Slashdot has a post about What You’ll Wish You’d Known: “Eminent computer scientist, author, painter, and dot-com millionaire, Paul Graham has written down the things he wishes somebody had told him when he was in high school in What You’ll Wish You’d Known, suggesting, among other things, that students treat school like a day job, working on interesting projects to avoid what he has found to be the most common regret among adults of their high school days: wasting time.”

The best bits are in the comments, where some of Slashdot’s many visitors talk about what they wish they’d known when they were younger, or whether even thinking about such things is worth any effort. My favorite bit from the comments, by an anonymous poster:

“youth is wasted on the young”

By the time you are old enough to want to make a list of things to tell young people they need to do to be happy, you are too old to relate to any young person in a meaningful or influential way. But inevitably, generation after generation, the old people are compelled to spew advice which the young will absorb, but ignore, until they themselves are old and ready to acknowledge its correctness (and then to futilely victimize that generation with advice).

I think the biggest cause of regret in young people is mixed messages being sent from all directions from know-it-all nannies who all regret their own youth and so want to live vicariously through others still in possession of it. Laissez faire.

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I think this is very tightly related to the rise and fall of civilizations: the inability to truly inculcate each new generation with the same values and attitudes held by the previous generation…

More good comments:

The opinion of high-school classmates doesn’t really matter. Knowing this would have done me a lot of good. Don’t bother trying to impress your peers in high school. In fact, go ahead and embarrass yourself. It won’t be the end of the world. A year after graduation, no one will remember or care. If anyone does remember and care, those are the weirdos whose entire life will be spent obsessing on high school, the people who never move on with their lives, and so their opinion isn’t worth much worry.

This is one thing I “knew” in high school, but I didn’t really know it. I remember in English class one time, somehow the class was talking about what from high school was important (I really have no idea quite how we got to this — maybe we had to write an essay or something), and one girl (on whom I had a crush) was saying something about important, lasting friendships. I came right out and said I thought high school friendships and relationships were pointless since almost none would really last into college or later life. Of course, I was somewhat biased since I didn’t really have many high school friends, and envied those who did. I was indeed keenly concerned about what others thought of me, and hated embarrassment. If I had really believed that the people I knew in high school wouldn’t matter later on, I wouldn’t have been so concerned with such things, would I?

The irony may be that, although I still agree with the sentiment now, I strongly wish I’d felt differently back then, and taken more risks. I would have been bad at it and had a lot of embarrassment, but the big, defining thing about embarrassment is thinking it matters. If you don’t care about embarrassment, you won’t be embarrassed. I would have had more interesting experiences then, been prepared better for experiences I’ve had later in life, and come out a more well-rounded individual. Or maybe not.

High school will not be, and shouldn’t be, “the best years of your life.” People will be petty, people won’t understand you. You’ve got to take it, and still treat other people with respect. (Even if you’re smarter, you’re not necessarily better — if you’re excluded, don’t retreat to elitism.)

All that said, I’m not sure if “wasting time” is so bad. Young children should be encouraged to play freely, not subjected 100% to a rigorous schedule of pre-planned activities. Not sure how much that can or should carry over into teenage years.

Graham is advocating exploration of that which interests you — in my mind, I should’ve been spending more time practicing social skills … since in high school I was most interested in my female classmates.

True dat, yo. I cultivated a form of aloof elitism that worked well in my class of less than 100 peers. Too well. And I ended up wasting crucial time by not “wasting time” with said peers… and female classmates.

Repeat after me: It’s not ‘wasting time’ if you’re having fun.

It’s only those obsessed with status & material wealth who get wrapped up in the notion that every worthwhile waking hour should be spent working on advancing careers and whatnot.

I agree, except a good reply to that would be a different, unrelated comment elsewhere in the thread:

I think you missed one of the points the author was trying to make, which is that for smart, satisfied people, work and play generally merge into a single activity at which the individual is very, very good. That’s how you get people who spend 80 hours per week programming and such. People whose work is play never have to work, and they seldom have to worry about money. The sooner one figures out how to make one’s work one’s play, the better off and happier that person will probably be.

I agree with this in theory. Unfortunately, it’s usually said by people who were lucky enough to have their default interests turn into a lucrative career. Most people alive are never, ever lucky enough to make their play into their work. Humans generally find only certain types of things interesting, and we can’t all do those same things, or else a lot of other important work won’t get done. The real kernel of truth in this advice is: it may be possible, with some effort, to take the job you find yourself in and start finding in it captivating problems to solve and things to be fascinated with. In this manner, you may force your work into a form of play, and derive some satisfaction from that. I’ve been trying to do this a bit in my own job, but let’s face it: they call it “work” for a reason.

So having said all that, what’s something I wish I’d known when I was younger? That it’s really not all that important. But that’s not really something you can tell someone. It’s a sense, a feeling you get from experience, that life is a fun ride when approached from the right frame of mind, and that you shouldn’t “sweat the small stuff” as they say. It’s mostly small stuff. Well, if you’re lucky enough to be born into a good society. But that cynical thought aside, it is mostly small stuff. (The most meaningful thing you can do with your life is try to spread prosperity and security around, and maintain it where you are, so that others and future generations will have the social cushions that allow for most of life’s evils to be “small stuff.”)

And that sense or feeling is exactly the sort of thing no generation can ever successfully pass on to the next, and exactly the most important that should be passed on, if it ever could be.

What would you tell your younger self if you could, and do you think he or she would listen?