What does it feel like to be ahead?

School, Life-lessons · 
18 mins read

In this post I’ll share my thoughts about a situation I recently found myself in and digress a bit on some other things.

Three months have passed since my last post. Lately, I’ve been busy with school and other projects so that’s the reason for such a long period of inactivity. I can’t promise a regular publication frequency for my new posts, so come back here often to check in order not to miss anything! 😊

Anyway, the title of this post is referred to me. It’s intentionally general and yes, it can sound a bit like I’m bragging at random about unclear things, but trust me if I say that it has nothing to do with it and I intend it in another way. Put that aside for now.

Some context first

I’m a very curious person. I’ve practically always wondered about how things work and why they are like that, so for me it’s almost natural and spontaneous to go in search of answers. It’s something I voluntarily do simply because knowing something makes me feel better and more aware of the world around me, even of the little details.

That’s one of the reasons why I started learning programming early in middle school (about the eighth-grade equivalent for USA/UK).

The first thing that I needed was to know English.

One of the main reasons was that I realized the Internet was the best place to learn something easily and finding good explanations and tutorials on the Internet in Italian is way harder than in English. There’s simply more content and it is of higher quality (rare exceptions aside, of course).

I was fortunate because for some years I had already started watching English videos, so, with the help of subtitles, I rapidly increased my ability to understand English content, both spoken and written. I’m still learning, by the way, but I got the foundations at that time, and they were so important and useful for the following years!

Once learned English, I was finally able to expand my range of possible content to use.

Looking back over the years, I feel very lucky for having such a big place to satisfy my curiosity.

But what did I wanted to learn?

Since I was a child I loved using computers. The possibility of doing what you want (playing a game, saving images, writing text, creating files…) without worrying about the physical aspect of those things was like magic for me.

As I grew up, I became interested in simple (like MS Office) and then more and more advanced software (like Blender for 3D stuff) and, in parallel, I cultivated a passion for video games.

Spending every day a bit of time on the computer, I slowly and almost accidentally unveiled what was behind the things I was using that made them work, and so I glimpsed the beauty of programming.

This process was guided by my tendency to go beyond appearances and to look closer and more accurately at the things I don’t know.

I insist a lot on this point not because I want to brag about it (I don’t care at all) but because I think it’s the attitude to always have in life and that everyone should apply for themselves.

I decided that being a programmer was what I wanted for my future, and I immediately started to learn how to become it.

YouTube was my main source of knowledge and I’m still using it a lot, especially because it turned out to be very rich in Computer science/ICT related educational content. It’s a really (I mean, really!) great place for learning, and even if it’s not the best tool for that, at least it’s completely free and you can absorb new knowledge anytime/anywhere you want.

Navigating the Internet turned out to be another very useful way to collect knowledge, too.

Year after year I first learned HTML and CSS (for making websites), then the basics of some programming languages like JavaScript, Python and C++. I created many little projects, get used to the programmer’s mindset and also worked with some programs like Android Studio, Blender and Unity (with C# language).

I decided to learn how to use Unity because of my passion for video games. Again, I had noticed that when I was playing a video game I was always super curious to know exactly how a certain mechanic was made, how the characters and objects were animated, how the special effects were recreated and many other things. Unity seemed the right program for me, so I slowly started using it, with the help of many tutorials on YouTube and forums online.

Ok, but what’s the point?

I started learning early and for myself because I had (and I still have) an important philosophy of life to follow: “don’t waste time, do it now”. I didn’t want to have regrets about not having started doing something earlier, and seeing on the Internet people of my same age (I was 13-14, now I’m 16) or even younger making cool and clever things strongly confirmed that philosophy and proved that I can always do better, no matter what age I am. It’s not too early to act and it’s always better to do now before it’s too late!

I am now attending the upper secondary school (high school) and that’s oriented to Computer science/ICT.

Particularly I’m in the third year, so after the common two-year period*I should explain how the Italian school system works but that’s not the topic of this post. my classmates and I have now started to really dive into ICT and programming.

I’m really happy about that: we are learning C++ and C programming languages and I’m finally learning things that I know will be useful for my future life as a developer.

But the fact that I went ahead over the past few years put me in the situation of already knowing the basics in-depth, and it is much easier for me to understand what is being explained compared to my classmates.

A matter of perspective

This is a strange and rare situation for me: on one hand I’m happy to learn more easily and quickly the things explained in class and to help my friends, but on the other hand I get the perspective of someone who already knows that topic and watches someone learn it, with all the obstacles and doubts that arise while doing it. It’s like watching yourself of the past through a mirror, it’s weird but also interesting.

