Ten things I've learned in the last ten years (or so)

According to an old theory I built upon in my twenties, life is about reaching a series of milestones. Usually, they'd take ten years or so.

The first time I thought about it, I was 19. I decided I was already in the first stage. 18 is my starting point. I'm about to turn 28.

So, what did I reach? What were my goals back then? What have I learned so far?

Disclaimer ☁️
This article covers aspects of mental health. Please don't take my advice as a substitute for professional help. If you find yourself struggling with something similar, don't hesitate to look for it.

Don't be hard on yourself

Let's go back to a not-so-distant past called three years ago. I published a post, speaking for the first time about recognising myself being bisexual.

While the article is still heartwarming and moving, I'm not that proud after rereading it. Why?

First and foremost: Fuck! I sucked at writing. Still do. But less. And it's only been three years. Granted, I didn't have a writing companion (like Grammarly) back then, and I've always needed a decent vocabulary in English. But heck, I'm better than this at writing.

Secondly, that's the most important thing: I was brutal with myself. Not brutally honest, but brutally harsh.

Although well-founded, the "suck at writing" argument is part of me being hard on myself. That's still a work in progress.

Admittedly, I was way too soft, contrasting with how that 19-year-old me would be.

Damn, I bragged about being a horrible person to me. What a dumb thing to do.

No wonder I worked above my physical (and sometimes mental) capacity for years, to the point of being burned out (a story for later) more than a couple of times. No wonder I've been burdened with anxiety all these years.

Some while ago, I watched a video from a psychiatrist explaining why "gifted kids" actually have special ed. needs and how it relates to later life anxiety and burnout.

The reasons behind the first part blew my mind. It is not because they have cognitive difficulties, nor do they have issues with communication, but:

1. Since things come off so easy for them in the first stages of life, they end up with absurdly high confidence,
2. Therefore, they tend not to build habits —more importantly, study habits— which play a significant part in building a successful career later in life.

This increases because adults usually encourage that unusual lack of hardship by excessively praising children. And reinforce that confidence.

Meanwhile, people around them build high expectations. Those are transmitted to them. And grow over time.

So, there'll be a gap between the expectations around them and the skillset they have to build upon these. And the higher the expectations are, the bigger it is.

Consider that versus how easily others reach their expectations, since they are more achievable, and they are usually better prepared to do so, the outcome is that, for "gifted kids":

1. They become perfectionists.
2. Over time, the lack of discipline and study habits become evident. These make the complexity of studying to achieve "big goals" increase. That leads to frustration.
3. Making comparisons with other people becomes more usual. Anxiety and depression tend to appear.
4. Remember the expectations gap? That turns into a form of shame. The "I'm not good enough" shame. Let's call it a "gap shame".
5. Take the above. Sum it up. There you have a person slowly burning out.

As a former "gifted kid" —with an IQ of 131, I can brag— I can totally identify with that. Especially with the consequences of perfectionism and that "gap shame".

Another checkup with my psychologist showed me that I needed to work on self-compassion —not the same as being self-indulgent— to start overcoming that anxiety.

It turns out that is the first step: accept who you are and what you're capable of.

The following steps are taking things one step at a time. Push yourself. Get out of your comfort zone. It's the only way to grow.

But don't beat yourself. That is not the way.

I've been working on it for two years. And until recently, I'm starting to get it.

Sometimes I still fall tempted to be overly judgemental of my milestones. And undermine them. But then, someone around me reminds me how far I've gone.

I hope to be, ten years in the future, that person who reminds me that I've gone places and I'm not obsolete like I used to tell myself in my early 20s.

No good comes with perfectionism

As mentioned earlier, the other part that comes with being a "gifted kid" is that you tend to be a perfectionist.

Over time, I've learned that there are no benefits to being a perfectionist. Instead, all you get is endless suffering.

Also, perfectionism is your enemy when it comes to delivering on deadlines, working under pressure —things that are pretty common in the tech industry—and making it to narrow-scoped solutions.

There's no such thing as achievable perfection. When you "finish" a piece of work, you're not getting it over, but you're just abandoning it. And that's, by definition, the opposite of perfection.

So, what usually really happens inside the mind of a perfectionist? It's a matter of wanting to make the greatest thing ever, even though you know it might take an indefinite amount of time with resources and skills you probably don't have.

Like envisioning creating an interactive game where you just wanted to develop a dice-guessing match that could have been a couple of prompts. Or how you tried to create a whole stock and product line system for a company that just needed an online store.

