
of their class allows?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I suspect a lot of students don't have the discipline to cope without a
schedule and hard deadlines.

------
Maro
Personally (I'm 36) I like the 'pressure' I receive all the time, from all
over the place, like the ones mentioned in the article: why don't I have a
six-pack, why am I not more 'perfect' with my g/f, why am I not working on my
startup, why haven't I made a billion yet, why is Elon Musk so f---ing more
productive, and so on. It shows me that more can be done, I could do more, it
pushes me to do more. I realize it would be more comfortable to not have all
these pushy signals around, but comfortable is sth I want to be when I'm 50+
or 60+, not right now.

~~~
dominotw
Sure you can ignore 'six pack' but you can't really igore is looming obsolesce
in IT once you hit you 40's and 50's, you can't ignore is dwindling
(biological) motivation and drive to learn and innovate. Ageism is real.

Thats what really worries me, sure I like coding and learning now but what
happens to me in my late 40's and 50's when I have to care for my parents and
kids at the same time while tying to not become a IT dinosaur.

~~~
ltaaug8
It's strange, I work in engineering, and all the most talented and highest
paid people are in their 40s and 50s. I guess ageism in the Valley is real,
but it seems most prevelant in web-related companies. At some point in your
career, working in a start-up of beer-chugging bros or in an office that looks
like an elementary school loses its luster, and you find better opportunities.

------
foobarbecue
Reading this made me realize that my regret usually targets the previous hours
or day. Generally, if I look at the last month or year or decade, I'm
impressed with what I've accomplished. And yet I'm always disappointed with my
immediate past. I think this short-term regret may be the reaction mass I'm
igniting to propel me forward.

To borrow a phrase from finnthehuman above, this short-term regret is the fire
lit under my ass. I think I'd better ignore Zack's article and keep feeding
it. It drives my overall happiness.

~~~
corey_moncure
I didn't have any regrets until I sat and watched cryptocoin for 6 years and
did nothing about it.

~~~
ltaaug8
If you had gotten in 6 years ago, you'd probably regret selling it all 4 or 5
years ago. Or perhaps you'd regret not selling, if the bubble pops tomorrow.
Hindsight is 20/20.

------
finnthehuman
This is narrowly tailored advice presented more broadly than to the context
it's useful for. And it's not the best way forward in that case, either.

If someone needs a fire lit under their ass to get going, a sense of falling
behind their expectations for themselves can be a perfectly useful motivating
factor.

Of course it can become all-consuming if that's all they've got as a life
planning system. It's a setup that will inevitably trigger the brain's way of
telling them there is a contradiction between desires and perceived actions.
Regret doesn't have to be stressful, but this guarantees it is.

Throwing it away for a self-evaluation system that nullifies regrets is
jumping to another extreme. Best case scenario is lying to yourself long
enough to let your actual value system catch up. Or maybe it'll make someone
lazy and complacent in a way that they're content with and much later come to
regret that too, or maybe it will lead to the clichéd cycle of a "fresh start"
every few months.

Building and maintaining a system of motivation, discipline and self-
evaluation that lets someone live their life while working towards their goals
productively for decades requires good mental hygiene, a topic with
suspiciously few quality resources.

------
bshimmin
"It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had
been dead for two years." — Tom Lehrer

------
nexus2045
This feeling of behindness for me comes in the form of thinking that I have
squandered my potential compared to someone my age who didn't mess up. I
should have graduated in 2011, and could've been saving up significantly as a
senior/staff/etc engineer at a BigCorp in Seattle/SF making a nice low 6
figure comp and be on my way to buying property with my SO. But instead I
graduated 3 years late, worked at a string of failed startups and only began
my career now making 50k USD in Canada. Yes, maybe those experiences met
something, but I felt that I've been too much of a drifter, and am paying for
that lack of focus and career climbing now.

~~~
eddy_chan
A lot of people who get seduced to work in startupville should heed this guy.
The cost is not only the difference in pay for the years you are working in
startups but the fact that career progression inside a bigcorp is forgone (and
that itself is worth a lot)

~~~
bdamm
Not really. It's harder to make your talent noticed in a big company. A
software engineer's power is in producing software that is unexpectedly
useful. In a big company that talent is often crushed under the weight of
expected results.

------
jblow
The article as a whole is nonsensical.

It is a little bit correct when it says that regret is not a useful reaction
to a past you're unhappy with, but even that by itself is misleading. Regret
is a useful emotion that helps you shape future actions. What is not useful is
_paralyzing_ regret, or any flavor of regret that keeps you wallowing in the
past.