At school (during IT lessons, at least), I experienced how it feels like to already know things and I had the opportunity to notice how others see things when they do not yet know them, a perspective that a student normally does not have because it’s living that situation in first person!

That’s how every teacher feels when he teaches students, but in my case everything is overturned from the perspective of a student that already knows what is being taught. Not a common scenario, I think.

The debate

Just today an interesting and very constructive discussion arose in the classroom among my classmates about what to do in our future.

Among us aspiring programmers, there were some with confused ideas, those who fantasized about becoming inexplicably millionaires, those who wanted to be freelancers and those who aimed to create websites, programs, apps or video games (but never started a project or tried experimenting).

As for me, I said that I did not have a precise idea of what to do in the future, probably an independent programmer, but I told about the projects I have done in the past years, noticing a great interest in my words.

And equally interesting questions arose, such as:

“When did you start your first serious project?”
“Where did you get the motivation?”
“Did you do it all yourself?”
“Where did you learn X?”
“How did you do it?”
“Where did you start from?”
etc.

That’s why I wrote this post. Those questions got me thinking: «they represent what inexperienced students want to know while they are learning something new of which they don’t really know the usefulness, yet».

They also demonstrate that, even if my classmates know how to make a little program in C++ (thanks to our school teaching it to us), they actually know nothing about how life as an average programmer/developer works outside of the school setting. No idea, simply because they have never been. But this is not a criticism or judgment against them: it’s completely rightful and normal. I’ve never been a professional programmer, but at least I’ve seen what it’s like in broad terms.

How does this relate to the topic of the post? Well, I personally wasn’t in that situation of disorientation because of the knowledge I’ve gained in previous years thanks to the attitude I described earlier, but school should never expect students to already know (even if only partially) the information around what is going to be taught.

I think that at school it’s important not just to mnemonically learn a thing, but also to understand the context around it, how it’s used, where it’s used and the general application of that knowledge in the life of a developer (in our case), from the ground up. That applies to both theory and practice.

Instead of perpetually jumping between theory and trivial or repetitive exercises only, it’s probably better to teach the mindset and the attitude to have while learning too, while working and occasionally make a bigger, more meaningful project that teaches not only how to behave in the restrict, narrow set of circumstances but how to do it in a larger set of situations and in a more programmer-like way, using logic and collaboration instead of memory alone.

If the ultimate goal of school, talking about my field of study (Information Technology), is to “churn out” good, well-formed programmers, then this is not the best way to educate us (even if it apparently seems efficient).

Luckily it is still early to draw conclusions: there are still two years to go!

Final thoughts

Before leaving, there’s something important I missed to mention: after doing that discussion with my classmates, we compared ourselves to each other and this brought out a strong desire to act and to do something, more than I’ve ever seen before, I think. It convinced many people to stop doing nothing and start making something.

For me, this is a really big achievement: changing people’s mindset and attitude to act for the future instead of just doing nothing every afternoon (or whenever we have useful free time and we don’t know how to use it) makes me extremely pleased.

Most likely this little “revolution” led to just ephemeral (yet strong and decisive) intentions for having active attitudes. Intentions that will probably remain in their heads for just a day or two and then fly away. But at least my story, in its small way, has been able to positively change some mentalities, hopefully not just for a while but for the rest of the future! 😄

⌚ Update!

05/06/2022

Yesterday, for some reason, I was re-reading an old Twitter thread from Alexander Bruce, the creator of the video game Antichamber. This activity instantly remembered me of the post you have just read (this one!).

I highly encourage you to read all the thread before going further:

See the full text

When I was younger, I was obsessed with getting ahead in life. Looking at my years projected ahead of me, working out how I could get through them faster.

Any time I seriously gave myself a 5 year plan, I’d immediately start figuring out how to compress it into 3 years, or 1 year instead, so that rest of the time could be used for an even better plan, which I would immediately start trying to make redundant.

A lot of high achievement / success was the result of sprinting like this constantly, and for most of the time while doing this, I struggled to understand why people were “wasting time” doing things other than setting themselves up for the future.

This process wore me down while making Antichamber, and though I was tired and burnt out afterwards, I kept trying to work out my next plan. Take a break, recharge some energy, then jump back in and do the next thing.

Later on, there were a few very specific moments and interactions with incredibly “successful” people that made me look at my projected future and actively reject the idea of chasing where I was going any further. The cost of where I was headed had become extremely clear.

The reward for spending a life consumed by work was more of a life consumed by work. Social groups entirely defined by work. Interests that only revolve around work. Physical and mental wellbeing tied entirely to work. Anxiety during any moment that isn’t spent doing work.

