Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

49 pointsanewkid86 comments

Background: I'm 18 years old, American, and attend an Ivy League college. It seems that I've tried to do a very long list of things, but that none of them ever actually succeed. Some of the things I've tried:

- Wrote a program to model the stock market. (The capital I needed evaporated during the credit crunch).

- Worked on a paper with a professor. (The professor bailed and they had access to lots of equipment I would have needed to finish it myself).

- Worked on a second paper with a second professor in another department. (Same story).

- Applied to Harvard, MIT and Stanford, the three big startup schools, twice, got rejected by all both times. (The school I'm going to is good academically but produces zero startups).

- Tried to start a company over the summer. (The other two people working with me bailed in August and are refusing to acknowledge that I own the rights to the portions of the code I wrote. Don't know what I'll do since I can't afford to sue them.)

- Tried to start a second company the previous summer. (Found out that that particular business had much larger capital requirements than I had thought.)

- Submitted my own paper to a conference, gave a talk there, but the paper was never published. (The special issue of the journal they were going to publish it in was canceled, and I haven't found another journal that would accept it.)

- Submitted second paper to second conference in different field. (Same story.)

- Applied for research internships last summer. (Rejected by all).

- Applied for finance internships this summer. (Rejected by all so far, not heard back from some yet, would appreciate suggestions if anyone has any).

- Helped to write a web application last summer. (No one uses it, and the other people working on it, who have a great deal of needed expertise, have moved onto more interesting projects).

- Did another webapp for one of the student clubs. (Someone else also wrote one and theirs was better, so everyone (including me) just used that instead.)

- Half a dozen math/science contests which I've entered. I recruited some fellow students to help practice and then we met weekly to work on our strategies. (Did badly in all of them.)

- Tried to start a blog, worked on it for two years. (Pretty much nobody read it.)

Am I doing anything wrong, just in general?

(Formatting fixed, sorry).

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Dude, you're 18. The more important question is, are you carrying out meaningful social experiences with people your age? Are you making really great friends who have nothing to do with your career? Are you engaging in dramatic, possibly-hopeless romantic endeavors with cute 18 year old girls (or boys!) that you'll enjoy thinking about when you're 60?

You can't buy back your youth, kiddo.

I don't get why, but it seems that few people here are interested in any of the same things I am. It's not like my interests are narrow; indeed, people criticize me for being too much of a dabbler (I am interested in math, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, politics, history, computers, and a whole bunch of other stuff). People just tend to talk about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff.

Why do so many people talk about youth as some sort of idyllic time in one's life? I, for one, have found a strong trend of things getting better as I get older, not worse. Old people, in general, have more of everything, because they've had more time to accumulate it: more money, more friends, more family, more power, more skill, more social status, more life experience, more of pretty much everything (except of course for physical stamina, but this is not terribly important in today's world, as the success of numerous disabled people shows).

perhaps because they don't remember? As far as I can tell, life gets better as you get older and gain more control over your life. Childhood was miserable for me.

I mean, physically, yeah, it's pretty much all downhill from there. but everything else gets much better.

I would not worry too much if your social life doesn't pick up until you are a little older. Mine did not.

Also note, if you don't connect with your peers, consider finding new peers. For me, moving to the San Francisco bay area (I'm in the south bay) has massively improved my social opportunities. Also, as you get older, the other nerds start to come out of their shells. At your age, many of them either studiously avoid other people or pretend to not be nirds.

perhaps because they don't remember? As far as I can tell, life gets better as you get older and gain more control over your life. Childhood was miserable for me.

I mean, physically, yeah, it's pretty much all downhill from there. but everything else gets much better.

I would not worry too much if your social life doesn't pick up until you are a little older. Mine did not.

perhaps they don't remember

Yea it's funny the way that happens. Perhaps this occurs more often than we'd like to think. For starters, just look at all the parents who don't seem to understand why their kid wants to be popular in school or why they seem unmotivated to study the subjects the parents want them to study.

Youth is carefree, where responsibility doesn't bear down you like a hammer. Youth is a time of learning, one of my favorite activities. Once you get older, you've got bills, jobs, internal politics, disappointments, and in some ways less freedom. And while you are happy, you are not happy in the way that you were in college.

More does NOT equal or mean better. The startup world is a great example of that.

P.S. - There is nothing wrong with parties, dating, sports, and clubs. In moderation of course.

Paying bills is easy, acquiring and keeping job if you are educated in something useful is also easy. Politics you can withdraw from. Disappointments are spread through all life and they are more harmful when you are young and emotional.

Being forced to learn boring stuff on daily basis for 10+ years (that actually longer since you are younger) while coping with your emotions and huge amounts of people you meet is far more hard then anything in adult life.

From an evolutionary psychology perspective 18 is exactly the age one wants to prove his worth. I understand him perfectly. And I don't think all this motivation should be wasted.

> Why do so many people talk about youth as some sort of idyllic time in one's life?

If you look into how memory works, negative details fade and positive memories remain. I keep pretty extensive journals, and it's absolutely staggering how much less pleasant my earlier life was than I remember it.

Also, most people accidentally wind up in a secure, relatively unchallenging position early in life, and never get out of that. Youth was their only time questioning authority, learning, and growing at a rapid rate. But the people I know that kept those attributes into their 20's... 30's... and 40's and beyond enjoy their later years as much or more than their earlier years.

If you're looking to run your own companies, projects, write your own papers, and do your own work, then you won't be nostalgically remembering your youth later. You're in line for a very challenging, but very stimulating and enjoyable life that gets better as time passes.

This may be a bit controversial, but I'd recommend you ignore the "play around and enjoy it while you can" crowd - most of the people I know that skipped that advice are quite successful and quite happy with that choice. Play around is good advice if you're looking for a very stable and secure life later. If you're in control of your own destiny, go ahead and build like crazy now - it'll have a compounding affect for the rest of your life, and will lead to a very fulfilling and prosperous life (and you're much likelier to end up quite wealthy, which has surprisingly become underrated as of late - consumerism sucks and you can't buy happiness, but wealth opens up so much freedom and opportunity. By starting now when you have no heavy expenses and aren't accustomed to a high standard of living, you put yourself in line to be very wealthy later)

Life is a balance. I agree with your point that if you are looking to run a company or multiple companies you will live a challenging and rewarding life. But to be successful you will need to foster relationships.

