Perspective
Yesterday, I had a conversation with someone who has a pretty different outlook on life from mine. She mentioned how she prioritizes her relationships over most of her work-related pursuits, because she wouldn't have gotten to where she is in her professional life without them. In her opinion, she'll probably end up finding some job that pays off well, and shouldn't be the main concern as opposed to preserving those relationships because they're sacred.
What I found unusual was how she was doing much better than the median here at university, yet still prioritized these relationships. For me, I've had to give up a lot of things to get where I am today, whether it's been time spent with family, friends, or otherwise, to get where I am, and I generally assume that to obtain most things, there are tradeoffs. I'm not sure if it's a healthy way to go about things, but it has ensured I don't have regrets because it forces me to completely acknowledge the decision options and potential consequences that may result. I think it's also conditioned me to be more accepting to sacrificing things even when it isn't necessary, which is not great, lol.
I think if one wants to be the best in their field, or reach a certain level of mastery, they'd need to dedicate an exceeding amount of time, but even there, there are diminishing returns. I think the sigmoid curve does a good job of showing aptitude as a function of effort. Something I'm still personally trying to figure out is where on the curve do I want to be, and how would that affect my relationships.
We also talked about how the time we spend in college is pretty short and is a unique time in life where one doesn't have a lot of responsibilities and is pretty much free to explore and try out things with relatively fewer consequences. Honestly, I think I agree with this, however, I do think the human information processing capacity peaks around the age of 20, and if I don't understand diffusion models by then, I am not going to make it and die poor and alone. It's why I've been putting in slightly more work in that capacity, but I should probably focus on better time management to achieve both. Part of this also stems by me taking life too seriously, I should get better at this.
TLDR: work hard but also play hard