Recently, a colleague asked me, and I am summarizing here, what shortcut(s) can he take to get to my "level" (as a web developer)?
My answer was that there are no shortcuts - it takes hard-work and a lot of time to become "good". This blunt easy can be hard to swallow, but why is there a seemingly sense of "entitlement"?
Without my copy of the current issue of Make Magazine[1] directly in front of me, either Saul Griffith ("MENTORing Kids Into Makers") or AnnMarie Thomas ("Real Tools for Kids") talk about how young people are not putting in the hours - loosely speaking - in terms of learning engineering or science. I think that there's a sense that hard-work isn't necessary - just being "smart".
What happened with getting your hands dirty by putting in the long hours? For me, the pursuit of happiness without the dedication to working hard is a folly.