You should not shut out people just because they talk about sports, cars, or whatever when they first meet you. Everyone has something to teach you. Even when you are the smartest kid in the room you can always learn something from someone. Your challenge is to get past the bullshit smalltalk and get to the meat of conversation that you both find mutual interest in.

I don't get why, but it seems that few people here are interested in any of the same things I am. ... People just tend to talk about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff.

It's not just you who has this problem. The experience you're relating probably sounds pretty familiar to many people around here. It's easy to forget that geeks are still the minority. In my experience so far, this won't change much as you get older. The "Jockocracy" is alive and well even after one finishes formal schooling, it just becomes a little less obvious and a little less homogeneous.

There may be some bastions of geekdom around the place and if you're lucky you'll have a few people that you can geek out with on a regular basis, but by and large it's lucky we have the Internet, hey.

Trust me kid (it feels weird that I can call an 18 year old "kid" now, but it feels right, I must be getting old), you will look back at your 18 year old self in 10 years with eyes you can't conceive of having today.

It's not about things really getting better or worse as you get older. It's more just about things getting different. It's not that youth is or should be this "idyllic" time and things just suck more as you get older. I think you'd find that many people who would self identify as geeks would not say their youth was particularly "idyllic".

You will be much wiser in 10 years. I know this is a cliché, but it's also true.

You will learn more from your failures than you will from your successes (I know, another cliché but again, very true), but make no mistake, the successes do feel better at the time. :)

You will have more responsibilities in 10 years. If there is one thing that has changed for me if I compare myself now to myself at 18, it is this. however much free time you have now, it will seem like a luxury looking back in 10 years. That's not to say that your life will necessarily turn into one big soul crushing grind or anything, but you will simply have more demands on your time. Some you will have desired and some you will not have. I now have a wife, I now have a budget to balance, bills to pay, a job to work at and so on. It's hard to say if I prefer my life now to the one I had when I was 18. Truthfully, I would say there are aspects of my life when I was 18 that I wish I still had and there are aspects of my life now that I would never give up to be 18 again.

Enjoy your youth and your current lack or responsibilities, try not to take it for granted (but you will, because we all do). Try not to take things too seriously. Some of the most interesting people I know still don't/didn't know what they wanted to do with their lives in their 30s. I might even include myself in this category actually. :P

Just keep at it, one foot in front of the other, you only really fail if you stop.

> Why do so many people talk about youth as some sort of idyllic time in one's life?

I totally second that.

Youth consists of people telling you what to do and hitting you without any consequences for no apparent reason beside their own amusement.

For me things started to lighten up during college. At last there was almost no boring things to learn (in comparison with previous stages of education) and virtually no homework drudgery. There were fewer interactions with people that were likely to assert dominance over me just on basis of formal authority. Vacations lasted three months. You didn't need to take notes during most courses, just xerox them from someone with better handwriting week before final exams.

After college life got even easier. I just have to earn enough money to keep myself and people I care about alive.

The only struggle I have today is to build wealth generating system that makes money for me without putting in additional work so I can relieve myself from the last obligations.

>>have more of everything

Including responsibility and lack of freedom. All that stuff they have more of costs.

Lack of freedom in what way? Other than being responsible for providing for yourself any responsibility you assume beyond that is your own choice.

>> more friends, more family, more power, more skill, more social status, more life experience, more of pretty much everything

More of everything means more up keep for each of them, and less freedom to try something new. Have a wife and kids? Are you willing to watch your children be homeless because you decided to take a year off work to see Europe? An 18 year old could easily crash on friends'\families' couches afterwards until he got a place of his own making it not that big a deal. More skill? More to up keep so that it doesn't atrophy, also it means you are dedicated to whatever that skill is in. World class Software person decides he wants to do Mechanical Engineering? Sure his years of analytical thought give him an advantage over a complete green horn but it is a loss of status, ability, and pay.

Everything you do has initial costs and up keep costs. These costs limit freedom. Sure you can hide in your parents basement and only provide for yourself but that has certain costs as well.

Believe me pal, you will really mis whatever you are doing now, or what you have not. So take some breaks and do what ever you may imagine to do now. I don't say break everything you do, just take some time doing other things you may wish you should have done when 18.

Because there is no turn backs in time (for now at least). Stucking in the things you like now and not trying else may lead to not even know what you would like to do.

When socializing, it might help to focus on activities you're interested in, rather than just intellectual interests - Many of those tend to be solitary pursuits.

As a personal example: I'm also very interested in cycling and cooking. They're a lot more approachable for most people, but (under the right circumstances) have plenty of points that segue well into talking about history, physics, etc.

I have to thank you first anewkid for posting this thread. I can relate to you very much. You had the courage it takes to accept and say it all.

I actually feel this way: I don't want to work for a body-shopping firm a few years after i graduate. I fear that very much. Coz thats what's been hapenning all around me. The mindset of the people around me is such - graduate, get a job.

So i keep trying things, and have been doing it since i was 14. I'm now 19. I'm still trying :)

So all the best to both of us and everyone around who's in this kinda situation.

Trying is fine and you will eventually succeed, but don't try to bend reality. If you really need to take a job later, you should do it confidently, not in panic.

yes sir agree with that. this thought did not cross my mind until you said it.

Now I think I've changed my mind. If I have to work. I will. And I would work just to fund my other ideas, like what I'm doing now by doing small freelance jobs.

You sound like another one of those ever-so-charming nerds that only wants to talk about the latest academic papers at parties. Why don't you take this time to learn how to relate to other people? I wish I did when I was 18, instead of now at 26. It will make you happier and more successful in the long run.

Also, you come across as a bit of a whiner.

Work on your social intelligence. Disowning your peers in favor of books (what a timeless stereotype!) is only going to leave you emotionally crippled later on.

I get along with other people (I'm not a social outcast or anything), I just don't do very much with most of them because we're not interested in the same things. Is that wrong? Should I feel terribly guilty about it? If so, why shouldn't they also feel terribly guilty for not being interested in the same things I am?

