I hate these kinds of articles because they can put tremendous pressure on people. There isn't a "right" way to spend your twenties (or thirties, or any decade) and comparing yourself to Einstein and Newton and Kepler like this article does is worse than counterproductive. The only way you should concern yourself with living is to try to be happy every day, whatever that means to you. Listening to pundits showing you charts and graphs and science about how you're wasting your life will just invite stress and pressure.
Especially idiotic are the random references to successful people.
As if not "wasting" your 20s (whatever that means) would somehow improve your odds to become the next Einstein.
If you happen to be the next Einstein then I firmly doubt reading baseless self-improvement drivel makes a difference towards realizing or not realizing your potential.
> If you happen to be the next Einstein then I firmly doubt reading baseless self-improvement drivel makes a difference towards realizing or not realizing your potential.
GEORGE: They always make me take stock of my life. And how I’ve pretty much wasted all of it, and how I plan to continue wasting it.
JERRY: I know, and then you say to yourself, “From this moment on, I’m not gonna waste any more of it.” But then you go, “How? What can I do that’s not wasting it?”
ELAINE: Is this a waste of time? What should we be doing? Can’t you have coffee with people?
Some people do need to hear this though. I spent ages 15-23 playing video games for hours. I could have learned programming in that time. (Probably would have, if someone had told me that programming existed)
It was fun at the time, but not really fun to reminisce on (unlike partying, which I don't regret). If I could say two things to my younger self, 'ditch video games and do something with more value' would be the second.
When speaking about learning stuff, some people are more ready to learn than others.
Programming is tough. If you lack the patience and the passion and the resources, you aren't going to learn programming, no matter how many self-improvement articles you may read.
I tried hard to learn programming since I was 12 years old. This was in 95 and I didn't have an accessible Internet connection or books and Linux was awful back then so I was working with QBasic and a pirated Turbo Pascal and 1 or 2 shitty books. I was also not ready for it, as I was lacking the necessary knowledge or the patience for doing things bigger than bubble-sort and hello-world. Only in high-school I managed to get more serious about it, but even then I lacked the resources and good teachers and I also had lots of other problems on my mind, as any other teenager.
Of course, for you playing video games was probably a waist of time, but if you wouldn't have had played those games than you have no idea how you would have filled that surplus of time.
And really, where's the rush?
I admire 12 year-olds that hack on stuff, but they do so because that makes them happy and because we live in a different age. Not because they are rushing to get somewhere.
I completely agree. I didn't really do much programming until I was perhaps 17 or 18 because I found it tediously dull until then. In the time since then, I've taught myself a whole range of programming languages because I started to enjoy doing it. I'm not sure if I had to mature a little to get there, or whether the little forced programming I did in college gave me enough of a knowledge boost to make it fun. Now I do programming and electronics projects in my spare time because I enjoy them. I also go to clubs because I enjoy them. Is one of those a waste because it's not seen externally as constructive? I don't think so.
I've recently been appreciating Cal Newport's latest book "So Good They Can't Ignore You". Wish I was able to read it when I was younger, but like most I was caught up with the "find your passion" hypothesis. The book deconstructs this passion hypothesis for a fallacy, and prescribes a craftsman mindset ("what can I offer the world?") over a passion mindset ("what can the world offer me?").
Don't worry about finding your true calling, just get good at something which few other people are good at (skills in low supply - so not video games, sports, etc). Get good by doing "deep work", not just superficial exposure. This Ira Glass quote spoke directly to me: "I feel like your problem is that you're trying to judge all things in the abstract before you do them. That's your tragic mistake."
Doing "something with value" requires (valuable, low supply) skills ("skills trump passion". skills also trump courage, as in the "all it takes is courage to follow your dreams" message of courage culture from which comes the OP article). Developing skills requires deep work. The deep approach is to narrow the focus from "be good at math" or "be good at programming", or even "understand functional programming". This is the broad/abstract approach I've had in the past, which, in retrospect at the ripe old age of 28, has not worked super well.
New plan is to hone a craft by choosing to work intensely with "this particular design pattern" or "this particular javascript library" (looking at you d3). Most importantly, to get good at building stuff by building stuff (craftsman mindset). Get good first, because you won't become passionate about something you're not good at.
very much enjoyed your comment, something I very much needed to hear. I myself am a comp sci graduate and I feel I have no programming skill whatsoever, especially now after almost 2 years of support work in banking. So essentially I feel like I've a software development degree and lack the skill to be a software developer. I've looked at my current passions and the Ira Glass quote also speaks directly to me as I'm looking at potential avenues and saying no, no, maybe with little to no actual experience of these avenues!
