I had somewhat of a Tiger Mom. She forced me to do multiplication tables while my friends were still onaddition, learn guitar while my peers were learning basketball, play chess while the other kids were playing video games, watch Bill Nye while everyone else was watching Nickelodeon. And I hated it, to some degree I hated my parents for it.

Until I realized all these SKILLS made me really fucking successful compared to everybody else my age. And all of a sudden I had passion. Passion for math, passion for learning, passion for science and technology and programming and computers. Ultimately, those skills instilled within me the passion that leads to me writing this post on Hacker News today.

And I thank my Tiger Mom for that every chance I get.

My parents pretty much left me to my own devices, and I'm still posting on hacker news. Also, i know people who were forced to learn piano as kids etc. and they are pretty much nowhere as adults. I'd say it's more genetics than anything.

It's genetics, in that genetically you have a probability of being inclined towards whatever subject your Tiger parent is subjecting you to. If that isn't the case, you have a massive misallocation of energy.

I'm against Tiger parenting as a blanket strategy prescribed for all. The fact is that not all parents are equipped to micromanage their children's careers, nor does the physical and emotional abuse involved necessarily lead to best results. The latter is like a shot of steroids - get short term results but lasting damage in all but the hands of experts.

I'm just confused as to why we're using posting on HN as a measure of success.

Yeah me too :) I merely applied the measure used by OP to illustrate my point. Agree that there are better metrics for success; as for the measure for procrastination, it's probably spot on ;)

Conversely, I enjoy learning to do things, and after that magic has worn off I get bored.

Written enough code to put a 3D texture mapped model on the screen? That's enough for me.

Finally made a perfect batch of eclairs? I won't make any more.

That depends entirely on the child - my eldest is a perfectionist and hates being bad at something, the youngest is quite happy doing the activity, even if she isn't very good at it.

Tiger Mom doesn't follow the path of least resistance, and uses emotional and physical abuse to enforce compliance. That the child might achieve enjoyment at the endpoint is only one of many possible outcomes.