I think it's both.

Even while being aware of my unrealistic work expectations, I often still find myself being disappointed when I reflect on my day.

Not being productive isn't what makes me disappointed. It's procrastinating in ways that don't even make me happy. It's too easy to be sucked into hours of binging youtube, reddit, wikipedia, or twitter.

I know I'd get way more satisfaction by going on a hike, practicing piano, learning a second language, or calling my family. But the simple distractions are too convenient and addicting.

Yes! It’s exactly this. I’m fine being unproductive, but at least I want to be able to reflect on my day and remember doing fun things (as opposed to dopamine roulette activities like Reddit).

It could be worse. You could be a millionaire, have sacrificed good years of your life and your health, and realise that happiness was achievable on a shoestring all along.

We’re sold a lie from the get-go, a lovely orange carrot dangling just in front of us. Very occasionally a lucky donkey catches the carrot, because the stick broke or somesuch - but the carrot is made of wood.

This is why we have billionaires. They’re the fools who didn’t know when to quit, chewing on wooden carrot after wooden carrot, insisting they’re delicious. More and more and more and never ever enough - because material wealth is good for satisfying your fundamental needs, but once it’s done that, the marginal utility diminishes rapidly, and you derive limited satisfaction from it.

As you say, be ok with you. Be happy in this moment and that moment, however it comes - being alive is enough - ask any cancer patient.

The handful of (tech) billionaires I’ve met all seemed to genuinely enjoy the work that made them rich. People have different utility functions (which is a good thing!)

I thought I'd be a millionaire by 30 too.

But I hit 30 last year and found that what I truly wanted to do was make music, write, and spend time with my family.

I don't advocate mediocrity, but everyone doesn't have to be a high achiever. It's okay to live a fulfilling life doing what you like, even if it doesn't make you rich or earn you Wikipedia entries.

That's not mediocrity, that's a happy life...

> Wikipedia entries

Dang, new life goals...

> make music, write, and spend time with my family

But seriously, that sounds about right for me too. Maybe insert 'code' after 'write'.

I think so, too! Sometimes we should re-evaluate our expectations and think about what we really want and why we want it. Furthermore, I think it’s important to realise that others might have other motivations such as money, success, curiosity, altruism and so forth so there really is little need to compare ourselves to them.

Most of us don’t have the energy to be productive all the time. It took a lot of work (ironically) for me to be okay with that and to allow myself to do nothing at times. Procrastination for me was the result of constant pressure which sucked so much energy that I just couldn’t BE productive anymore. Funnily enough when I allowed myself to slack around or fall a bit behind I ended up greatly improving my grades.

In the end for me it’s a tale of starting to live in the moment (as cliche as that might sound) instead of failing to meet one’s own impossible expectations.

On the other hand some very well-known people felt profound conflict about not achieving their self-imposed goals before actually doing so. There's a famous story about Caesar bursting into tears at the thought of how Alexander the Great had built an empire whereas Caesar himself had done nothing of note by the same age. [1]

It's common to read about other military leaders like Alexander who felt similarly, but perhaps military historians just like these stories. The behavior seems general. I would guess that Elon Musk is pretty frustrated that his rockets don't reach Mars yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar#Early_life_and_c...

Survivorship bias perhaps? I suspect even more people felt profound conflict about not having achieved their goals only to continue to fall short of their aspirations.

I'm usually pretty hard on myself, but I'm glad I'm not that hard.

Basing your life on others achievements seems like a pretty sad life to live.

> with a Wikipedia page

Two of my personal projects that usually get 2-3 visitors per day have been linked from Wikipedia pages (both history-related), as a 39-year old guy that is good enough for me.

Absolutely agree. In some ways I've done more than I ever expected, and in other ways I feel like I'm behind. But comparing my current self to what I thought back when I was 20 doesn't really matter at all. All that matters is that I'm happy with my life as it is, and that I feel like I have enough influence over things in order to change the things I'm not happy about.

I think the danger is not just unrealistic expectations from a point of view of "I'm just not that much of a genius/producer", but (not necessarily article-related) I think it's important to realize how unusual the story is of the "super successful" and "driven" people we so often compare ourselves to.

Now that I'm older, I realize that where I am is not surprising despite the work I've put in; what would have been far more unexpected would be for everything to have worked out and grown so large that I'd be one of the big successes.

That measuring stick would need to be configured against the mean, assuming it's needed at all (and it likely isn't).

Writing 500 words before noon is not an unrealistic expectation. Being widely regarded as a genius writer by 35 maybe is. TFA covers both.

> Writing 500 words before noon is not an unrealistic expectation.

No doubt. To me it seems that the author is writing about being unable to meet basic goals due to depression from not having met more fanciful goals.