Or you were thinking about making your manifesto: a book that defines you and your thoughts, when it is a series of articles that, together, form. Or even picture yourself working on an incredible drawing when you need to gain basic painting skills.

Starting is the easiest part. Ideas are free, and talking about them is pretty cheap.

The tricky part comes when you hit yourself on the reality wall and start figuring it's too big to get it all at once. Or even worse, you're stubborn enough not to realise you're hitting over that wall time over time.

Thus, you'll never finish because either:

1. You don't have the skills to build those things in the first place, and you have to overcome lots of learning and challenges before; or
2. You get burdened with anxiety because the monster you initially envisioned —now that you realise your limitations— is too big to tackle.

While the first one is easier to handle since it involves learning over time, you must also learn to accept your imperfect works and appreciate how your art improves.
The real problem here lies when you commit yourself to something you're incapable of, nor are you aware of where to start.

"Fake it 'till you make it" is an infamous industry motto. And while it's generally good advice about not quitting just because you don't know, it's terrible for a person comfortable with faking it… too much.

The third thing that comes out bad when trying to be a perfectionist is this:

It's not unusual for people starting a learning process to reach a point where they find themselves with some of their recently acquired knowledge that needs to be polished until they are ready to go on. This is especially true for perfectionists.

And while, in theory, it's an excellent idea to strengthen your basics in any knowledge area, the reality is that you don't do it by reviewing the topics over and over but with practical experience. The one you get by doing. Otherwise, the only thing you're doing is slowing down your learning curve. Usually, some concepts might be weak at first, but as long as you keep going back on them when needed, you don't need to repeat a course twice or thrice.

It happened to me. In retrospect, this slowed down my learning curve to a point where I could have gotten enough experience creating digital products before college. Instead, I forced myself to repeat myself repeatedly in such a way I was still pretty junior by my first year in college.

It took me five years to gain the equivalent experience any other professional in my area gets in one.

But it gets worse. In the real world, the consequences are much more problematic. They might vary, but usually, they might be unmet deadlines, work delivered with poor quality results, unfinished projects, or a combination of the above.

And frustration. Tons of them.

A couple of years ago, a friend tweeted the following:

Today, I understand this goes beyond being able to do what you say you're able to. Still, it's about accepting that as a fact and then growing from it.

Work/life balance it's a thing. Moreover, it's necessary

Burning out is an old foe for me. I've been there more times than I could like. Thinking of it, throughout my 20s, it's affected me in many aspects I'm able to understand lately.

It's more than just the inability to respond to your studies or the projects you abandon. It's also the people you affect, the meaningful relationships you leave aside. It's your body and mind crying for help while you're in bed for a whole week, eating Domino's and watching TV series until late in the night.

Nope, I'm not talking about depression. It looks similar in appearance, but in my case, it was more related to anxiety.

Oh, and it's the procrastination. It's always procrastination. Or is it the increase of it? Good question.

I'm writing another article about how I overcame my most recent burnout, so I won't go deep into details (I promise the backstory is interesting).

But, long story short:

1. The more you over-commit, the more you procrastinate, the more you fail, and the guilt will be more tremendous.
2. The less you'll be able to do stuff. And the less you control your work/rest periods (throughout that article I said earlier, I focused on creating a framework for building cooldowns), the more exhausted you'll feel every other morning. And back in the loop.
3. Take that, and add to other issues, like anxiety —sorry, it's been a constant all these years 😅— or depression. You'll be down on the road to inaction.

Right, burnout is terrible and all that shit. So, how do I manage it?

Sorry to disappoint you. There is no size-fits-all response. It's primarily up to you. But here are a couple of tricks:

1. First and foremost: consider taking a break. Especially if you're feeling burned out, if so, stop right now. Trust me; your projects can wait. Your health can't.
2. You must identify what causes it. Once you've done that, you need to take your time to prioritise your things. Remember, something that might seem important to you might not necessarily be healthy—for example, not sleeping enough, having bad sleeping habits, or working excessively because you need to cover a learning curve.
3. Learn to identify when you're starting to feel burnt out. And when you are, pause and analyse the situation that created it. Then, make an honest attempt to change it.
4. Some people might benefit from meditating. Personally, meditating didn't help me at that time as it helped forced me to take vacations. But as I said, no magical solution works for everyone.

Then, iterate. Getting out of the burnout spiral is not a one-move moment in your life. It may take months or even years to handle it. Also, it will not happen to you once in your life.

