I was born the same year as this guy . How do I reconcile myself to the fact that I may never achieve so much even in my entire life ? Is it a matter of lowering ones expectations ? If this is the kind of brilliance it takes to succeed in the start up world I'm quite discouraged.
I too constantly feel that I should be more successful, and I'm pretty sure the feeling doesn't go away -- no matter what's achieved.
I think looking at others can be a useful gut check: am I working as hard as I could? Am I as focused as I'd like to be? But given that there's so much randomness and circumstance there too, it's a bad benchmark for anything.
(For what it's worth, the check I use personally is: "is there a difference between how those who know me best would describe me, and how I'd like to be?" Most of the time, I just try to fix those gaps.)
>> (For what it's worth, the check I use personally is: "is there a difference between how those who know me best would describe me, and how I'd like to be?" Most of the time, I just try to fix those gaps.)
^^^
If only I could up vote this many more times..
Please, let's all stop this cult of parenting, and cult of personality. Let's assume that Patrick and John had played with legos, and that their parents taught them programming. What would that teach us? That we should teach our kids Programming and let them play with legos? Certainly not.
Much respect to John and Patrick, I hope that they continue to do impressive things and that a few years down the road they'll look at the things they did in their 20s as 'merely setting the stage' for whatever else they'll be doing then.
Yep. Cargo-cult parenting, that's got to be a new one. I'm quite surprised at how people will latch on to the parenting as something to imitate. I'm sure it can be a factor but you can't assume that you will get identical results by cloning the procedure. Nothing good can come of that.
No, that kind of brilliance is not what it takes to succeed.
It doesn't hurt either, but the biggest factor is perseverance.
If you get discouraged because someone younger than you can succeed when you can't then that perseverance element is exactly what you have to work on.
For every Patrick and every John there are 10's of thousands of people that succeed. And almost all of them are not nearly as brilliant or as young. Imagine a world without them. In that world you would be closer to the top. But your chances of success would not be diminished, nor would they be decreased.
Now repeat that process for all those that are smarter, richer and more dedicated than you. At some point you'll be the one at the top. What would you blame it on if you then still did not succeed?
In the end, all that matters is when and how you decide to make a go of it, how much you apply yourself, how well you'll deal with the unavoidable hardships and how much luck you will have and how the timing will favor you.
It doesn't really matter how much higher than 120 your IQ is, plenty of people with less than that have succeeded at a level that even Patrick or John will never exceed simply by being in the right place at the right time and making use of every opportunity that life threw at them.
If you want to measure yourself do it with people that started off with less than you had and that still made it. Then figure out what they did right that you're doing wrong and go for it.
"[Julius] Caesar served in 63 BC as a quaestor in Spain, where in Cadiz he is said to have broken down and wept in front of a statue of Alexander the Great, realizing that where Alexander had conquered most of the known world at thirty, Caesar at that age was merely seen as a dandy who had squandered his wife’s fortunes as well as his own." [1]
IMHO you might want to reassess your idea of success.
Having a great family life, bringing up children, enjoying each day. Those are good measures of success.
One of Britain's richest people was a bum until he was 30 (and he did it all from scratch): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2h_GIP019c .. so you don't have to reconcile. Just be a late bloomer.
Not to take anything away from him, but I think his other achievements are far more impressive. Learning to fly or play the piano generally "just" takes time and money. The really hard things are those where you can apply yourself fully and still fail.
Learning to fly takes time and money, but how many people with money and the time to spare have you heard of being able to pilot a plane by themselves at the age of 22? It takes an incredible amount of hours before you can become a pilot. May be trivial, but I think it actually shows just how incredibly committed and talented he actually is.
Lets just hope he continues to use his intellectual gifts for good and not to better his pockets. He's off to a good start though.
No it doesn't take all that long, not at least for a PPL with no ratings.
In theory, a PPL can be earned with just 40 hours of flight time, although the actual average is closer to 60-70 hours. There's obviously a ground school component, which can be self-study, and depending on learning speed might require about another 100 hours. Factor in the time to write the written exams and pass a checkride, and it's not a horrendous time commitment. I've heard of people doing it in a month, albeit working on it nearly full time.
