1) Any action is greater than no action. It doesn't matter how much you suck at something. Do it. Congrats, you've beaten everyone who never started.
2) Finish things. No matter how ugly it is. Even if you have to half-kill yourself to drag it that last inch over the line. Congrats, you've beaten everyone who never finished.
3) Your worst effort is probably better than average. Stop obsessing about the 1% best. That's not who you're competing against. You're competing against the pool of real people a company / project could afford to hire, who are available to hire.
4) Everyone starts off terrible at everything. No movie covers the 10,000 hours someone is learning: that's why training montages are a cliché.
5) Forgive yourself. It's okay not to be spectacular every minute of every day. Consistency of effort is more valuable than cyclical manic-depression. The key to becoming better starts with accepting and being happy with where you're starting from.
But I've found the previous to be right, more often than not.
Hope the inspiration helps you get out of your own way. :)
With the caveat that you should abandon things you've realized you don't value. I've seen far too many people spend too much time to "finish what they started" as a principle, even when they no longer valued the goal. Time is a zero sum game. All that time you spent on it is time you could have been spending on the other goals you have.
People like me have more goals than time. Gotta pick wisely.
> Any action is greater than no action. It doesn't matter how much you suck at something. Do it. Congrats, you've beaten everyone who never started.
Similar comment :-) Too many times in my life I was glad I didn't act (where all choices involving action would have led to negative consequences).
> That's not who you're competing against. You're competing against the pool of real people a company / project could afford to hire, who are available to hire.
Depends on your goals. For most of my projects, I'm competing with myself, not with others.
There's a significant lack of guidance in WEIRD societies about how to be a person, and this is topped off by the limited maturation rituals: learning to drive, first full-time job, graduating and buying a house come to mind - but we've somehow come to a consensus that putting a giant paywall in front of them and creating dependencies between them is fine.
Putting it like that, it's no wonder that so many young people are staying home, whittling their time away on scraps of "advice" on how to get on in life.
I've come to pity people who plug such "productivity" advice online, because I feel like they must be suppressing (or missing) an idea of the Good Life: a notion of using one's actions, or speech, to contribute to the common good.
I'm hopeful newer generations in the West will have the nous to reject false idols like "productivity" or extreme wealth, but I think it's on us to expose the painful lessons learned as we're transitioning into a cyborg society.
Where you live and your social circle dictate the comparisons that are made. These are not universal - moving to another part of the country will result in fairly different standards. Some of my friends (now acquaintances?) liked to spend a lot of money at expensive restaurants, hotels, etc. It's my choice whether to spend time with them (I don't spend much). Folks who need to change their wardrobe every so many months? Not in my circle.
Life is great if you set your own standards. It's liberating. Also, I've learned that the guy who makes $1M+ on Youtube is also living a very different life - one I don't want to have. Yes, I'd love the money, but not the sacrifices.
I don't get paid as much as most SV types - but whenever I audit my life, I realize that's the only thing "missing". Almost everything in my life is the way I wanted it to be (by design). I know what I value, and I both consciously and unconsciously achieved it. More money would be awesome, but do I want to sacrifice what I have? I doubt it.