Interested is a choice. Once you decide that you're going to make an effort to know more about something or someone, it becomes much easier to find common ground -- and at your stage in the game, you need to find as much common ground as you can. The ability to befriend people of many different backgrounds is a strength that will reward you in the future.

Also, not for nothing, but your stories (repeated abandonment by professors, peers, etc.) strongly suggest to me that you're missing important social cues. The research-paper anecdotes, in particular, tell me that you're doing something wrong. No professional academic or journal would take a paper submitted by a high-school student seriously without lots of personal mentoring. If you did have a faculty mentor, they wouldn't simply abandon you without cause. You're missing something important.

You'll be disabused of this implicit notion that you are always right at some point. You can choose to do so now or the world will force it on you later. But you will make little progress until you do.

Actually, the advice to get laid (with a pretty and not too drunk person) might be good here. It will force you to confront any social deficiencies you do have.

No offense, but your personality leaves a bad taste in my mouth, acidic, like a pasta sauce that hasn't been cooked long enough. You have no interest in making any changes in your life, but you admit yourself that you're not happy with what you're doing. You ask for advice with no intent on taking it, instead hosting a pity-party where other nerds stroke your ego by telling you that the world has wronged you, reinforcing your broken worldview.

Getting laid might mellow that out bit. Does for a lot of people. A person is more than just a brain. You must tend to the whole organism, not just the ego.

Right now, I wouldn't want to work with you on a project, no matter how smart you are. Don't need a prima Dona that thinks he's always right.

"You'll be disabused of this implicit notion that you are always right at some point."

Please tell me where I have ever said or implied that I was always right, or even right most of the time.

EDIT: I see you edited your post to say this twice, I suppose on the principle that "what I say three times is true".

"No offense, but your personality leaves a bad taste in my mouth, acidic, like a pasta sauce that hasn't been cooked long enough."

I will freely admit that I can be unpleasant at times, but I do know enough social skills to not insult random strangers who I have no reason to be hostile to.

"You ask for advice with no intent on taking it, instead hosting a pity-party where other nerds stroke your ego by telling you that the world has wronged you, reinforcing your broken worldview."

Wait, what? Look at the top-ranked comments on this thread, none of them could be remotely described as pitying me. Some people did give good advice, eg., lionhearted, zaidf, btilly.

I edit in place. Bad habit for public fora. Probably would have removed the repetition with a further edit had I not been called out on it and quoted so quickly.

"Look at the top-ranked comments on this thread, none of them could be remotely described as pitying me. Some people did give good advice, eg., lionhearted, zaidf, btilly."

Some of the most highly-ranked comments here tell you to work on a project where other people can't get in the way. That's the worst advice that I see. The world has gone collaborative. Learning to be a better collaborator will yield much higher returns.

And like I said, you come across as a whiner by putting the focus on all the external causes as to why your projects didn't succeed. I've seen so many people with a thousand external excuses as to why they can't do X that it quite offends me, especially coming from someone as talented and privileged as yourself.

Saying "I shouldn't bother with trying X because of reasons XYZ" is indeed a bad idea, but I try not to do that, and I think I've been decently successful. Is there anything that I should do for any of these projects, which I haven't been doing because of some convenient excuse? (This is not a rhetorical question, it would benefit me a lot if I realized I had been making some excuse to not try some new course of action.)

Privileged? I do have some privilege, in that I was born in a first-world country and not a third-world country, but that's about it. My parents aren't rich or famous or even upper middle class. My mom constantly worries about the bank foreclosing on her house because she can't pay the mortgage, my dad works as a salesman and lives in a junky 2BR apartment. I myself am flat broke, I actually have negative net worth because of the student loans I had to take out.

I was almost in the same situation my freshman year around ~2006. I even wrote to pg(before knowing much about YC) on how he focuses and completes things. I was surprised when he responded.

My context was startups. I kept building sites which I was promptly shutting down after launch because no one used it--and more importantly because I didn't do much to get people to use it. If I remember correctly, pg said to pick something and allocate the next x months to it--no matter what.

It worked for me. A few months later I picked an idea, and said no matter where it goes, I will work on it for six months.

I think you merely making a post like this means you are progressing. A lot of people would kill to just have tried so many things. You are clearly bored of trying stuff. Time to buckle up and get a little focused--because it's more rewarding and fun!

1. It's a good idea to partner with people, but pick projects where you don't depend on your partners to finish. Pick a problem/domain where if everything else failed you could at least push out a minimal version to see if you can get traction.

2. For abandoned projects, salvage the scraps - publish the drafts or parts of them, open-source your code (unless it still holds significant value, but don't overestimate the potential value).

3. You seem ambitious and not easily discouraged - both valuable characteristics. So keep trying, but be on the lookout for blind spots, and patterns in your failed projects. Distill your strengths and preferences and see how you can apply them best, and work around your weaknesses.

4. Make sure you're not someone else's "useful idiot" (and obviously, don't exploit others).

5. As others have mentioned here - enjoy your life, seriously! Don't race to the presumed finish line. (Read Philip Greenspun's article on early retirement). You should always strive to pursue something that you find personally meaningful. What's the big picture of what all your efforts are really for? Sitting in a vault of cash by yourself like Scrooge McDuck won't make you happy.

6. Unless you want to become an academic or consultant/i-banker, don't worry too much about your GPA, but meet and work with as many people as possible. Make friends and test-drive them for productive pursuits. College (and I guess grad school) are statistically almost the last stops for finding co-founders. Just look at startups you respect, and look up the founders' stories - the vast majority met at the latest at university.

Are you doing something wrong? Probably you are. But that is to be expected since there are so many ways to mess up. The question is whether you're learning from your mistakes.

Personally I would ask why people keep bailing on you. You had 2 professors bail on letting you complete a paper you started on. You had co-founders bail and screw you over. The people working with you on the web application didn't continue working with you. (The point being that they didn't just abandon the application, they also didn't invite you to be part of the next thing they did.)

This is a bad pattern because generally we can't succeed unless we can get other people to succeed with us. For example you're unlikely to start a successful startup without the close cooperation of a cofounder. I'm sure that circumstances are different in each case, but as the poster says, "The only commonality in all your failed relationships is you."