When he says "you are not behind", that is mostly wrong. If you're 25 and
aren't yet doing anything individual and attemptedly groundbreaking with your
life, you probably are behind, if that kind of thing is your goal. Sticking
your head in the sand is not going to make this better. Being complacent and
saying it's fine, I am only 25, no wait 26, no wait 27 until you are 40 isn't
going to help either.

There is a reason the human mind is able to conjure phantasmal pictures of
"where we should be" \-- because that is useful. If you choose to ignore that
in order to have a shallow feel-good time in the short term, you do so to your
own detriment.

All that said, if you are genuinely content with where you are today, then
everything is fine and you don't need externally-imposed images to tell you
where you "should" be. This advice is only for people who deep-down want to
build interesting new things.

My last comment is ... this seems like an excerpt from a self-help book
written by someone who perhaps should gain further life experience before
writing a self-help book. When you decide to write a self-help book you take
upon yourself a substantial ethical burden, because if you give the wrong
advice, you can affect many peoples' lives in a negative way. So you should
make sure you really know what you are talking about.

~~~
tastyface
Oh man, I wish I knew how to better deal with that _paralyzing regret_. I'm
turning 29 in a few months, and I've been spending the last ~5 years almost
entirely trying (and usually failing) to work on major personal projects,
solo. Sometimes I tally up all the months where I effectively did _nothing_
and gape in horror. Usually I'm fine, but on some days, after seeing all the
25-year-old creators peddling their incredible companies, art, games, etc. on
HN and Reddit — which in turn took them 5-10 years prior to that to get good
enough to make — I fall into a nearly catatonic despair. When will I have time
to learn all that stuff? Was it really worth giving up 5 years of my social
and professional life just to chase some stupid dream? Emotionally, I often
feel like a 80 year old man, seeing no real future in front of me.

Common advice is "learn to be happy with what you have", but that will never
work if your dream is to do something Great, for future generations to
remember -- to not throw away your shot.

What noticeably cheers me up is reading about all the people who started doing
interesting things only in their 30's and forward, or those who reinvented
themselves at some point in their lives and went on to be famous only on their
second (or third) wind. I wish we had more of their stories instead of the
endless parade of young genius entrepreneurs. Learning about the breadth and
diversity of human experience is always such a pleasure, and it helps me
remember that shaping your life and personality to meet your intellectual
goals can be a grueling, decades-long process.

(Incidentally, reading Show Stopper! about the NT kernel was really great for
this: although Dave Cutler was clearly a very accomplished engineer at the
start of the book, he was in his 40's and experienced mostly in "archaic"
technology when Microsoft decided to hire him. This wasn't at all the focus of
the book, but it was wonderful to witness the power of a competent mind so
quickly and confidently adapting to new technologies and problem domains!)

~~~
subwayclub
I recognize a lot of myself from a few years ago in that (and I'm 32) and the
main things that changed me in no particular order were:

* Adopting a more deliberately Stoicism-inspired philosophy - whether or not I'm succeeding at my goal there will be another struggle waiting after that, so there isn't really an endpoint here other than my death or permanent incapacity. * Buying into feedback loops over goal-and-achievement systems. Feedback is more important to doing good work than any other thing - if you don't have it then you don't know if it's any good. But also, it's easy to miss what forms of feedback are available and sometimes it's as simple as critically thinking about whether or not an expected result happened(e.g. write software, add a feature: did it actually do what you expected?) * Got a lot of money. I did this through crypto. I had no expectations about it, it was just a way of putting another iron in the fire. The amount of physical effort put in was, of course, clicking a few buttons, typing a few passwords. But the mental/emotional effort of "why bother" and "why study this" \- that is why you aren't seeing everyone on the street talk about it(yet). I had to make a firm decision to get in for anything to happen. And there's a lot of random chance to that, just as with my game projects, which have hardly gone anywhere in years of trying. And now that I have the money my mind is rearranging things so that I will further devalue my work on games in a monetary sense.