Spend long enough doing this and work feels like a completely inescapable thing, to the point that trying to envision a life without work becomes scary, because it feels like letting go of everything you’ve built.

Until those moments, having a disregard for life outside of work felt justified, because it was all working towards something. Everything else was an inconvenience that would get in the way of what I was working to achieve. This thought process was fine…. until it wasn’t.

Once I started rejecting this idea of “success”, it became more and more apparent how much I’d left behind in order to get to where I was. When people would say “I wish I had what you had”, my response was “along which axis?”.

People wanted my success in work, while I wanted their success in everything I hadn’t prioritised. I was still at square one along some avenues of life that other people had developed naturally while “wasting time” earlier on in life.

Taking a break from work to gain back all of what I’d missed took years. People often said it was good that I had the time / resources to prioritise those things now because of Antichamber, but the irony is that I could have been doing them my entire life.

Developing more empathy didn’t require money or resources or education. It required having lived experience, and engaging more closely with people around me.

Having other interests and hobbies required actually taking the time to do the things I was interested in, rather than pushing them aside constantly or not starting things because I wouldn’t be as good at them as what I already knew how to do.

Good physical / mental health requires putting in time and effort every day to maintain my wellbeing, rather than letting it slip as a problem to fix tomorrow.

People always say that they don’t have time for things, but everything ultimately gets paid for somewhere. When I became chronically sick for a few years, I spent far more time, energy and resources fixing my health than I would have if I prioritised it more in the first place.

I no longer think anything is “wasting time”, it’s all just spending time differently. Everything I do is building up some life experience somewhere. Whatever I’m doing, that’s how I’m spending my time, until I decide to spend it doing something else.

I love the work that I’m now doing, because I’m not wishing I was further along or doing something else. When I’m with friends, I’m not thinking I should be at my computer. Instead of lying in bed awake, thinking about what I haven’t done, I’m sleeping so I can recover energy.

This requires constantly checking in on myself and being honest with what I’m feeling and what my priorities are, adjusting course when necessary, with the hindsight of knowing where life leads if I don’t do this.

To bring this full circle, I now struggle to think in terms of “getting ahead” in life, because my question becomes “getting ahead at what?” Adult life is too much of a sprawl to know what being ahead even means, so my focus is only on making life worth living.


While reading Bruce’s story, I found several points particularly relatable in that many times in the past I had similar ideas, just like him. Sometimes I couldn’t understand how so many of my friends never wanted (or never even thought) to prepare for the future, start to work seriously on a thing or use their time more usefully/with a more precise and determined purpose.

Fortunately, though, I never (or almost never) exaggerated trying to “be ahead” and consequently prevent myself from enjoying life to the fullest. When I’m with friends, when I listen to music, when I do sport or when I just relax I don’t think (or at least no longer do) that I’d rather spend my time better working on something else.

That’s simply the way I decide to spend my time and doing it differently than usual doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s an opportunity to live new experiences and improve the heterogeneity of my life.

Still, there are some moments where this mental condition (if you can call it that) comes out again. An example? In April I turned 17 and now that my third year of upper secondary school is finished I’m starting to feel the pressure and urge to find a way to earn some money and become more independent from family*If you are of similar age or older you probably understand what I mean and what kind of feeling is that…. For this reason, every time I’m not doing something that is aimed to build my future I feel like I’m wasting time.

Being aware of this potentially dangerous mindset and knowing related experiences and consequences from other people makes me more cautious: when I set myself a goal to achieve I make sure I don’t over-sacrifice all those activities that make me enjoy life. I live the present without regrets on how I spend my time if it’s a thing that happens just occasionally.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean putting my responsibilities aside in favour of fun, but it means being careful not to make my life stressful. And when I decide it’s the moment to work, I make an effort not to let it become an obsession.

Most of the time, it’s hard. But not impossible.

Remember that, if taken to extreme levels, desperately trying to succeed in something can be as harmful as living life in sloth.

In conclusion, what I wanted to say in this post is that we have to find a balance between enjoying our life and finding a reason to live looking forward. Neither of these two weights has to be too heavy or too light, otherwise the psychological equilibrium is lost and you neither enjoy living nor have a reason to do so.

In short: be curious, find a meaning and stay happy!

Note: the feature image of this post was created by merging together two images generated by DALL·E 2 AI model giving the prompt “being mentally ahead, abstract drawing”. Given the good results, I may use this method again for future post images, but I’ll always tell you if and when I do.


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