Comment by bmaier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmaier | Hacker News Reader

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>>When their intensity is combined with multi-potentiality, these youngsters become particularly frustrated with the existential limitations of space and time. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to develop all of the talents that many of these children have. Making choices among the possibilities is indeed arbitrary; there is no "ultimately right" choice. Even choosing a vocation can be difficult if one is trying to make a career decision between essentially equal passion, talents and potential in violin, neurology, theoretical mathematics and international relations.

I'm curious how others have dealt with this. When faced with seemingly equal career and life decisions how to you go about choosing what vocation or path to pursue.

Does anyone have any specific methods?

Up to now, I trusted my guts and went without much thought to the path with the best profits/effort ratio (that is, I usually chose the easiest, satisfying enough path). The good thing is that you avoid analysis paralysis (by not thinking too much) and prevent a lot of effort (as a kid, I used to be guilty of being lazy but today I understand that hard work is overrated anyway). On the other hand, you can end up in a dead end. So, from now, I continue to move through small steps (I don't believe in bold moves) but I also "look deeper in the tree"; I think about the next step as well when I look at a path, to avoid being trapped in a dead end (of course, I learned to do this because I ended up in a dead end recently). I have a vague idea of a few ultimate goals I'd like to achieve, but not a crystal clear vision so they're rather irrelevant to my small steps. But it's OK as long as the decisions I make lead to better opportunities.

I flipped a coin to choose which college to go to.

I actually ended up going to the school that lost the coin flip, however.

Don't do any of them, and instead learn how to do things faster and learn faster.

Then get bored a lot... ;)

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