It's not a "skill" per se, but demonstrating you will reliably show up on time and do your job has a definite value in the labor market, and could lead to other opportunities.
How about learning how to get along effectively with others? Or given an individual that was interested in operations, how to run a warehouse, principles of Lean, etc?
A job can be a stepping stone to a better future. Perhaps that is true here?
I wish more people understood that the models they were taught in Microecon 101 are not a particularly accurate representation of the actual inner workings of human society.
Leaving aside for a moment the huge number of people who have moved to North Dakota - so many that energy boom towns are experiencing severe housing shortages - working in the oilfields is physically grueling, and so unsuitable for anyone not in good physical condition; and your typical boom-town is not exactly the best place to bring a family.
Beijing is generally worse more often, partly because they get hit by dust carried from the increasingly large Gobi Desert in addition to all the man-made pollution.
Not really. Beijing definitely get dust, but the real problem is that Beijing is trapped in a bowl and gets some wicked inversions. And to think I could see the summer palace from my office just yesterday.
The Northeast Corridor metro areas (Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-DC; dense, 4mm+ pop centers all located within a few hours of one another) and a handful of other regional short-haul routes (San Diego-LA, Boston-Portland, etc) account for almost all Amtrak traffic; the long-haul cross-country routes are basically tourist attractions subsidized by the commuter rail segments of the system.
You have aged. Your energy level and motivation will decline until you die.
The rate of change varies from person to person, and you can probably reinvigorate yourself to a degree with a better lifestyle (more exercise, a better diet, a stimulating job, a vibrant social life), but slowing down is inevitable.
Sure, your overall energy level goes down when you age. But if you matured well, then your motivation goes up because you know what matters to the world and what matters to yourself. And you have more skills. People are motivated to do what they're good at.
When you're young, you're trying lots of shit, but you mostly suck at all of the things you try. You're a dilettante. Your low expectations and sense of novelty keep you excited. You're spending a lot of energy, but objectively not getting much done.
When you're older, you're trying less stuff, but the skills you already have allow you to use much less energy to to accomplish much more.
Honestly I think there is an additional compounding effect with programming -- you can write programs that make you a better programmer. I still use little tools and scripts I built 5 to 10 years ago, and they magnify my productivity. I know that as a 20 year old I would have spent an entire afternoon on something that is now second nature; a one-liner.
It's not a matter of having more energy. You don't want to spend lot of energy while programming, at least.
You're describing one method of coping with the inevitable decline, and I think your advice is excellent and I'm glad it works well for you. But the OP was complaining precisely about a decline in energy and that 'sense of novelty'. I don't think there's any point in suger-coating the reality that for most people those feelings peak early in your youth.
Well, I'm not and no one should be "coping" (with being in their 30's!), and it's not a "decline". It's only a decline if you look at the downside and not the upside.
I totally agree that you have more raw energy and there is more potential for excitement when you're 14. But like I said, if you want to write good software, "energy" and "excitement" are not top on the list of attributes you need.
I think the OP is basically describing mild depression, which is a completely different issue, unrelated to getting older. You can be depressed and young or depressed and old. In fact I was a lot more depressed when I was younger.
You turned an issue of motivation into an issue of age, when they're not the same thing.
Perhaps if your goal is to write the next Facebook, and you're in your 30's, the time has passed. You're not going to be Zuckerberg, or Larry Page. I guess some people have trouble coming to grips with that. But personally I don't care so much about those kinds of things (and didn't when I was younger either.) You're not going to be Van Halen or Jack White either. Suck it up :)
The way I like to look at it is that you simply need to work a little harder. You see athletes in their 30's and 40's (and even much later) doing things that most people can't do in their teens. Why is that? It's because pretty much everyone is so far from their potential.
In theory some particular aspect of you may start declining but almost always this means that if you work harder at it you can outperform your younger self... So while there are some biological processes at work most of it is in your mind.
Bullshit. He sounds like he's in his 20s or 30s. Energy levels should not be at 10% of peak. (Peak is around age 20.) They should be 85-95%, which is good enough to get most things done. 10% is appropriate for age 85.
His problem is that he's in a pretty severe rut. His default activities (low-value screen time) and cannabis use are depleting him. Unfortunately, the "obvious" change (quit pot and Reddit and, most likely, the Internet, cold turkey) is probably not a good idea. He could probably quit the cannabis cold turkey (it's not physically addictive) but if he quits screen time, he's risking anxiety issues. (Screen addiction is, IMO, about low-level anxiety.)
Energy levels do go down with age, but not so dramatically. Most people, I would say, are at 60-80% of peak energy (enough to perform well at work, and offset by gains in perspective) until their final illness (which might take a week, or a decade, to run its course).
The VC-funded world worships youth in a creepy way that has more to do with venture capitalists' midlife crises (they did their 20s wrong, and want to relive those years by taking young proteges-- this is often known as chickenhawking) than anything real or substantial. We shouldn't fall for that bullshit. The years from 20 to about 70 are basically a plateau for most people (excluding athletes)-- if they take care of their health.
One suggestion: Adjust the game so that the player is only presented with countries that have populations within a certain distance of each other. Right now I'm getting a lot of "Marshall Islands vs Pakistan" type questions.
I plan to implement this soon. Right now each country is chosen randomly. What I have in mind is to sort the countries by population and choose the first one randomly. Then, choose a second country that is random, but within a certain distance from the first one. i.e. within 10 or 20 spots on the list. Hopefully this will ensure closer match ups.