A lot of "striver porn" \- worrying about productivity and getting ahead and
making Right Decisions - stops making sense post-success. If you end up with
the success, great, but I wouldn't try to impose a narrative arc on it. The
actual factors involved are just mindboggling. The feedback loops, on the
other hand, those are something you can improve from nearly any life status.
And they tend to vastly differ from productivity tropes because they're about
optimizing a whole cross-section of life, not just quantifiable output. E.g.
if you do less but your stress level is lower, do you end up ahead on health
later?

~~~
DanHulton
Huh. I was gonna type a lot of this, but you've saved me the trouble.

I did want to signal boost the stoicism part, though. There are a lot of good
mental health practices available in modern stoicism that tend to appeal
highly to nerds and other logical types. I can't recommend the following book
enough:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195374614/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_1...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195374614/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TGJ9AQ1YSK1980NGZ9DT&dpPl=1&dpID=41oP29YgLtL)

I reread it every couple years and it has definitely helped a lot with my
feelings of loss and "wasted time."

Oh, and getting older. It's incredible how much more mellow I feel at 37 than
at 27.

------
dcolgan
Like all advice, this is good for some people and bad for others. I've heard a
whole lot of advice to slow down, make sure you don't burn out, and don't miss
life. And for people who are putting tons of pressure on themselves to
achieve, this is excellent advice.

For me personally I've had a lot more free time than most people because I've
worked part time freelance for the last few years, and I could probably reach
my goals faster if I "kick it into gear" a bit. As I think Derek Sivers said,
advice often reflects the state of the giver of said advice more than
anything.

------
CM30
It's probably also worth noting that a lot of these stories of teen geniuses
and young billionaires and what not are ones you're hearing about because
they're noteworthy and unusual. That's what gets them media coverage, what
inspires people to constantly discuss them on social media and why so many
people are discussing them in general.

Most people won't end up in that situation (as a prodigy who'll change the
world before they're 30), and that's perfectly fine. Go ahead and put in more
effort if you think you're not doing as well as you could be, but also
remember that one in a billion success stories are outliers rather than the
norm. Remember that what's in the news is there because it's unusual. Man
bites dog stories are obviously going to be more common than the other way
around, despite the other one being a few thousand times more likely.

TLDR: Don't compare yourself to extreme outliers, at least if you don't want
to feel like a complete failure.

------
insertnickname
For the love God, why is the opacity set to 0 on the text? So that JS can be
used to fade in the text... Why would you do this? You're just annoying people
who do have JS enabled with annoying animations and barring people who don't
have JS enabled from reading your content. It's not even that JS is used to
dynamically fetch the content, all the content is right there in the HTML,
it's just deliberately hidden with CSS.

~~~
Macha
There's a school of design thought that the FOUT (flash of unstyled text) is
worse than delayed text loading so they hide the text and reveal it once the
web font is loaded). Browsers even put in a default delay before using the
fallback font to appease this point of view, but hacks to enforce it even on
slow connections still exist from time to time.

[https://www.paulirish.com/2009/fighting-the-font-face-
fout/](https://www.paulirish.com/2009/fighting-the-font-face-fout/)

(Personally I think it's insane, especially when many of these sites have ads
which reshuffle content much more violently than any FOUT. Also now you have
hacks to enforce the old behaviour: [https://css-tricks.com/fout-foit-
foft/](https://css-tricks.com/fout-foit-foft/) )

~~~
wwweston
I don't think of it as insanity so much as a kindness -- they're generously
signaling up front that _they_ consider their content less valuable than their
font choices.

This helps me value the content accordingly.

------
1065
I am totally driven by laziness. The only useful things I ever did with
computers were about making less work for me or people I liked. The rest was
just pissing about. I never judged myself about it and have never understood
why it's such a big deal. Get into a job the purpose of which is to reduce
work, and then whine about too much work pressure? Anyone reading this is
probably one of the .1 percent most privileged people who ever lived in all
the history of the planet. Where did these evaluative norms come from? (Yer,
it's kinda obv.)

Stumbling across some philosophy stuff about "thick concepts" led me to the
answer I wanted.

------
KirinDave
Articles like this make me uncomfortable, in part because of the huge sum of
work I put into making sure I'm abreast of major developments in my field, and
learn new fields.

I did this because I am behind (my Christian School was just awful for the
most part, physics was God's love and math was for liars and moneylenders),
and I'll probably never, ever catch up.

But still, I am trying to improve. But sometimes I talk to folks who don't
work as hard at my tradecraft. They make fun of other folks who do. They try
and shape the field to suit their lazy "this didn't outright fail so it's
success" mindset.

Odds are, if you're a programmer you ARE behind. The field moves fast, no one
does post-graduate teaching. Conferences are hit or miss and taught by the
same folks. You need to work hard to fix it.

~~~
fratlas
How do you attempt to fix being behind? Books, blog posts?

~~~
KirinDave
Sadly I can't really give you any advice other than to introspect carefully
and try to work out what works for you.

There are tons of videos about learning to learn and I've watched a few. Their
message is as obvious as it is vague.

1\. Set concrete learnig goals. Keep those goals small and reasonable.

2\. Reinforce your learning with practical work.

3\. Pace yourself. Take a week off every 3 or whatever works. If you burn out
you'll lose more time. Similarly, learning is an expensive activity and if
you're not well you can't do it effectively, so think about your health.

------
dade_
"Don't waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're
behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself." -Mary
Schmich

~~~
paulgb
For nostalgia:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI)

------
wruza
>So turn your eyes forward and focus on what you can change: the future.