This strikes me as a pattern that is repeating too much for coincidence. So you need to ask why. It may be that you'll get an answer that you can't easily solve. For instance people may find you not fun to be around. If that's the case then you're unlikely to be able to change your personality. In which case you need to find someone who can get along with you as you are. However it may be something like, "you've always got 50 other projects going on, and keep on dropping the ball" in which case you can fix it. (Do fewer things at once.)

Whatever you find, be aware that you are almost certainly doing SEVERAL things consistently wrong. So once you've identified one thing to improve, don't stop there.

Maybe you're trying to do too much? Perhaps you could find something which you are really passionate about and work at doing it the best you can.

Looks like a lot of the time you've been doing things for or with other people. Why not think of something you are really passionate about and do it exclusively for a while. Do it for yourself, not anyone else. That way you only need to be persistent to succeed. And you never know, there might be other people out there that like it and want to use it too.

Keep it up, you're doing fine. You're learning a lot from your projects, and even if you don't "finish" them, you benefit greatly from them. That's a good place to be when 18, and you're already aware of the usefulness of finishing stuff, so keep doing what you're doing but keep an eye open toward finding projects that you can/want to stick with.

I see that people have already told you that it's fine, you're 18, everybody is a dabbler at 18, and those who aren't will have a midlife crisis where they wake up one day and wish they were you.

This is all true, as far as it goes, but I needn't say it again. Let's try some coaching instead. Vince Lombardi mode, engage!

Stop trying to look smart. Being smart is wonderful as a source of personal pleasure, and is also really useful, but looking smart is an empty experience. Too easily faked. Any idiot can look smart. Many idiots specialize in it. Bernie Madoff looked smart.

A sure sign that you're trying too hard to look smart is that you are "applying for finance internships" and "modeling the stock market". These are understandable mistakes -- the media works hard to convince you that these are respectable goals, much as they work hard to convince you that blackjack and poker are sexy games that you should play all the time -- but to a scientist this stuff is the badge of the lightweight. It has the intellectual content of a whiffle ball, and the only reason to do it is to collect money, generally from the gullible or the corrupt. (See "Bernie Madoff", above.) Real businesspeople don't "apply for finance internships"; they sell things or make things. And real investors (as opposed to gamblers and shills) don't waste time modeling the market, because they've all read Malkiel.

You are in college. Do you... study anything? Your resume is seriously scary. Where do you find all this time? Your academic work must be way too easy. You are in college right now. You are surrounded by the infrastructure for learning stuff. There will never be a better time for that. Do not waste this time collecting C.V. entries like so many stamps; that is for later. I call upon the spirit of the geek's Vince Lombardi: Yoda.

All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on Where. He. Was. Hmm? What. He. Was doing.

You claim to be interested in physics; do you understand Maxwell's equations, stat mech, quantum decoherence, general relativity? You claim an interest in math; have you run out of math courses? Chemistry: Do you understand the band structure of solids? Biology: Do you know what siRNA is, can you do graduate-level molecular biology lab work? Computers: Have you finished SICP, learned operating systems and algorithms? Have you even considered linguistics, or geology, or anthropology? Study any foreign languages? How's your music theory?

Dabble, but dabble smart. Dabble like a scholar: Study things. Study the hardest things you can find. Study like you mean it.

"Stop trying to look smart."

Look smart to who? I studiously avoid mentioning any of this to anyone at my school for fear of seeming arrogant.

"It has the intellectual content of a whiffle ball, and the only reason to do it is to collect money, generally from the gullible or the corrupt."

Yup. I did these things entirely for the purpose of making money and not for the intellectual challenges, because money is useful and I'm currently broke.

"And real investors (as opposed to gamblers and shills) don't waste time modeling the market, because they've all read Malkiel."

Google Renaissance Technologies.

"Where do you find all this time?"

College is not very demanding. My usual load is two technical courses and two nontechnical courses, which take up 10 * 2 + 6 * 2 = 32 hours a week.

"You claim to be interested in physics; do you understand Maxwell's equations, stat mech, quantum decoherence, general relativity?"

Yes, yes, yes, somewhat (working on it).

"You claim an interest in math; have you run out of math courses?"

I will next year at my current pace.

"Chemistry: Do you understand the band structure of solids?"

Yup.

"Do you know what siRNA is"

Nope, thanks for the link.

"can you do graduate-level molecular biology lab work?"

I probably could given a month or so of training, but I seriously doubt any professor would let me because of my age and my relative lack of bio courses.

"Computers: Have you finished SICP, learned operating systems and algorithms?"

I haven't written my own OS or programming language if that's what you mean, but I find solving problems that have already been solved a zillion times better by thousands of other people working together over decades to be distasteful; what's the point?

"Have you even considered linguistics, or geology, or anthropology?"

Yes. I know some geology and anthropology but find linguistics boring.

"Study any foreign languages?"

Yes, I find them quite boring, it's basically just a great deal of memorization by rote.

"How's your music theory?"

Music cannot be explicitly taught in the same way that any of these other things can. I'm not sure how it can be taught, actually. I could probably become good at it given several thousand hours of work but don't see the point in investing that much time.

Computers: Have you finished SICP, learned operating systems and algorithms?"

---

Reinventing the wheel won't get you a better car, but you'll understand the hell out of the wheel.

It is also theoretically possible that tinkering with wheels is pleasant. Though perhaps it's not for everyone.

It is even possible -- bear with me here -- that while rebuilding the wheel in your own way you will discover something new and interesting. Even in an ancient and venerable field like computer science, which has been picked over by dozens, perhaps even a hundred world-class minds for as long as six decades. [1]

---

[1] One of the many charms of growing older is that you come to understand things, like why older people were always rolling their eyes at you when you were seventeen. I remember back when I was young, thinking about the futuristic year 2000. "My god," I would think, "I will probably live to see the year 2000! Although I'll be 29 then, so I'll be much older."

Tinkering with wheels is indeed fun (I have done some tinkering with existing OSs).

A hundred world-class minds over six decades really is a lot.

A hundred world-class minds over six decades really is a lot.

Really? Try saying that to a math professor.