Finally, burnout is a necessary evil. From time to time, we need to push ourselves to see how far we can get. If we didn't, progress would be years away from our life expectancy. Being impatient about the future is part of being naturally curious. Burnout is just the signal telling us we must stop looking at the big picture and start enjoying the journey. At last, is all that effort worth it if we're not truly there to contemplate the results?

The only right pace is your own

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone tell me, I'm late in life: late for getting a degree, late for buying a house, late for…

I don't think I'd be rich, but I could afford a nice trip abroad.

Being a person who dropped out of college once to follow his dreams, those comments are not unknown to me. And they hurt.

They hurt because they usually come from people you look up to or those you love. Parents, partners, teachers.

And that's an added hurdle for you. You're not achieving enough. You're not fast enough. Someone's son just graduated and got a job at a bank.

Flash news: life's not supposed to be a single straight path; everyone should follow the same way.

Some people have kids before graduating, and their lives are pleasant. People never graduated from college: they found such a good idea that was enough for them to live off it. Others didn't even attend college in the first place: they just found a well-paid job with skills they got in the way and are self-taught.

Other people never bought a house: instead, they have millions in their pockets, so they can afford to live in a different hotel room every night, which doesn't necessarily mean they're homeless.

So, late for what? You live your own life. Your destiny and how you go through the journey of this world should be in your control and not in others.

And travel abroad. That's a piece of advice that works for everyone, regardless of their path.

Fear of failure is useless

This wouldn't need too much explanation. If none at all. But still, here we are.

I became aware of my own mortality first when I was nine. And for the last 25 years, I lived with the fear of failing, living under a bridge and dying as a natural consequence of that failure.

I was 18 when I first pronounced a series of sentences that would become the lemmas of my life:

• Respect is a meaningless concept. Especially when confused with authoritarianism through fear.
• There's no such thing as absolute truth.
• Sometimes, what looks like a wrong decision takes you to the right road.

It took me literal tears and therapy to fully understand that last one.

So, here's my learning: while fear is a fair signal that something wrong might happen to you, it's not necessarily true. There are well-founded fears, irrational fears, and fears that hide something else.

In my case, it was more of the latter. Fear of failure was more a fear of being seen as a loser.

But again, a loser in which sense? Even if an implausible scenario happens, I'm so out of luck I can't find options to keep living out of my current career, and I have to start from scratch: is it really a failure? Or could it be a combination of events out of my control?

So I won't be really a loser. Checked! What's next?

Fear of starting again? Sure! That does exist, and it's honestly more rational. I wouldn't die due to failing, either.

And also, I've seen plenty of people fall and begin again. In this case, some conditions might make your journey more manageable: have a strong support network (family, friends, people who care about you), enjoy doing new things, and learn to live with the minimum.

You'll be fine.

So, what's left?

The biggest question —no doubt— is: "what did I learn if the failure were to be due to reasons in my control?"

Having the disposition to take learning from every possible failure you have had in your past is crucial for not making it again. This is not to say you should become more averse to taking risks, but you would be wiser when taking them in the future.

While bad habits (or lack thereof) are especially more challenging to overcome, it's not impossible

You might not believe me, but I'm a recovering addict.

Remember the frustration gap I talked about earlier? Well, I wasn't aware of it. Still, in my late 10s and early 20s, as I was hitting on the wall for the first opportunities in my life, as I had my first failures, that feeling started becoming more and more burdening.

But instead of tackling those issues like an adult (I was a kid, anyways), my response was to avoid them and, instead, find a hideout in food. More specifically, in sugar.

I started sleeping less to compensate for the excess sugar in my body. Also, it felt natural to stay awake overnight, so I could advance more on my projects and because I needed to dedicate more time to study since I lacked study habits and ended up distracting a lot.

My usual routine was a midnight morning trip to Oxxo (a convenience store) to get Mountain Dew, Doritos, and condensed milk to help me stay up until 3am or 4am.

Don't get me wrong: it wasn't torture to me. Actually, I enjoyed it. Considered it a valid lifestyle for years.

But, truth be told, it also affected me in a way I didn't see until years later.

Burnout came. We've briefly discussed it and talked about finding out the causes. Well: here's the main reason behind it.

But that's not everything.

Overweight came. And then obesity. I'm still struggling with its consequences. For some, I'll have to live with them for my entire life while I can work others out.

But that's just an example of how bad habits can cause damage in the long term and even worsen other issues (see burnout and anxiety).