How do I deal with feeling behind?

Question

Efri Dereje · Accepted Answer

Behind against what?

There's no timeline. There's a made-up one that got assembled from people around you, LinkedIn, and whatever your family expected, and none of it applies to your actual situation.

But I'll take the feeling seriously, because sometimes it's pointing at something real.

If it's real, meaning you genuinely haven't moved in years and you know it, then the answer isn't to feel worse about it. It's to pick one thing and move it in the next ninety days. Feeling behind is paralysing. Doing one specific thing is the only known cure.

If it's not real, meaning you've actually been progressing and it just doesn't feel like it, then this is a measurement problem. Write down what you could do three years ago and what you can do now. Most people are shocked by that list, because progress is invisible from inside it.

The thing to watch is that feeling behind makes people take bad jobs. You accept less, faster, because you're trying to catch up to a schedule that doesn't exist. That costs more than the delay ever did.