And now you start feeling bad about it not happening tomorrow. Better advice
is to feel who you are, not who you're going to be, because the latter is
simply a change after applied force, but the former is the force itself.
Talking to my succesful friends I realized they're no more happy nor sad than
me or themselves in the past. Success doesn't make relationships better, even
worse. Success doesn't answer any fundamental questions you have, because it
is about acceptance, not about the force that reasonably stops you every time
you attempt to be "nice player". Not researching/admitting your inner true
state is just a colorful way to a personal exhaust, such loved by those who
convert people to wealth which they also don't need.

Above said doesn't apply to those who are "succesful" by design and maybe some
groups out of my (pretty narrow) focus.

------
agentgt
Really what has sort of stuck with me that is analogous is Alan Watts talks on
living. Particularly about life being a dance.

[http://www.befreetoday.com.au/alan-watts-life-not-
journey/](http://www.befreetoday.com.au/alan-watts-life-not-journey/)

Yeah it's a little pop culture but the way he talks about things is very
accessible.

------
codingdave
You shouldn't freak out over being "behind" in life. But you shouldn't be
complacent either. If you start acting on it today, in 6 months you no longer
be behind. So don't beat yourself up over where you are today. But do step up
and move forward.

This will matter much more later in life, when the reasons for being behind
aren't laziness, but other life events. Accidents, injuries, getting derailed
if you have children and go without sleep for what feels like 5 years. The
normal trials and tribulations of life that everyone goes through. And then
when they are over, having to get back on track. Getting in the habit of just
stepping up, dusting yourself off, and getting going again is a good habit to
make as soon as possible.

------
bryananderson
The fear of regret can be quite motivating, but regret itself is unremittingly
demotivating. Isn't that strange?

Perhaps the best mindset is to always forgive yourself for past mistakes and
believe that you can accomplish everything that you want - but only if you get
to work right now. After all, if you don't, you'll regret it.

------
rdiddly
Almost right. I would say that telling yourself you're behind, and telling
yourself you're right where you're intended to be, are both flavors of the
same thing, which is telling yourself a story about the truth. You don't need
the story, you only need the bare minimalist truth itself. You did what you
did. You didn't do what you didn't do. Now pick another thing and do it. When
it's done you can tackle the next one.

------
mcguire
Apropos of nothing,

" _Zack Kanter, Boulder, CO-based entrepreneur, speaker, futurist, and writer,
CEO of Proforged, amateur chef, all-around nerd._ "

I don't think that's the Proforged
([http://proforged.com/](http://proforged.com/)) that makes suspension parts.

Or maybe it is. [https://github.com/Proforged](https://github.com/Proforged)

~~~
ogreface
That's him. Though he doesn't seem to have updated his personal website, he's
now CEO/Founder of Stedi: [http://www.stedi.com/](http://www.stedi.com/)

~~~
mooreds
Yup. I imagine that running Proforged caused him to want to simplify EDI.

------
manmal
The way I can feel really good about my life is this (actually very similar to
what OP says):

\- Accept this very moment, and all the moments before this one as
unchangeable. Since any additional decision or action will take place in the
future, this moment is the only possible state of the world I currently live
in. Fate/environment/god/entropy/myself (whatever one believes in) led me
here, and it could not have happened in any other way, or it would have.

\- What I can have an effect on is the future (as the article says) - I can
STRIVE to make a certain improvement or reach a goal.

\- Whether or not I reach a goal is almost always not entirely dependent on
me, and is therefore uncertain, and it would not make sense to expect it 100%
to happen. So I don't fully rely on it, and have a Plan B and maybe C
available. Fate/environment/god/entropy always has the last word on my
reaching a goal, and since I cannot change that, I also have to accept it.

Not accepting unchangeable situations is IMO a major source of suffering.
Finding out what I can or can not, or maybe should not change is an ongoing
struggle.

------
burnt1ce
HN needs more posts and conversations like this one. I'm grateful to each
person that contributed to it.

------
SQL2219
I spent 10 years in a bootstrapped startup, I'm definitely behind. I should've
stopped after 3 years.

------
sarreph
"Regret is just a horrible attempt at time travel that ends with you feeling
like crap."

What a great analogy!

