We all have things that we're good at. Mine just happened to be the stuff that looks great on a college app at age 19.

Luck has a way of balancing itself out, though. I struggled mightily at fitting in with peers when I was in school, and I've struggled hard to do high-quality original creative work since. Haven't quite gotten the hang of either, while meanwhile there're people who create world-changing products like FaceBook and GMail and Google Maps within a couple years of getting out of college.

They're not. But they are IMHO highly correlated - I feel like I was a good example of it in high school and the first bit of college. Textbook Asian academic overachiever, below-average social skills, and little of my life that others might consider interesting besides my unrelenting ability to code. It took a lot of work to leave that version of me behind, and much of that came from sacrificing academic performance. Absolutely no regrets about that.

That said, I think wazoox was out of line extrapolating the author's life like that. We simply don't know enough about the guy to make a judgment in one way or another.

Besides, doesn't his own point about finding your inner winner involve not caring about alleged overachievers?

Seems like a lot of people on this thread don't understand that to really feel like (and as far as I am concerned, be) a winner, you need to stop looking for external validation. Constantly allowing yourself to seek it out or fantasize about it is just building a habit of feeling unfulfilled and insecure.

I don't think he's such a dork, just joking, ... FTW ? All of this sounds so young, and that's OK. I attained some "achievements" myself at times but it feels so vain in the end, 10 or 15 years later. I even remember that funny hormonal boost called pride, but now I'm looking down at my former self, I can't even long for this anymore. Maybe I'm just getting old.