Tell HN: Uni feels so usless, I cant focus anymore
4 comments
You're burned out.
And why are you burned out? Because you're trying to do uni, and a business, and consulting, and a girlfriend at the same time, and you don't have the time and the brainpower to do it all.
You are finite, friend. You cannot carry this much.
So you have to pick. I do not know, but I suspect that if you're going to do the startup, you need to drop both the uni and the consulting. (Your girlfriend might have a better read on it than me; she's certainly closer to the situation than I am.)
And why are you burned out? Because you're trying to do uni, and a business, and consulting, and a girlfriend at the same time, and you don't have the time and the brainpower to do it all.
You are finite, friend. You cannot carry this much.
So you have to pick. I do not know, but I suspect that if you're going to do the startup, you need to drop both the uni and the consulting. (Your girlfriend might have a better read on it than me; she's certainly closer to the situation than I am.)
You're clearly overworking yourself and you're burning out. Try to prioritize the things that matter the most to you, maybe a couple of things to do? I'm in high school right now, and this strategy is actually quite helpful.
Be lazier
I'm MUCH older than you. I definitely don't have life all figured out, but I have the benefit of many years of experience and mistakes (and a few small successes).
The MOST IMPORTANT thing that matters long term of all the things you have listed is your health.
Physical, mental, emotional.
Based on your description of things and my interpretation thereof: You are working too hard and playing too hard. And stressed that you're not working harder and playing harder. Chill, bro. Pull back. Something's got to give. If you don't choose what to pull back on, your body is going to choose for you.
I know what you mean about the last couple of things you've said. I too have had to truncate long streaks of working out because of injuries or health problems. Do what you can. You don't need to push yourself unnecessarily; just literally do what you can. If you're not "back to your old self" just yet, don't try to force it. The idea is to do better -- not to be perfect.
And for crying out loud, spend some time away from screens. Go outside (it's a cliche because it's true), take walks, look at birds, read a book for fun, maybe meditate. (Sometimes you have to focus on nothing before you can focus on anything.) If you don't have the time for it? Make the time for it. The emails businesses and the emails will wait. The girlfriend, if she's at all decent, will wait. And your schoolwork won't suffer.
One of the big follies of college is about putting an immense amount of pressure on teenagers. Putting that kind of pressure on yourself is a recipe for mishaps and mistakes. It's okay to take that pressure off of yourself. Twenty years from now you will not look back and regret not being able to do it all perfectly -- but you are at risk of regretting not focusing more on one thing and less on another thing.
And you'll definitely regret letting your health suffer if you don't take care of yourself.
If these ideas make the high-achiever part of you feel guilty or otherwise bad, consider: It's one thing if you're working hard for a particular goal and you're making a short-term sacrifice in service of that long-term payoff. But everything you're doing is so all over the place, it all seems long-term, and nothing you've said indicates that you even have a clearly defined goal. Until you have a clearly defined goal, you are subjecting yourself to noise.
Of course, you're 18. If you don't 100% know what your goals are right now, that's okay. And you're bound to err. And you're bound to make a wrong turn and have to correct. That's fine. That's normal. That's expected. Part of being 18 is figuring out your goals.
That means putting yourself in a place where you can mindfully explore and figure things out. And you can't do that well without taking good care of yourself. Take care of yourself like someone you are responsible for caring for. If you wouldn't let your son or your daughter or your pet go through a particular kind of strife, don't allow it for yourself.
Be well.
The MOST IMPORTANT thing that matters long term of all the things you have listed is your health.
Physical, mental, emotional.
Based on your description of things and my interpretation thereof: You are working too hard and playing too hard. And stressed that you're not working harder and playing harder. Chill, bro. Pull back. Something's got to give. If you don't choose what to pull back on, your body is going to choose for you.
I know what you mean about the last couple of things you've said. I too have had to truncate long streaks of working out because of injuries or health problems. Do what you can. You don't need to push yourself unnecessarily; just literally do what you can. If you're not "back to your old self" just yet, don't try to force it. The idea is to do better -- not to be perfect.
And for crying out loud, spend some time away from screens. Go outside (it's a cliche because it's true), take walks, look at birds, read a book for fun, maybe meditate. (Sometimes you have to focus on nothing before you can focus on anything.) If you don't have the time for it? Make the time for it. The emails businesses and the emails will wait. The girlfriend, if she's at all decent, will wait. And your schoolwork won't suffer.
