There is a time for everything. Unless you have some exceptional talent, you have to follow the route that's held up as best practice. In RPG terms, it's like the recommended hunting ground for each level. For example, I think that up through university, study methods are what matter. Strictly speaking, they're methods for studying for exams, but anyway. I think university is the last good window for building these study skills. Up to that point, you have to do well on college entrance exams and earn good grades. If you're aiming for a big company, you also have to prepare for English tests and aptitude assessments. Things like how to understand a text well, how to memorize well, how to do mental math well, and how to read the test-maker's intent seem to be what matters. Up through university is the period when you can properly build this kind of general learning ability.
People say "It's never too late in life!" and bring up the story of the KFC founder starting his business at 62. But that's a message about holding on to hope for success. Some things are definitely too late. If you don't develop a feel for dating and a sense of how to treat the opposite sex in your teens and twenties, you're in trouble. It's meant as a joke, but you can end up in the news, like in the screenshot below. If you'll never be interested in the opposite sex your whole life, it doesn't matter. But if you develop an interest late and act clumsily, you can't even get feedback. People badmouth you behind your back, and if you cross the line, you get reported.
A study method you didn't properly build as a student will hold you back in whatever you do from then on, especially when you take on something new. In that sense, acquiring something at the right time matters. Some people send their kids to English-language kindergartens because they say it's best to pick up a language in early childhood. On the flip side, there are stories of brilliant prodigies who skipped grades, lost the chance to play with friends, and ended up with weaker social skills.
And this is just my opinion, but the productivity you fail to build between university and your early years in the workforce will also hold you back.1 There is definitely a window for optimizing how you work and getting it in place, just like with the study methods above. Most people, myself included, unfortunately weren't born geniuses or with silver spoons, and have middling abilities. We have to keep earning a living diligently, while also studying and letting ourselves get distracted now and then. If you're thinking about having kids, you'll have to take care of child-rearing too.
After high school, as we become adults, our lives diverge. They diverge again after we graduate from university. I majored in mechanical engineering. Looking at people from my department, quite a few of them skipped the big companies and run restaurants. Even I, working as a developer, took a somewhat odd route. Anyway, for people like me who've taken the typical knowledge-worker track, productivity becomes important. Execution becomes important. This is a somewhat different ability from studying. It's the ability to quickly handle work across many different contexts.
When your productivity drops, you can't do other activities even when you want to. Work piles up so you might have to work late, and when you get home you might collapse. This leads to a loss of the sense of control. As a student, you can endure studying all day long, because there's a set time when this hard period ends. But once you're an employee, there's no set time when this life ends. There are no school breaks either. Of course, life never goes entirely the way you want, but the feeling that you're losing control feeds a vicious cycle. Whether you become a leader, start a company, run your own business, or raise children, it holds you back.
The world these days is uncertain all around. Jobs are uncertain, and it's even uncertain whether my own profession will exist in the future. A few days ago, an AI developer reportedly appeared. (
https://www.cognition-labs.com/blog) With things so unstable, it has become an age in which you always have to keep an eye on "side paths." If you use LinkedIn, you'll have noticed that the number of people posting there has grown a lot recently. They don't trust their jobs, so they're doing personal branding. In the past, people hesitated to write on LinkedIn, because just posting there carried the sense of "Looks like that person is job hunting." Yet we've reached a world where nothing can be trusted, to the point that people push through that reluctance to build their brand. Honestly, isn't that also why I'm doing "Productivity Billion Sian" separately from my day job as a developer?
Even if the world weren't unstable, continuing to try "small adventures" on top of a "stable for now" present is a good strategy. In Antifragile, this strategy is introduced as the "barbell strategy." It's easy to say, but it's hard to stabilize your current situation and also attempt a venture that might fail. Put differently, it means "perform excellently at work and secure the spare capacity to do side projects," but if you haven't built an image as someone the company would hate to lose, and you go around saying "I'm starting a YouTube channel, writing a newsletter, writing a book...," you get criticized. And if you pour all your energy into the company, you have no energy left for ventures.
You have to look after your main job and your side work, learn all the knowledge pouring in from every direction, and it has become a truly complicated world. As someone who works as a developer by day and as a productivity creator on the side, I suspect my life isn't all that different from other people's. You also have to make sure to play and rest well. In a world where you don't know how things will change, and in a marathon with no deadline, I think we take an interest in productivity and need it to have a little sense of control.
Footnotes
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So I privately expected my content to be watched mostly by people in their 20s and early 30s, but surprisingly there are more in their 40s. ↩