> if you have opportunities now, you'll have opportunities in a few years once you graduate.
Sure, but not all opportunities are created equal. Think how different things would be if Gates waited a couple years, or Woz and Jobs, or even the Google guys. Google would have incorporated right around the dot-bust and likely would've tanked because it wouldn't have had those couple years to become established first. If ViaWeb had waited a couple years then instead of selling to Yahoo in 1998 they would have run into the bust as well, making it that much harder to get bought. WebTV would've missed out on two years' worth of being viable back when websites were designed for 640x480. Microsoft would have been a couple years behind and would've missed the IBM deal.
In this industry, a couple of years is a long time and things are constantly moving, so there's always an incredible opportunity cost for waiting.
On the flip side, college will always be there. Woz went back and got his degree after Apple went public.
> I think more people should view entrepreneurship as a career, not as something you do for a few years in your early 20s to make a few quick bucks.
You can do it as long as you want. However, as an oldie, I can tell you that my productivity level was MUCH higher when I was younger. In the 18-22 range, this stuff is EXCITING. You've never DONE it before. Everything motivates you!
I don't think it's an accident Reddit was done by guys that age. It's such a simple site with a boring design that people with massively more experience wouldn't even bother to do something like it. But they started out in Lisp, so it was an adventure! Then they learned Python and rewrote it. New and interesting!
Nothing substitutes for enthusiasm because enthusiasm leads to getting things done. New things are exciting. Youth = inexperience = more things are new and therefore exciting and so you have more enthusiasm. Youth also means higher hormone levels, which means more energy and caring about things more and being irrational by expending irrational amounts of energy on projects that interest you. Lower hormone levels mean indifference or just talking about something but not having the excitement level needed to break your energy-conservation threshold and DO it.
Also as an oldie, I'd say my productivity today is the highest it has ever been. How do I keep myself motivated? By constantly being a beginner. I do web programming, GUI programming, embedded systems, drivers, unix, mac, PC, bare metal, lisp, python, C, dozens of assembly languages, Verilog, hardware, analog, RF, antennas, etc.
In my opinion, you are just making excuses for why you are less productive than you should be; it's called rationalization. ;-)
My advice is to dive in to some area of s/w (or whatever) that you don't know at all (i.e. become a beginner) and see if that doesn't spark your excitement again. It does for me, over and over again!
Sure, but not all opportunities are created equal. Think how different things would be if Gates waited a couple years, or Woz and Jobs, or even the Google guys. Google would have incorporated right around the dot-bust and likely would've tanked because it wouldn't have had those couple years to become established first. If ViaWeb had waited a couple years then instead of selling to Yahoo in 1998 they would have run into the bust as well, making it that much harder to get bought. WebTV would've missed out on two years' worth of being viable back when websites were designed for 640x480. Microsoft would have been a couple years behind and would've missed the IBM deal.
In this industry, a couple of years is a long time and things are constantly moving, so there's always an incredible opportunity cost for waiting.
On the flip side, college will always be there. Woz went back and got his degree after Apple went public.
> I think more people should view entrepreneurship as a career, not as something you do for a few years in your early 20s to make a few quick bucks.
You can do it as long as you want. However, as an oldie, I can tell you that my productivity level was MUCH higher when I was younger. In the 18-22 range, this stuff is EXCITING. You've never DONE it before. Everything motivates you!
I don't think it's an accident Reddit was done by guys that age. It's such a simple site with a boring design that people with massively more experience wouldn't even bother to do something like it. But they started out in Lisp, so it was an adventure! Then they learned Python and rewrote it. New and interesting!
Nothing substitutes for enthusiasm because enthusiasm leads to getting things done. New things are exciting. Youth = inexperience = more things are new and therefore exciting and so you have more enthusiasm. Youth also means higher hormone levels, which means more energy and caring about things more and being irrational by expending irrational amounts of energy on projects that interest you. Lower hormone levels mean indifference or just talking about something but not having the excitement level needed to break your energy-conservation threshold and DO it.