------
AdamGibbins
The entire content of this blog does not load unless I disable uBlock, I just
get an empty white box.

~~~
ptr_void
Works fine for me with uBlock

------
thallukrish
In short, it is better to identify and drop things that would hang in your
mind from actions you did. Sleep is the natural way to get rid of hangings. If
it is worse and you cannot sleep, then meditation is a good way, though not a
easy way.

------
z3t4
This reminds me that I should be working instead of reading HN. It's Sunday
evening and family is asleep, you now got around one hour where you can either
do house chores, relax, or work on something. One life, one hour, make it
count.

------
bluejekyll
This is very Stoic in its philosophy. If you agree with it, you may enjoy
reading 'Meditions', a collection of writings from the Roman emperor Marcus
Aurelius, from aprox. 170 C.E. which explore many Stoic ideas.

------
guskel
Employers and gatekeepers in general disagree.

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jdorfman
The greatest advice I got from someone was to never compare yourself to
someone's highlighted reel. That changed my life.

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namuol
> why the hell it so easy to watch six seasons of Game of Thrones in two weeks
> but I can’t even get myself to write one fucking page of a book

Wow. Literally read this while watching an episode of Game of Thrones, and I
just started two weeks ago, and I'm in the middle of the sixth season.

~~~
Paul_S
Passive entertainment is like eating sugar. I don't think it needs much
explanation why it's easier to consume it than something else.

------
bluker
I love this story about Charlie Munger which can be found here:

[https://www.joshuakennon.com/if-charlie-munger-didnt-quit-
wh...](https://www.joshuakennon.com/if-charlie-munger-didnt-quit-when-he-was-
divorced-broke-and-burying-his-9-year-old-son-you-have-no-excuse/)

In the past five years, I've started and sold a company. Bought a house on a
golf course, purchased expensive foreign cars and went on insane trips all
over the world.

Last year, my wife woke up one morning and told me that she no longer wanted
to be married (that's a story for another time). Got divorced and lost almost
everything except the stock that I still own in the acquiring company that may
never have an exit. The house, the cars and the trips vanished.

I guess my take away from this is that life is a series of ebbs and flows and
it's our responsibility to gain greater self-awareness each day that we wake
up. If you feel like you're behind then that is actually an amazing step in
the right direction. Ask yourself why you're you're feeling behind and work
through those emotions with yourself.(Literally talk out loud to yourself.
It's weird but it works)

Are you biased because your former co-founder still has his house and a new
baby? Are you biased because your closest friend just took his company public?

What I noticed about myself is that envy tends to create the anxiety that
leads to feeling behind and the inadequacies associated with that emotion.

If you understand and even accept those emotions then you can reverse it by
playing devils advocate to your feeling of insecurity (everyone needs a little
self-love) then you start to be grateful for the things that you are doing
well and doubling down on those strengths.

Although, I find him at times to be utterly unbearable. Gary Vaynerchuk does
has some very sage advice for anyone feeling behind. His content about playing
the long game has had the greatest effect on me.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsB9U9kSXUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsB9U9kSXUc)

I struggle with debilitating depression but I've created mental models that
enable me to get out of bed on those days and get to work. I'm hyper-aware of
my state of mind and when I'm feeling depressed or sorry for myself I let
myself become aware of it and work through it instead of falling into the
recursive emotion that is feeling depressed about being depressed which leads
to feeling even more depressed.

Once those issues are ironed out then I do my best to break up my day into
very small tasks that I can accomplish in order to keep the serotonin levels
high.

Today for instance, I needed to finish some financial modeling for the new
company that I started but I had serious FOMO because it's labor day weekend
and everyone's at the beach. I recognized it so I took a pen and paper to the
beach and did some work at the beach.

Now I've created some momentum for my self-esteem and I'll end up having an
exceptionally productive Sunday. ; )

~~~
mindentropy
Thanks for sharing your experience and links. I too am going through a similar
experience and this is helpful.

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Cyberdelic
Dwelling in the past is a waste of time, but so is living in the future...
Focus on what you can do now. Today. Otherwise, it becomes too easy to put
things off for Future You to deal with...

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5partan
Substituting regrets with desires doesn’t make you happy either.

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yogipatel
> This is an excerpt of a book I’m writing.

Damnit!

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Animats
_Remember, if you are not one up, you are one down._ \- S. Potter.

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sebastianconcpt
Beautiful. We also need an intellectual vaccine: there is a cultural war going
on where one of the powerful sides is an industry of hysteria-based pretended
self-victimhood. Many fell into this epidemic hysteria that is pathologic to
the core.

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oldpond
Thankfully, this is all just dust, so no worries.

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ssaddi
very nice article. Uplifting. So many times people feel otherwise because they
are compelled to think this way ...

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Walkman
When you realize and accept this, you can start focusing on your future and
stop whining abut your past.