Is this you?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838640

If so, why have you changed your username?

If not, read the advice there, because your story sounds very, very familiar.

The immature know how to ask for advice, but not to take it.

It's hard to tell just from your post, but so far it sounds like you're more of a "starter" than a "finisher" -- you're not following through enough on your projects to keep them going. I'm not an expert on your life, so this is just a guess.

However, the one that really stands out for me is: "Did another webapp for one of the student clubs. (Someone else also wrote one and theirs was better, so everyone (including me) just used that instead.)"

In your other examples, there were external factors that created large barriers to finishing the project. That happens sometimes, but with this one, you simply ... gave up.

There's not necessarily a negative connotation there; you could have made a perfectly logical decision after factoring in your interest in the project, the amount of work it would take to compete with the other webapp, and whether you had any immediate ideas that would make your version better. But, it looks like you're asking why you haven't been successful yet, and here's a case where there really wasn't anything stopping you.

Aside from that, I think most folks here have a pretty big stack of failures and dead projects. I sure do -- I've even lost track of them. I've got failures in inventions, big what-if ideas, political ventures, software projects, business leads, and on and on.

As long as you're able to get something valuable out of those failures, some lesson or some insight or some social connections or something, then it's not really a failure.

It's just more experience.

Yes. There seems to be a common thread here. You are taking on way more than you, or really anybody, can handle. I mean, seriously---a program to model the stock market? That's why everybody else keeps bailing out. Anyway, if you get a bit more realistic (don't read: less ambitious), then I'm sure you'll be a lot more successful.

Failure is actually a good thing, as long as you learn from it. And it looks like you've got plenty of material in that regard.

You are not focused.

If people gave up after one or two failures, nothing would get accomplished.

- Wrote a program to model the stock market

Everyone wants to do this, but unless you have insider information like Goldman Sachs or some rare mathematical insight that a million PhDs have overlooked, you are likely to fail. The stock market is a zero-sum game where most of the profits go to the high end of a Pareto distribution. This is too ambitious for you.

- Worked on a paper with a professor.

Unless you are a genius, I doubt any of these professors would be working with you seriously instead of just being free lab labor. Your knowledge is most likely too shallow to be useful in high-tech research that gets all the grants. However, this might be your goal if you want to go to grad school.

- Tried to start a company over the summer.

Keep trying.

- Applied for X internships

You are too young. There is also a recession so you can lower your expectations.

- Half a dozen math/science contests

There's something wrong with your plan if you have the time for half a dozen of them.

- Tried to start a blog, worked on it for two years.

Link?

At least you had the drive, In my case I never knew what I truly wanted until a year ago. I kind of slacked all the way through college, thinking I was just going to be another cog in the wheel when I graduate. I felt that I wasted too much time.

That said. I agree with having focus. Narrow down your area of focus to a couple of things and drive the nail all the way. As in my case, I'm focusing on learning graphics programming and image processing, and considering my current skill set and timetable, it would take at least 3-5 years to acquire reasonable expertise on this. Along the way, I will try to learn how to create and run a startup. This is my current plan for the future, just to give an example.

As for webapps, you don't have to work on something that others might use or be happy with, rather, work on something that you, yourself can be proud of, even though nobody knows what the heck it does.

Dude, almost same story as mine. But I fall very short at the number of items on your list :).

But still I believe that it's all about experience.

All those things on your list will help you someway or other, on the right time. Just keep it going and more importantly _balance your life_ (AKA numairs comment :) ).

May the force be with you!

As for the webapps: did you create a web app that you yourself would like to have? What I mean is, perhaps you could try to create something that is useful to you, then it does not matter as much if other parties lose interest. Chances are if you like it, other people might like it, too.

A lot of the things you mention seem to be for other people's benefit, not for your own. Like writing papers - presumably the professors have more to gain. Or the science contests - sure, they'd look nice on your CV, but are you also intrinsically motivated to work on that stuff? Perhaps you could focus more on what you like and less on what you think other people would like to see. Just guessing, though.

Another thing could be to "launch" early, so that users keep motivating you.

I think you're doing great. A lot of people on this thread say you should spend more time being social. There's nothing wrong with that, but if I had it to do over again I would do it your way.

Yeah I had some good times as a kid. But now as I'm approaching 30 I don't really care about good times. I just want to do something big and I wish I had more of a head start.

Life is a summation of experiences. The more diverse your experiences are, the more perspective you have on any given situation. Perspective is what allows you to see things that other people can't. Get as much perspective as you can and treat it like gold. The earlier you start, the better off you'll be.

It reads like an amazing list of accomplishments. Actually though, you have accomplished close to nothing (please read on, I don't want to put you down; I had the same problem). Sure, you are interested in a lot of subjects. That's nice. But that's never going to translate into any success. Stop the dabbling, determine which field you really want to put work into and do that for some years. You can later change fields anyway. But there is no use doing 10-15 things sub-par if you could do a single thing outstandingly.

Stop using dabbling around as an excuse for real, hard work.

You don't have to be successful at anything.

I spent most of my twenties dwelling on my failures and wondering what I was doing wrong. I wish someone had just told me to chill out and do what I enjoy, but nobody did.

You seem to have a lot of curiousity and willingness to try knew things, which is awesome. If you can come out of your twenties as a person who is healthy, learned, and experienced, you have accomplished a lot.

Tomorrow, forget about all the past endeavors you've mentioned, and just go out and have fun and try something new.

You're thinking too externally:

...capital, capital, people, people, publishing, acceptance/denial... and so on.

To be successful, you can't wait to be blessed or funded or accepted by anyone else. A good place to start would be trying to get small jobs/contracts/articles/whatever that'll make you a bit of cash, a bit of success, and some lessons and contacts.

Also: Feel free to ignore the people telling you to soak in your youth. The Western world infantalizes people - keeps them younger than they need to be. Kids used to be officers in the army as early as 14, coming of age ceremonies at age 12, starting basic work at age 8. I was making pretty good money playing cards at age 18 and started my first successful company at 19.

Getting a huge head start on professional success now is quite likely to lead to a fun life with lots of cool people, experiences, and travel. Don't sweat missing opportunities to drink beer and socialize with young girls - it's overrated and you can do it in a much more high class and comfortable way after you make it later.

