I think "in their remaining tenure" is a key phrase here. For me, 36 now, even owning my own profitable company and making neat software for a living can suffer downward pressure, because I'm starting to deal with feelings that I should be much further along by now - money wise, job wise, stability wise.
It's very mental - I should be the happiest kid on the block, but this is when you start to look back at time wasted, and wonder if your incredibly lofty goals will ever come to fruition.
Everyone thinks they're meant for greatness - so few reach it, and right around now is when we start admitting to ourselves that we may not be all that extraordinary.
Hopefully, I'll be able to get past all of these mental roadblocks before my 50s!
I'm 21 now trying to plan out my life and this is one of the major things for me. What do I want to do in life that is important to me and can I accomplish this within the timeframe I have. I don't have a second chance so I don't want to spend time doing something that I'll lose interest in, or end up being stagnant in some job that I can barely stand. I'd rather do all that worrying now then when it could mean finishing something on time. At least now I can plan accordingly (do this before I'm x years old) to how much time I've wasted, instead of wasting time and not accomplishing a part of it before I need to.
Also trying to figure out how "great" I am, or what I am "great" at. So I'm not disappointed at myself . I've already gone through that once on several levels when I went from being an old teenager to a young adult. One time is enough, and I bet it's so much worse when you're at the point where you can't accomplish the goal because you're not good enough (or even just questioning if its feasible, that has to drop you farther than where you should be and end up doing worse because of it.)
Or I may be just wasting time now and I should just jump in. I don't know, maybe I'll figure that out. I don't need much in life, just to feel like I've done the best that I can at whatever I end up choosing. Not even in an idealistic way really, I want to give back what people have given to me (knowledge, ideas, materialistic things if any) so at most I don't leave the world knowing that I did less than nothing. If I leave doing more than I have taken then I can be happy in the fact that I've made the world a little bit better. Not a lot but it wasn't a waste being alive.
I can totally relate to the instinct to plan things, and "do it right" the first time. Life is short; your 20s are shorter; don't waste them!
At the 'wise old' age of 26, though, after changing paths twice (PhD dropout->job 1->current job) and swallowing many earlier words, I've started to accept that we just can't know everything in advance, and it's OK to be wrong and "waste" time. And furthermore that it's not really a waste, because it teaches you.
Journey rather than destination, and all that.
I guess what I'm saying is, yes, be introspective, know yourself, do things for the 'right' reasons (because you want to do them and are passionate, not because others expect you to do so) BUT give yourself permission to change your mind, and to try different things! If your standard is "live life perfectly the first time", you're bound to have regrets. If your standard is "let's see what happens" then you'll be fine :-)
"Let's see what happens" is how I love to live my life but sometimes it's just not possible given how affected I am by external stimulus because of my introversion and ADD. So I have to plan out some things but I'm not looking for the perfect life. I've learned from past experiences that wanting something to be perfect is always the wrong way to look at something because no matter how hard you try you will never achieve it.
"There's another trait on the side which I want to talk about; that trait is ambiguity. It took me a while to discover its importance. Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance. But most great scientists are well aware of why their theories are true and they are also well aware of some slight misfits which don't quite fit and they don't forget it. "
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2) By definition, what "you" are uniquely good at cannot be represented by logic, mathematics or reason. Otherwise, "you" could be duplicated, cloned, automated. The unique properties of you exist at the boundary of possibility, in the space historically occupied by philosophy/magic/religion, now supplemented by scientific research and metaphysics. A good starting point is understanding the history of the number zero. See also Heinz von Foerster on the subject of ethics and free will, http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html
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"Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide.
Why?
Simply because the decidable questions are already decided by the choice of the framework in which they are asked, and by the choice of rules of how to connect what we call "the question" with what we may take for an "answer." In some cases it may go fast, in others it may take a long, long time, but ultimately we will arrive, after a sequence of compelling logical steps, at an irrefutable answer: a definite Yes, or a definite No.
But we are under no compulsion, not even under that of logic, when we decide upon in principle undecidable questions. There is no external necessity that forces us to answer such questions one way or another. We are free! The complement to necessity is not chance, it is choice! We can choose who we wish to become when we have decided on in principle undecidable questions.
This is the good news, American journalists would say. Now comes the bad news.
With this freedom of choice we are now responsible for whatever we choose! For some this freedom of choice is a gift from heaven. For others such responsibility is an unbearable burden: How can one escape it? How can one avoid it? How can one pass it on to somebody else?"
"This guidance probably should have been Chapter 1 of our Politics 101 series. It’s foundational. It’s a HUGE problem for many professionals, particularly young – and dare we say it, naïve – professionals. So many young people say, “I don’t ‘play politics.’” The more savvy folks around them think, that’s good, because this isn’t a ‘game’ you can ‘play.’ "
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4) The biographical stories in Plutarch's Lives of "Noble Grecians and Romans" were preserved for several centuries by people
who believed those lives were memorable, back when books were non-trivial to produce. These lessons cross platforms, time and space.
I've only read the first link so far, I've had a bit to do today but I appreciate all these links. Already learned a ton so far and this is almost exactly the sort of material I was looking for. Just wanted to say thanks before this falls into obscurity and/or you forget about it so you know your time was not wasted.
It's very mental - I should be the happiest kid on the block, but this is when you start to look back at time wasted, and wonder if your incredibly lofty goals will ever come to fruition.
Everyone thinks they're meant for greatness - so few reach it, and right around now is when we start admitting to ourselves that we may not be all that extraordinary.
Hopefully, I'll be able to get past all of these mental roadblocks before my 50s!