May I ask if you've always been a developer and this was limited to languages / paradigms or was this am I a DBA/Systems Analyst/Dev or perhaps even wider?
Thanks, I'm glad typing that wasn't just for myself.
In college, my major was math and biochem (with an eye toward computational biology or computational chemistry). So no, I haven't always been a developer, my interests were very wide: everything from systems biology to quantum mechanics. So wide that I ultimately dropped out at the start of my senior year, rather than choose some specialty for graduate school. I don't regret that, since at least I have a couple friends who did go on to different grad programs (physical chemistry, molecular biology) and I still appreciate the independence and freedom that comes with dropping out.
Anyway, I always wanted to be more of a big picture / theoretical guy and sort of poo-poohed programming. I thought it was more important to have deep understanding of mathematical formulas and creative theoretical research ideas (the passion). But I've come to appreciate that implementing such formulas/ideas as code (the skills) is much harder than I imagined (as is any type of coding), and also the best way to gain a deep understanding.
So that's how I came back to programming in the past few years, which I always treated rather casually growing up (started with some visual basic in my early teens).
How did you end up in banking support work? Maybe thought it was an avenue to wall street quant/HFT work (wild guess)? In Cal Newport's book he does say there are certain jobs where the best option is to leave, eg when there's little opportunity for growth and learning (building "career capital"). But his overall point is to stop chasing a passion by looking for an expected dream job right out of college. Instead, develop it over time by earning and leveraging/parlaying career capital. Going through the motions, gaining experience, and developing valuable skills through hard work. You should check it out (I finally found a pdf online only the other day), sounds like it will be worth your read.
Screw that. There's a thing called balance. I would never trade my time going out/video gaming for more hours of programming. I balanced fun and work and I would consider my career successful. Youth is something you only have for so long. You still have 30+ years to program hardcore after your 30s.
You feel that you would have been better off hearing that, but you're also forgetting that some people will feel the exact opposite. I also spent my late teenage years playing video games. I do not regret it at all, and I have tons of great memories of that time in my life. If I were to give younger me advice it would be to relax and enjoy yourself while you don't have bigger things to worry about.
Exactly. Save the serious stuff for later.
When else will you be able to have the most fun?
When are you the prettiest, the strongest, the wildest?
Enjoy yourself in your twenties. Isn't that what life is really all about?
Sex, drugs, and rock n roll. Friends. Your tribe.
You can recover in your thirties and get serious, work long hours, enjoy your children, and watch the wrinkles on your face grow.
Way to confuse nurture and nature. This is just very bad pop science. As if curiosity wasn't something that could be nurtured, or evaluating risk something that came with life experience..
No need for the barf response. It's actually the truest and best advice one can get.
Genius does what genius knows will make him/her happy[1].
That's it. Simple as that.
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[1] Of course we know and appreciate the difficulty of defining that. Or that we've appreciated that happiness is probably only "achievable" obliquely. Or that happiness isn't what we are after ... after all, and that it's meaningfulness that we seek. Or that even after searching for meaning we come to the absurd conclusion that our existence is devoid of any meaning! Doesn't matter really, just be happy. FFS.
Fair point. Chasing happiness (esp. short term pleasure) as an end in itself, rather than as a side effect of doing valuable things, is unlikely to result in happiness.
But I think a strategic view of "what big choices in life will contribute to long term happiness?" is a still good thing to consider.
I think if a person's "happiness every day" is "smoke crack and gamble in search of a short-lived rush", he needs to reevaluate, because that won't serve long term happiness.
OTOH, if a person's "happiness every day" is "do yoga, spend time with family, and work reasonable hours at a job he enjoys", then that's a good idea.
Ideally, the short term and the long term are reasonably aligned, otherwise you get problems.
What does this even mean? Surely it's all relative, measured by our interpretation of what's great. I'm sure many theoretical physicists would consider their life work to be great, while many others would consider abstract theoretical physics with no practical application completely useless.
Personally, I aim to enjoy life and ensure that any children I have can do the same. I'm not sure if I'd see a point if there wasn't happiness in it for me. Fundamentally, we're fairly insignificant. Your interpretation of life is all you have. Why not be happy?
This article isn't trying to promote the "right way" to spend your twenties. It ends with asking the question, "But what kinds of things should you channel [20s brain power] towards?" It's just trying to highlight many of the advantages young brains have that are often overlooked. Especially in traditional careers where the 20s are consumed by degrees and climbing corporate/professional ladders.