I'd recommend you start shooting for small wins that pay just a bit. Don't worry about your hourly rate, focus on your monthly rate. If it takes you 50 hours in one week to make $500, but you learn from it, that's good. Hell, 50 hours to make $200 in business could be worth it - it takes a long time to get started in business to the point where you make any money at a reasonable speed, but controlling your own destiny scales up much better. My first year in business I think I averaged like two dollars and change per hour - we're talking 50+ hour weeks for like a touch over $10,000 at the end of the year. Ugly, but I learned the ins and outs of running my own shop, which was necessary for later.

For now, look to grab some small wins. Try to not spend much too - if you can build your bank account up to the $50,000+ range over the next 2-3 years (very possible), then you'll be ready when you get a good opportunity to invest in some people, you can frontload marketing and distribution contracts for better economies of scale, you can test hire someone for six months if you meet a good person, you can throw in and get a share of a commercial real estate deal... look to live off of rice, ramen, cheap rent, minimal alcohol, the dollar menu at fast food restaurants, and bank all you make. Do a lot of little stuff, don't get arrogant and think anything is beneath you or not paying enough. You're 18, so everyone is going to write you off. It sucks, but all us young entrepreneurs went through it. You don't have a track record, and there's also a lot of things that you're not aware you don't know. Hustling and taking little projects, jobs, opportunities when possible helps fix both those problems, and can build the bank account for the bigger wins later.

Best wishes - I admire the ambition. Most of my friends were on a similar track at your age, and a lot of them have come out crazy-well just now into their mid to late 20's and early 30's.

Indeed - it sounds as if age/experience, the recession, and Other People have been the big drag factors here. Focus on something you can achieve start to finish without external capital, without other people who can make or break it. And for gods sake stop listing your failures, if I'd ever done that at your age I'd never have got out of bed in the morning.

One big regret I have about some of my early projects was that I did not leave them online. I wrote a book price search engine when I was a few years older than you. it was actually pretty cool, but I folded the company because the competition looked pretty hot at the time.

Folding the company (or at least not working on it more) was probably the right decision. The mistake was that I took the code offline and lost it.

save every piece of code you write. If possible, put it in public. Not only does this help you if you later have an idea or opportunity that would use your old stuff, but it builds up credibility, and it helps give you an idea how far you have personally come.

So yeah, if there was one piece of advice I could send back in time to me at 18, that'd be what I'd say. Make sure all the technical stuff you do is accessible online forever, even if it no longer works.

Seriously, the social bullshit works itself out once you figure out that you get to choose your peers. (and you do. It's hard to imagine after going to high school and being forced to choose from the thousand or so people your age who happen to live within a few miles of where you are born, but as an adult, you absolutely get to choose your peer group and your culture. no matter how weird you are, there are other people like you.)

It looks like you're good at finding the wrong side of everything you do. Just look at the bright side. You did a lot of impressive things. Nobody is successful in more than a small percent of what they do.

Moreover, in every success there is always some way to find flaws (it was too easy, nobody cares, I didn't learn anything....). So, you have to take yourself lightly, continue to work hard, and enjoy the things that you do. Try to define success for yourself, not for others.

Unlike the rest, I ask, "why wait?".

I'm sure the school you go to has great resources. I'm a freshman at Emory and even though there is no reputation for startups here, the business school and the library still offer extraordinary resources. I've been emailing around searching for local business men to connect with.

If you reach out you will find people with similar interests and I have found partnership to be a superb motivator for getting stuff done.

Persistence is key.

So, why not try something simple for a change. And then finish that, make sure it involves you, only you and does not require a bunch of money.

Then when you've done that try again, but this time with something a bit more ambitious. Find your 'comfort level' and slowly keep expanding that.

If you keep at it this hard surely one day you'll succeed.

best of luck!

Hey -- as someone who thought similar things at that age, you probably have quite a few skills from all those bruises. Very few people are writing multiple web apps, multiple papers, etc. at 18.

My advice to you would be to seek out a mentor who sees themself in you. That could be a graduate student, a young prof, or an entrepreneur.

Forget all that shit about "socializing". Completely agree that things get better as you get older. Clubs are overrated. Work out hard and get a decently hot girlfriend if you want. But then get back to work.

PS: stay ambitious. Read Richard Hamming on ambition. PSS: Look for a mentor that is where you want to be when you are their age. You need to find someone who you respect technically and who wants to teach you, to give you their wisdom to help the young version of themselves avoid all the mistakes they've made.

I have a few pieces of advice:

Your feelings are just normal youthful listlessness. It will pass. You could try getting REALLY DRUNK, but it won't really help. In a year or two, things will be a lot better.

Modeling the stock market is REALLY HARD. No one has done it yet. Don't fret over it. In fact, I'd say don't try.

You will probably have to wait a few more years to get research internships. That's just the way things are. Keep trying though.

Starting a company will get easier as you get more work experience.

Program committees for Academic conferences and Journals are not "double blind". The people reviewing your papers know your name and your institutional affiliation when they review your paper. Getting accepted without someone else's name attached is hard. Just keep at it.

Don't worry about the school you go to. Being an entrepreneur is more about persistence than anything else. Just be stubborn.

What year are you in school? Most of the Code you write as a Freshman is going to suck. You might not know it yet, but it does. Even if your code is the best in the class, it still probably sucks. Just keep hacking (and learning) and you will get better at it.

Blogs are free, both to produce, and to consume. That means the barrier to entry is low, and their are a lot of them. As a product, blogs are commodities. The difference between your blog, and most other blogs, is imperceptible to the average reader.

Think of it like tomatoes. If you grow a small plot of tomatoes in a community garden, what makes your tomatoes different than the one's at the supermarket? People know where the super market is. They don't know where your garden plot is. And even if they did, the only difference between yours and theirs is that you grew yours in a garden. What's the difference between your garden tomatoes and your neighbor's garden tomatoes? Most people don't know.

If you want people to read your blog you have to:

1. Make sure they find out about it

2. Make it very obvious why your blog is different from everyone else's, and why it's worth reading. "But I'm smart and I wrote it" is not an obvious reason, because no one knows who you are.

