I am now coming to terms with the fact that I developed a coping mechanism when I was a young child of comparing myself to established professionals. I was highly gifted as a child (of this I'm 99% certain, but I've never been tested), and this was combined with a rage to master the subjects I was interested in. In particular, these were writing and mathematics as a young child.

For me, I would say math came easily. I don't know how the average child learns, but I never had to pay attention in class even though I was studying material two years ahead in elementary school. I would listen to the concept that was being introduced in class, get it on the first repetition (when I was 7 years old, for example, the ratio of the circumference to the radius of a circle is a constant: yeah that's obvious. boom, done), and then zone out for the rest of the class. But I was also obsessed with math and wanted to learn more. My parents got me a workbook which had some math puzzles, which introduced powers, square roots and decimal expansions from what I recall, so that's how I learned that stuff in first grade. There were mathematical concepts with which I kind of struggled, but in hindsight I realize it was usually more of a philosophical objection than not being able to understand the concept. For example, fractional exponents -- I got stuck trying to conceptualize the idea of multiplying a number by itself 0.5 times although I conceptually understood that it was the inverse of multiplying it by itself 2 times, and acceleration -- I used to write (meters/second)/second instead of m/s^2 because I couldn't stomach the idea of a "square second", which is kind of funny in hindsight. I also taught myself mental arithmetic by figuring out a bunch of tricks (such as multiplying by 2 and then shifting the decimal point instead of dividing by 5) and was faster at it than other kids who were trained in abacus. I used to challenge myself to multiply numbers in my head. I would pick two random numbers, say 68 and 343, and then try to figure out efficient ways to multiply them in my head. For example, here, I see that you can find 343 X 2, then 343 X 2 X 2, 343 X 3, remember those results, and then add them up, that kind of stuff. I was obsessed with numbers. Also, I told myself that being able to do this was nothing special, because it was just a trick which other people hadn't learned to do.

The same with reading and writing. I don't know how precocious I was because I never hit a limit while trying to read books, but I also didn't read very hard books for the most part. The thought never occurred to me that a book was too hard to read: if I needed to know what a word meant, I could look it up in the dictionary, and that was that. I read all of the books in my house that were meant for children (such as Harry Potter) at a young age, and several from the library. I'm not sure why I never challenged myself to read my dad's books when I was young (physics textbooks and popular physics books). Occasionally, I'd flip to a page and read it, but I never read them cover to cover. I grew tired of just reading books, and decided to write books instead, which I spent more time on eventually. It became a pastime, and I would spend 4 hours a day writing. I wouldn't really acknowledge mental fatigue, or maybe I didn't have it; I don't know either way. I wrote a few hundred pages of fiction, which in hindsight wasn't great in quality but was certainly very good for someone that age and pretty creative, before I quit a few years later.

I don't write this to sing my own praises: I just want to give context. I also hope that I'm not being biased by only looking at the "highlights" of what feels like my past life. Back when I was 8, I thought to myself about grade skipping and realized on my own that I might have to be skipped 5+ grades to really challenge me so there really wasn't much of a point, and that I'd be better off going at it alone. I know a lot of highly gifted kids coast through school. But again here's the thing which probably sealed the deal for me -- I had a rage to master subjects and an insatiable curiosity at a young age, plus an ability to focus for apparently any length of time. I could devour books, or spend hours on a math problem. I would obsess over topics of interest and work much harder at them than a kid normally would. This cemented my dissatisfaction. Being highly gifted is one thing, but also being able to focus for 4 hours straight at that age and having an obsessive drive to master subjects? It propels you way past your age peers! I had no teachers, in any field, who could challenge me at all for several years.

This resulted in me setting my own standards. And what were those standards? Well, to consume information was not enough, and it somehow didn't really occur to me that acquiring information/knowledge was in itself the hard part. Instead, I set myself the target of being able to perform at a professional level, and/or to come up with insights which combined that information, with no outside guidance. To try to invent my own math theorems, to write a novel comparable to a published author, to come up with ex nihilo insights, because I thought that's what smart people do (which I later realized is not really true, at least in the modern world -- though I don't completely agree with this article, he is right that basically no one just spontaneously generates deep insights: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/).

I don't even think I was that smart, just that I peaked early. I struggled with Olympiad math and knew several others who were better than me at math in high school and college. Writing, maybe I was never in the right environments to meet really talented writers, so I've basically never met anyone in person my age who can write better. But the perfectionism, the idea that every concept needs to be understood immediately, the constant comparison with people who are very accomplished, has continued to this day. Maybe it's good and bad in equal measure, and I don't know if I would have thought the same way if I had access to equally or more talented kids as a young child -- maybe I would have been humbled and accepted the reality of talent. But all of this manifests in this odd dichotomy of feeling inferior because you don't meet a hypothesized standard while at the same time being clearly better at your areas of interest than 99% of people you meet! But you don't compare yourself with them, and instead compare yourself with professionals in the field who are better than you, so it doesn't give you happiness to know that you are *just* in the 99.9th percentile. And when you are already an adult, why would it, given that you have been there your whole life?

I wonder if this strikes a chord with people here. I would be really interested in getting to know whether this is a common sentiment, and any similar stories would be more than welcome (it's a pain to search this forum sometimes!).