It's still an admiral accomplishment. There's a lot to learn while learning to fly!
I know a number of people under 22 that have their pilot license. While not a huge percentage, not rare either. And the initial time is not that long at all.
Additional anecdotal data: of the four or five pilots I know personally (ages 23 - 65), all had their pilot's license before turning 18. So, yeah, not all that uncommon.
Note: I'm not a pilot, these aren't coworkers, just natural friends.
His father may be a businessman (yes, I read the part where he says he's an electrical engineer), I'm not sure.
Based on what things cost in Ireland today and the salary one can make, it does not look good. And any salary considered 'high' pays 41% in taxes (where high is > $41k per year)
> And any salary considered 'high' pays 41% in taxes (where high is > $41k per year)
That's incorrect. You don't pay the high rate of income tax on all of your income, but only on income over a certain threshold depending on your circumstances. Actually we have pretty low income tax rates when compared to other EU countries:
Comparing taxes is hard. There are various other 'hidden' taxes that Ireland doesn't have. e.g. no 'council tax' or property tax (though they are bringing one in, most likely just for people who own, not rent), there are no water charges (yet), etc. All of this can mean that someone can have more in their pocket at the end of the month in Ireland. It all depends.
Ireland's cost of living has been in decline in recent years due to the recession triggered by the global credit crunch and a substantial local property market collapse. For example, this is from 2009:
And between 2009 and now, our economy has been flat at best. I think it's important to look at all of these factors when examining a country's economy. The real problem Ireland has is unemployment: we went from ~4% to ~14% unemployment in just a few years. This has added to the decline in the cost of living however (less demand for goods and services).
The unemployment rate is sorta higher, but is hidden by a lot of unskilled labour emigrating abroad for work. Irish culture has a history of accepting emmigration to find work when things are bad.
Rent and property have also fallen in value, making it cheaper to rent.
Dani Fong was allowed to stop going to normal school at around age 12, because she hated it to the bone and her parents listened. After that she went on to an alternative track that involved programming, horse back riding and community college and shortly after, a physics undergrad that took 5 years.
That's what I gathered from her history. I know of a bunch of people that could of been like that, but stuck to normal school and the pace that it sets with it's busy work and so on limited their potential. I think there is a lot of kids where you could just 'skip the bullshit' and put them in some sort of college degree but instead they flounder in a school system where they don't fit in and is not suited for them.
She started her own company because similarly, she really doesn't like being an employee.
'Skipping the bullshit' is in fact the lesson I'd like people to draw on. And it doesn't end with school. Too many people are stuck in jobs and relationships and situations they don't enjoy. Get unstuck.
Although, I will annotate to your analysis -- the reason I started this particular company was that I wanted to make a difference. The reason I had to start some company was because I am rather insubordinate, and lack consistency of attendance and effort on things that I am less than passionately attached to.
Be careful of generalizing parenting methods, also don't put too much weight on parenting when there's at least as much (though probably more) due to genetics. (There's also a nice low-hanging fruit plucked by making sure the child has enough iodine in the womb/early infancy[1].) With parenting tricks, what seems to "work" remarkably well for one child might not work at all for another child, even in the same family! I'm not a parent so I observe this lack of generalized techniques from multi-sibling families with very different sibling life outcomes and also from Feynman's anecdote on his son and his daughter. Here's him telling it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw (at the 49 minute mark).
If there's one thing I've seen in common among entrepreneurs who've been successful and started young, it's an absence of parenting, or at least very hands-off parenting.
Having mom or dad to go running to trains you to spend your entire life hiding under the wing of "mom" or "dad". Having parents who go "So?" when you go "Timmy hit me at school" teaches you to sort out your own problems and find your own solutions.
The vast majority of people I know who've made it/are making it (the one's who're actually profitable, or have product(s) attracting investment) have either no, or highly dysfunctional, relationships with their parents.