One of the big follies of college is about putting an immense amount of pressure on teenagers. Putting that kind of pressure on yourself is a recipe for mishaps and mistakes. It's okay to take that pressure off of yourself. Twenty years from now you will not look back and regret not being able to do it all perfectly -- but you are at risk of regretting not focusing more on one thing and less on another thing.
And you'll definitely regret letting your health suffer if you don't take care of yourself.
If these ideas make the high-achiever part of you feel guilty or otherwise bad, consider: It's one thing if you're working hard for a particular goal and you're making a short-term sacrifice in service of that long-term payoff. But everything you're doing is so all over the place, it all seems long-term, and nothing you've said indicates that you even have a clearly defined goal. Until you have a clearly defined goal, you are subjecting yourself to noise.
Of course, you're 18. If you don't 100% know what your goals are right now, that's okay. And you're bound to err. And you're bound to make a wrong turn and have to correct. That's fine. That's normal. That's expected. Part of being 18 is figuring out your goals.
That means putting yourself in a place where you can mindfully explore and figure things out. And you can't do that well without taking good care of yourself. Take care of yourself like someone you are responsible for caring for. If you wouldn't let your son or your daughter or your pet go through a particular kind of strife, don't allow it for yourself.
Be well.
Dont get me wrong I love my uni, its a great school, very good global recognition and stuff, and lots of cool opportunities and stuff going on. I'm a really passionate guy and I love building, and so I literally on the first day just walked into the CS professors office hours, and was showing him stuff I built. I got offered a research position, joined in on the research meetings for a bit, and then got told that they dont pay right now, so I stopped. I want to make capital, and I dont want to build for someone else to own it just so that I can put it on my resume. It makes me feel like a cuck, and then the prof claims the work. I literally asked him, if students come to you with these ideas why dont they just build it themselves, and struggle a bit and try to become profitable, we have great networks here. And he somewhat agreed, but I apologized for being disrespectful.
As the year went on ive met some new pretty interesting people. And I started to get involved and got accepted to a MIT hackathon, and ended up doing pretty well and founded a startup out of it. my Co founder is a 50 year old industry expert and weve been making good progress, and the engineering team is doing well, its me and one other guy I hired on. We are pitching to the owners of a very well recognized company here in the next couple weeks, and im hopeful that it will go well. Obviously no revenue yet, we are barley in beta testing.
But good lord, I cant focus on school at all. its so hard, this feels like such a drag. 5 course load, and a girlfriend, and then ive also been doing freelance software stuff since highschool, so ive been balencing my existing clients as well. Literally all ive been doing for the last while is just coding, any free moment i get i code. Im at the university from 8am to 7-10pm pretty consistently, my gpa isnt that good because i just coudlnt give a rip honestly, and i know my parents are upset about it because they know im capable, and they think what im building is really cool and its great but they just want me to be safe, but htey dont understand how cooked the market is, this degree is dying, and i feel like to stay ahead especially as a first year i need to be doing stuff like this.
I just cant bring myself to study 2-300 pages of math, and whenever i sit down, i get mutliple messages and emails of feature requests, issues, tagging in github and i cant focus because genuienly i am so passionate about coding and building that anything else feels like noise. And it sucks, im so addicted to it, ive been cutting gym time short to build more, i barley go outside, i barley do any of my hobbies. i genuienly forgot how to cook, and i was a damn good cook. this is consuming everything, and im so addicted, thanks claude. i think studying is great, and i think its important, i dont think its useless, it just feels that way right now. I just want to build and build and build and build.
stressed out of my mind tho. struggle alot with my health. im not fat or anything, i used to be really buff, got into a really bad motorbike accident 2 years ago, year before that broke my arm, but the motorbike accident left me with a TBI, and i was disabled for a while, and then i got back into the gym, hit new PR's on the bench, and then kept getting sick, and hurt, and then 2 months ago i snapped my arm clean in half when i flew off the side of the mountain snowboarding. still managing tho. it makes me really mad im not where i used to be physically. it weighs on me. i feel terrible about myself. i look in the mirror and cringe. im not who i used to be, but mentally and what ive been building, makes me proud. maybe thats what matters, i know i can get back to it. i just need to stop getting hurt.