[pg]

"Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later."

I've found this particularly true. As long as you're working on something interesting and difficult, you're probably not wasting your time, even if you can't see yet where it leads. It will be an ingredient in something.

[kristofferR]

Yeah, this is true. However - it is important to not confuse this with the idea of destiny or faith. The dots would probably connect just as well with completely different choices(dots). This could have resulted in a completely different life, but not necessarily any less true/right than where the dots have taken you so far.

I'm just 20 years old and still have a lot of dots to "do" - connecting them will come later in life when I can see where my choices/dots have brought me. This is both exhilarating and frustrating.

I've not made big enough choices to steer me down a certain path yet so I can spend my life doing anything imaginable (from chopping trees in Alaska to founding a F500 company to living on the street). However, not matter what I want to do/archive in life, I can't see the perfect path there. I can't predict the future, I can only look back at the past and connect the dots from there. No matter how correct I do things I'll probably end up in a different situation that what I imagined when I started the journey.

I'm beginning to understand that the planned destination in my life is not the important thing, the journey is. As long as I do my best and work hard on something I enjoy, I'll probably end up in a good situation. It might be completely different from what I dream about now, but I'm confident that it will be a good destination nevertheless.

[keiferski]

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

[scrrr]

Although the same might be true for solving Sudoku-puzzles. Or taking pleasure in solving challenging problems that have already been solved.

I think the key ingredient is inspiration. I find it not always clear where to look for it. On Hacker News? When traveling? What makes one think "This is something I want to work on." and makes one stick with it long enough? It seems like there's a certain ingredient to personalities that some people have more of while some have less.