I relate to this, too. Here's some stuff that I read recently that helped me a little:
"When you are young, beginning new projects is easy and finishing them is hard. As you grow older, beginnings get harder, but finishing gets easier. At least, that has been my experience. I think it is true of anyone of at least average intelligence, creativity and emotional resilience. The reason is simple.
When you are young, the possibilities ahead of you, and the time available to explore them, seem nearly infinite. When you try to start something, the energizing creative phase, (which comes with internal brain-chemistry rewards on a fast feedback-loop), gives way to exhausting detail-oriented work, maintenance work, and unsatisfying overhead work. You need to get through these to bank distant external rewards (money and such) that only come with completion. It is then that you are most vulnerable to the allure of exciting new beginnings. So you abandon things halfway. You bank the internal rewards of beginning, but not the external rewards of finishing.
But with age, this changes.
As you grow older, the history of a few completed projects and many abandoned ones in your past starts to loom oppressively in your memory. The early internal rewards of many beginnings are now a distant memory that offer no pleasure in the present. The external rewards of completed projects, which tend to continue to yield dividends (such as completed degrees, financial rewards) loom larger all around you: wealth, strong relationships and perhaps most importantly, an earned ability to see the world differently as the result of having been through many completions.
When a new opportunity opens up at 35, you evaluate it differently than you did at 25. You are able to estimate how long it will take, what the journey will feel like, what the early pleasure and distant pain will feel like, and what getting it done will feel like. You are able to react psychologically to the whole prospect in the form of a narrative that extends beyond the finish line, as a systematic leveling-up of your life. You see the transient pleasures of beginnings diminish to nothing in the far future and the enduring rewards of finishing as a steady source of dividends extending out beyond the horizon."
When I compared people that take on big goals later in life with those who simply simulate them in their mind, then decide their projected end results are 'predictable and uninteresting', I saw something interesting.
Those who take on big goals are seen as naive and almost childlike, because the 'experienced' believe they already know the end results.
Those who don't take on big goals get to be in the audience and throw stones, but never really amount to anything other than gloating at a possible failure.
I think the experience works against you at a certain age. The projections are a lie, or possibly inaccurate at best. I've come to believe you don't know what will happen until you do it -- what your mind simulates is often only correct in the broadest sense, but way way off when it comes to the important details and compound ramifications.
In otherwords, keep taking on big goals and press on to finish them, while ignoring that pesky voice which thinks it already knows how this will all turn out. And ignore the people who do the same, their words are rarely helpful.
Your comment is very interesting. But let me argue against it.
May be when you are older, you can see the end result with more clarity, and decide that is not worth the effort and the sacrifices that you have to make.
Is it better becoming a millionaire when you are 30 or when you are 50? If you do it at 30, you will enjoy the fruits for 45 years. If you do it at 50, you will enjoy them for 25. (Assuming expectancy_of_life=75) Also if you sacrifice a number of years it is a larger sacrifice over the rest of your life.
I'd say a sufficiently large goal is well beyond that of only self-fulfillment or making a lot of money. It would be an attempt to change a field, advance a given topic in that field, or create a system which a group of people could benefit from.
You may, however, appreciate your millions more if they come to you at 50, even if you aren't wealthy for as many years. I think there's a quantity vs quality argument that could be made there.
I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, but perspective can be gained with age and experience and that can colour your view of the world and how much you appreciate what you really do have.
The first thing I'd say in response to your overall comment is that what other people think is a red herring. You'll never do anything interesting at any age if you decide to take on big challenges based on others opinions, and there are naysayers at every age. But also, the fact is that if someone says they're going to do some amazing huge thing I will be polite but I will probably not believe they can actually pull it off until they do so. This has nothing to do with my life experience, but just that talk is cheap and people like to dream. It's just a statistical fact that on average there's a lot more talk than execution, or perhaps a better way to look at it is that one ambitious idea might take 10 years of full-time dedication to execute successfully during which time who knows how many more lightbulbs would come on.
But perhaps more to your point, what does my experience tell me about bold ambitions? Well, mostly I've learned that making big predictions is foolish. The older I get the more I discover how extremely subjective life is, and how dependent everything we know and take for granted is based on personal experience and perspective. I'm much less likely today at 35 to predict the outcome of a project than I would have at 25. My experience comes in at a smaller scale on more specific issues. Engineering choices for instance, I have a much finer tuned sense of where to balance hackery and YAGNI, or how to manage different kinds of business relationships. But I certainly am loathe to sit around making armchair prognostications about the medium to distant future. In short, experience does not make me think I know more, it makes me aware of how little I actually do know.
I've never actually changed my approach since 25. I don't have much interest in doing something I've done before, so everything I try is always new, which means I can't even begin to estimate what's involved in completing it. I just approach it with the attitude "Well, how hard can it be?"
There are two necessary factors to great feats: The foolhardiness to start, and the stubbornness to finish.
Hey, that's awesome! I've experienced this in my own life too, and I didn't realize why until you put it into words.
I focus a lot more now on projects that I know I can finish, and work aggressively to keep them in scope, as hard as that can be. (There's always shiny features you want to implement, but too many of those, and your side project collapses under its own weight, in my personal experience, anyway.)
visakanv: thank you for this. this was a comforting read and sat close to home. it leaves me optimistic.
killnine: i hope not to be the bearer of bad news but it seems you've been hellbanned for 2 years. only users with "showdead" can see your comments, and no one can vote on them or respond to them. unfortunate because voting up your comment would have prevented me from leaving my own. :)
If I worried about "likelihood of not finishing a project" before I started a project, I would never start. First step is to start, if you get there then you can worry about finished or unfinished - either way you will likely have learned something or created something which is more than the worried non-starter can say.
Agreed. Starting projects which you won't finish just consumes resources and therefore prevents other projects from getting finished. I have been very aware about this. Being highly selective on projects which you even start is simply being smart.
"When you are young, beginning new projects is easy and finishing them is hard. As you grow older, beginnings get harder, but finishing gets easier. At least, that has been my experience. I think it is true of anyone of at least average intelligence, creativity and emotional resilience. The reason is simple.
When you are young, the possibilities ahead of you, and the time available to explore them, seem nearly infinite. When you try to start something, the energizing creative phase, (which comes with internal brain-chemistry rewards on a fast feedback-loop), gives way to exhausting detail-oriented work, maintenance work, and unsatisfying overhead work. You need to get through these to bank distant external rewards (money and such) that only come with completion. It is then that you are most vulnerable to the allure of exciting new beginnings. So you abandon things halfway. You bank the internal rewards of beginning, but not the external rewards of finishing.
But with age, this changes.
As you grow older, the history of a few completed projects and many abandoned ones in your past starts to loom oppressively in your memory. The early internal rewards of many beginnings are now a distant memory that offer no pleasure in the present. The external rewards of completed projects, which tend to continue to yield dividends (such as completed degrees, financial rewards) loom larger all around you: wealth, strong relationships and perhaps most importantly, an earned ability to see the world differently as the result of having been through many completions.
When a new opportunity opens up at 35, you evaluate it differently than you did at 25. You are able to estimate how long it will take, what the journey will feel like, what the early pleasure and distant pain will feel like, and what getting it done will feel like. You are able to react psychologically to the whole prospect in the form of a narrative that extends beyond the finish line, as a systematic leveling-up of your life. You see the transient pleasures of beginnings diminish to nothing in the far future and the enduring rewards of finishing as a steady source of dividends extending out beyond the horizon."
- http://www.tempobook.com/2014/01/13/when-finishing-is-easier...