3. Build something people want. People have to want to read what you are writing. What need does your blog fill?

In any case, you should do 3 things:

1. Focus.

2. Relax.

3. Find your own path.

Keep going. Don't give up and don't beat up yourself.

You're trying and that's what really counts - most people have ideas and then never try to execute on them. It sounds like you are executing on a whole lot of things, which is really great.

Also I don't get this thing about "my school has never produced any startups" - how do you know? Its not like anyone keeps a detailed, thorough and completely accurate history about this start of thing. People from all types of backgrounds - big name schools, no name schools, and no schools - start companies and are huge successes. You shouldn't look at just a few examples (which can be more hype than fact) and think that you have to follow in the same exact footsteps and life-story.

I sometimes feel the way you do. I started a local ratings company and then google and yahoo ratings took off. Interestingly enough it never really caught on and yelp perhaps has done a much better job. I've tried babysitting coops, and several other ideas all which failed. However the more I read, the more you discover that the key to success is working hard and trying lots of ideas and constantly refining those ideas quickly. I take myself too seriously at times and I really need to start having more fun with my side projects. Your broad range of ideas and knowledge is the important thing here, it will greatly benefit you in the long run.

To be honest, I say keep trying and don't get discouraged. While joecode is correct that you might need to be more realistic about some of your goals, if you keep trying, you will find success, even if it's modest.

If you're interested in doing another webapp, I say do one start-to-finish completely on your own. That way, you don't have to rely on the dedication of other people for it to be successful. Also, try to reach out and find other people interested in tech entrepreneurship at your school - I've found a surprising amount here (Washington University in St. Louis) just by poking around.

Sounds like a good summary of most successful people before they became successful.

But if you want to get that real sense of accomplishment, I recommend getting a fairly blue collar job either next summer or at night during the school year.

What you need to figure out is whether you're facing bad luck or you're just not as talented / determined as you'd like to think. In most of these examples, it's somebody else's fault: your professors bailed, your friends bailed, the schools rejected you, etc. One of the reasons people work so hard in startups is that those excuses just melt away once it's all up to you.

You are much more experienced than most people I know. And you are quite younger than them. Work as hard as you can, and live without regret, the rest will come along the way ;)

You're young and you still have lots of time to figure what works, but you seem to be doing the right thing by trying lots of things that interest you. This will give you lots of experience quickly and teach you about yourself.

You seem to be on the right track. From what you've written, doesn't seem like your doing any specific thing wrong (except maybe spreading yourself too thin, but that depends on many factors that I can't know from just reading this).

Yes, it seems to me you are doing two things wrong. First, you are not considering carefully enough everything an endeavor will require for success - and if you can and will provide what is required. That leads to the second, which is you jump in fairly hastily, then fail to deliver what is required for success, if success is even possible at the time. Note: I've been guilty of all this myself, and have worked to improve.

When I read this it immediately reminded me of King Bruce and the spider story. I googled and found the link http://www.longlongtimeago.com/llta_history_bruce.html

I see all these setbacks of yours as stepping stones to success, plus you are only 18. In other words you are learning thing's earlier. Keep trying and soon you will be rewarded.

Can you give links to those webapps you made? Have you tried figuring out why no one uses them? If you worked on either of them for another year, will they still not be successful? If not, why not?

Sometimes, you have to plod your way to success, for years.

Unlike most people, you are smart enough to have made a start. Don't give up in first gear.

When I was in college, I wanted it all - wanted to prove theorems, found companies, join politics and so on. As I got older, I realized that just getting deeply focused on one thing gives you all manner of creative opportunities. Pick one area, and get in deeper and deeper - that would be my advice.

You only need two skills to succeed in business: the ability to negotiate and the ability to sell. Buy low (goods, services, knowledge), sell high.

Without knowing your personally, I would say you need to work on the sales side of things, as there is quite a bit of rejection in your past.

(Successful) life: you try 50 things. 1 succeeds. You're about halfway there, well done!

You're 18... give it time.

I think "give it time" is good advice if you have a project which is not very successful now but is on the ground running and is growing quickly, but I can't think of anything I'm doing that falls into that category.

He's not talking about your projects. Give yourself time and stop being so hard on yourself.

A lot of your apparent failures will seem completely meaningless in the future. I would count doing poorly in match/science contests under those, as well as the blog. Are those things really important in the long run?

And some of your other failures will be very important in the years to come. You've already learnt how badly things can blow up if you don't formalise your business arrangements in writing, for example.

It's sounds cliche, but set some concrete goals for where you want to be 5 to 10 years from now and focus on the things that will get you there. Strip out the rest, but keep the things you are passionate about even if they don't have much practical value.

Right. Practically no one has "succeeded" at anything except school by 18.

I wonder too... it seems like you think you need to be in an ivy league school, and really in an ivy league among ivy leagues, in order to be successful. If you do think that, why? What don't you have now that you feel you need?

I'll reiterate a lot of what the other people are saying: you're depending too much on other people. You're also looking at certain things that "failed" and saying, "I failed" instead of looking at them and saying "They didn't take off, but I learned this, this, and this."

I'll take your webapp you built for a student club as an example. What made the other person's better? What did you learn, if anything, from building that webapp? If you had another opportunity like that, what would you do differently?

You seem like a smart and motivated kid; I'm sure you can figure out what went wrong in each instance (excepting maybe the Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and internship positions). I'm sure you can even find problems with the internships. First, you're too young. I'm guessing you're a Freshman or a Sophomore, depending on whether or not you graduated early from high school. Most companies don't look at you until you're a junior or senior. Plus, it's a recession, so companies are more likely to cut internship budgets. That being said, you may have set your sights too high on gaining an internship. If you applied to say, Google, or another company renowned for its extremely high standards, you shouldn't be disappointed if you didn't get accepted. If you want to do web development, look for a local web development shop that might be willing to hire you. You might get lucky and not even have to work as an "intern"; you may very well get hired outright. I've already managed to do that twice, and where I am is hardly considered a tech center, but there's a decent amount of CS students at my Univ. that would kill for my job.

