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Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

Teenagers also tend to have all the time in the world for hobbies, relative to working adults.

I'm a firm believer that in order to reach virtuous levels in anything, you really need to take advantage of your teenage years to nail down the fundamentals.

I'm a musician myself, and spent almost every day between ages 13 to 20, often up to 6 hours a day, practicing and playing my instrument. Way more often than not, when I meet very talented people in different walks of life (music, tech, sports, etc.), it's the same story.

Teens also tend to have a very naive optimism and ambition / drive. Nothing is impossible, and no-ones gonna stop them. I think you need that no-breaks mentality to succeed.

And lastly, people naturally root for young people. The next hope, and all that.

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I disagree. Your teenage years are just your first opportunity to "master" a skill. If we take the 10000 hour rule as an example it takes 5 years of continuous effort. Between the age of 12 and 18 there is plenty of time for that. After that you go to higher which lets you master your second skill. After that you go to work and master your third skill and so on.

The only difference is that during your teenage years you get to choose. There is no pressure to get a "useful" degree or find a high-paying job.

Something obvious: Just because you have these opportunities doesn't mean you automatically take advantage of them and become virtuous. A lot of people waste their opportunities in exchange for something else.

> If we take the 10000 hour rule as an example it takes 5 years of continuous effort.

While your point about about teenagers having lots of discretionary time to become better at what they choose to pursue is very valid, the 10,000 hour rule is a distortion of the findings of a study on accomplished violinists. It is not broadly applicable. The tradition of violin playing has hundreds of years of teaching and quantifiable and measurable performance indicators. Other fields, not so much.

I did a lot of programming in my teenage years, and i think that gave me a head start i am still enjoying today. But when i was a teenager, we didn't really have the internet at home, so picking up a programming book and having a go was amongst the easiest and most enjoyable distractions available to me in the summer holidays. I do wonder, if i was growing up again today, whether i would still do that, or just spend all my time on Reddit.

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