[1] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/introducing-alyssa-rosenz...
Seek tech partnerships with others lacking such time constraints and optimize shared responsibilities with existing partners. YOLO Time waits for no man.
I mostly don't care about the praise, because it's not the motivating factor. I usually interpret it non-presonally as the other person being excited about similar things I am. (probably a projection, but whatever)
Also in > 80% of cases the communication goes 1) praise 2) I need this. :) So, being praised is associated with someone wanting something from me, by now.
The best praise is the one that comes with a donation. :)
It's important to develop constructive (or at least non-destructive) habits to handle these feelings. I'd suggest "A Guide to the Good Life" by William Braxton Irvine as a resource. The right therapist can also help you "unpack" these feelings (although the different styles can be hit-or-miss for you, so shop around when you're on a "good" day).
I think that it's okay to set a personal goal for yourself that's different; the most you can ask of yourself is to try to contribute to society as best you can, whether that's "I'm working on the farm making food" or "I work at a big tech company and donate $5 to the campaign" or "I mentor startup founders".
> achieving great things when you're young requires a combination of hard work, privilege, and supportive adults (parents/teachers/etc) and most people just didn't (or don't) have the same opportunities.
I think that it's easy to externalize emotions about success in young people by projecting the help of an adult as the driving factor for that young person's success. Although this may be true in some cases, there are a large number of young motivated people who are just self-starters, with or without the resources of a backing adult.
I say this because, more than privilege or adult support, I think success at a young age boils down to hard work (as you've mentioned), having passion, and being prepared for luck, i.e. taking advantage of opportunities.
I think parents and teachers play a large role in the development of a person: this is obvious. What I'm not a fan of is when people lessen the success of a young person by shifting the accomplishment to be a simple cause of the environment in which they were raised, rather than the efforts and attitudes of the person who put the work in to accomplish what they did. Support ≠ doing it for them.
To summarize: I agree with your larger point (to not beat yourself up when seeing a great accomplishment at a young age) but disagree that success at a young age hinges on privilege and parents over luck and perseverance.
A teen hacking together something awesome is commonplace. A 65 year old doing it is less so?
#EMDW
https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/interior.aspx?sid=1758&...
Still amazing.
But coding is easy to get started with. Now, a 14 year old world renowned notary, that I will probably not see within my lifetime :-))
1. It's a protected job in most countries 2. It's just boring for kids.
In addition with programming you can create and mod games which is how a lot of people start their first programming steps as a kid. Kids don't just start programming because they think hmm I want to program. No they want to do something and to do it they have program. There is 0 incentive for a kid to do notary work.
> 1. It's a protected job in most countries
Not all things which are difficult to do are difficult because laws of physics do not allow them ;-)
Sometimes "hard" means "other people make it hard". It doesn't mean that it's hard in the sense that you have to discover new things or go to other worlds or be able to read binary code fluently while it's scrolling down the screen, Matrix-style :-)
Immediately knew where this was going.