Back to the relying on people bit. If you want to build a webapp, build a webapp. It really isn't that difficult to do on your own. Hosting is cheap, and even if you don't ever make it into a real business, you'll likely learn a lot along the way. If you want to start a business, start a business. If other people believe in you and want to join, have it in writing who owns what if things head south. If you didn't have that in your last foray into business, take it as a lesson and move on.

If you really just want to cut your teeth on real world project, find an open source project you believe in and support it. If you think there's a niche that needs to be filled, fill it. The GData Ruby library, for instance, is drastically lacking (the Google Calendar is supported, kind of, but that was it, last I checked). Writing a gem for that has been on my todo list for a while. I'm sure you can think of a few things like that, and it might actually help you land an internship at Google or wherever if you write an open source plugin for one of their products. You can even write that GData library if you really want. I'll let you have it. :)

Edit: My email address is in my profile. If you want someone to work on a few things, let me know.

I have some ideas that might interest you or at least get you started. (My email's in my profile)

Like other's have said, time is on your side.

Success is 99% failure. Keep trying.

> Why do so many people talk about youth as some sort of idyllic time in one's life?

Because youth is wasted on the young.

It's a good thing that you've tried all that, even those left unfinished. The next step is to apply the Pareto principle, and stop doing a bunch of things. Do the easiest thing with the most benefit. Do what makes you happy. Do more things outside the academic and business areas. Dabbling isn't a bad thing. Here are some suggestions I find worthwhile, in no particular order:

1. Sex.

2. Meet people, help people, make friends, make allies.

3. Travel.

4. Improve your body. A healthy mind needs a healthy body.

5. Teach yourself how to cook.

6. Read books. (don't be afraid of not finishing them)

7. Learn more about the rules that govern you. Quite boring but so very useful.

8. Become a minimalist. Sell your things and stop buying things you don't need. Simplifying is good.

9. Study and practice meditation.

10. Learn how to grow, collect or hunt food.

11. Explore altered states. Some do it with wine, some do it with poetry. Exercise, alcohol, herbs, plants, fungi, pharmaceuticals, music or plenty of other activities, they can all do the trick.

12. Conquer fears.

13. Swim in the ocean.

14. Lie on the beach.

15. Don't worry be happy.

I love tip number 6. I get that overwhelming sense of guilt for not being able to finish a book.

I read a sobering fact somewhere -- we'll only be able to read about 1000 books in our lifetime (50 years, 20 books a year or nearly 2 a month). Maybe 2000 or 3000 if you're a voracious reader.

Given that, it doesn't make sense to waste time with a bad book when it's taking the place of a better one. This helped me with that same guilt.

I agree with what you are saying, but a voracious reader could easily hit 10k books by late middle age. 200 books a year is not that many.

as for 1., I agree and disagree. Physically, it will never be better than now, but emotionally, the whole experience will be better once you mature emotionally.

7. is probably the wisest item on the list. Understanding yourself, your limits, where you can push yourself productively and where you can't will pay back enormous dividends as you grow older, both in your financial, professional, and personal/emotional projects.

In general, though, I would distrust people who say childhood is for being social. Young people tend to be jerks because they haven't learned better yet. Also, when you are young, you have less choice about who you do and do not associate with. I think correctly choosing your peers is the most important part of a satisfying social life. Choose people who value the person you want to be.

It seems like you are dabbling in a bunch of areas and improving your overall intelligence. Your improvements will eventually cross-pollinate and patterns will indeed emerge, and you will begin to start thinking rationally about your behavior, instead of acting haphazardly.

You have to ask yourself what you're aiming for. What you want. And then formulate an attack plan. Sorry, but you're not going to be able to get a finance internship and a research internship and a coding internship at the same time, while also becoming a writer. Mastery takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice (practicing, and then immediately implementing conscious corrections based on masters' recommendations regarding the technique).

What do you want... Social status? Peer recognition? Parental recognition? Access to high-quality sexual partners? Money to buy toys? Happiness?

Carefully evaluate if you are working on any of the above things as means to an end, or ends in themselves. If you aren't, it's OK: just try to figure it out what it is you really want, so you can attack it directly. Spend time investing in understanding your emotions, and it will pay dividends later.

If you really really just want to do math physics chemistry biology economics politics history computers etc., you can. You just have to focus on improving your skill levels in each domain in order to create a meaningful impact. e.g. Improve your social intelligence in order to understand how to build something people want (figure out why people like talking about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff...hint: it happens for a reason, try to be open-minded and understand that everyone is human); improve your coding skills in order to understand how to actually make it. Read history books. Take advantage of all your free time in college to do more reading. Optimize your sleep schedule to use polyphasic sleep and spend all your time reading and working if that is TRULY what you care about. That is one good attack plan if you analyze your emotions and find out what is really important to you. But my guess is that it isn't.

My guess is that you just want to fit in and seem recognized as a contributing human being. Who doesn't?

"Sorry, but you're not going to be able to get a finance internship and a research internship and a coding internship at the same time, while also becoming a writer."

Of course not. I apply for all of these internships at once so that, if one fails (as they often do), I have backup plans.

"(figure out why people like talking about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff...hint: it happens for a reason, try to be open-minded and understand that everyone is human)"

I'm not condemning them or anything, just saying that we're different. Indeed, if anything, you (and many others here) seem to be condemning me for being different.

I'm not condemning you.

But I don't understand how you could be applying pursuing so many disparate career paths while also solidly understanding your own values. Finance has little to do with value-creation, and more with wealth accumulation; research has more to do with the progress of science (and possibly the recognition of greatness), and (typically) little to do with wealth-creation. Same goes for writing.

You are not going to get anywhere if you spread your faculties too thinly. Figure out what you want to do and then pursue it seriously. By the way, I applied for about ~350 jobs before finding my current gig. I tried sales, finance, tech, business development ... I didn't find my current job (which kicks ass) until I buckled down and focused all my efforts on landing a tech job.

True, thanks for the advice. Sorry if I got upset, I had just finished reading some other comments which seem to say that the only things worth doing in life are getting wasted and partying and banging chicks, and that if I'm not doing those I'm wasting my time.

Focus on one thing, try a simple web app that can potentially gain traction quickly (maybe twitter related? Finish it.

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