[Nostradedamus]

Remember this: Albert Einstein had a simple clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

[asr1191]

Einstein is not just another person, right? The man had amazing perseverance. Not everyone is like that.

But I am genuinely curious to know how lesser known, and the more average kind of person deals with this. Because I feel like I might end up being in the same situation judging from my current progress.

[Nostradedamus]

Look, I "bootstrapped my brain" all my life…maybe because I was lazy or impatient and wanted quick solutions.

On HN, I see lots of amazing individuals with great education, work experiences using "expensive" vocabulary.

I am not one of them. I was below average in school but "bootstrapped" my professional life using my personality and my imagination. I ended up creating something beyond my wildest dream.

[maxxxxx]

I am not sure what to learn from this.

[Nostradedamus]

You're not wasting your life sitting in a cubicle. Your mind is always free to create and discover...

[tmaly]

Sometimes a low stress job is ideal for the opportunity to create.

[Nostradedamus]

But high stress can do some amazing things to your brain. And immediately when I found this out I use it at my advantage. For years I worked on my project with results like "a step forward, two steps behind". So I quit my job with only a few thousands $$ and put as much stress on my "system". I found my "eureka moment" a few days before I ran out of $$. They call this the survival instinct.

[maxxxxx]

I think it's great that you succeeded but you shouldn't generalize your experience. I also put everything on the line for a business idea and failed miserably with a lot of debt. There are a lot of factors involved in success. It's not only persistence.

[is_true]

Stress usually comes with health issues. Be careful

[swframe2]

You may need two jobs for a brief amount of time. One that pays the bills. Another that drives your passion. Think of your first job as "bootstrapping" your second job. Just make sure the first job doesn't take so much effort that you have no energy left to do what you really want to do.

[maxxxxx]

My point was that finding your passion may not result in a viable career. I have tried to bootstrap the second job but it has always failed. My guess is that this is the case for most people and only a lucky few manage to turn their passion into a career.

If Einstein hadn't been Einstein he may have failed in physics work and stayed a bored patent clerk forever. I bet this happened and is still happening to a lot of people.