I'm a 26 y.o. software dev working on going indie. All my life, I've struggled with procrastination. I find it very hard to sit down and work on a project without an external motivator, and on many nights I end up vegging out in front of the TV or aimlessly clicking around on the internet. As a result, even though I am successful on an absolute scale — CS degree from a top-10, worked at a startup and a large company, enough savings to last a few years of solo development — by my own metric of success, I am crippled by the feeling that it's "too late". Every day, I read an article by some hot-shot young dev who has a handful of fancy projects behind his belt (not to mention a great website and design sensibility) while I have exactly zero — and he's half a decade younger than me! How will I ever be able to catch up? Experience-wise, I'm still a junior dev.

It's a constant, irrepressible gnawing in my chest. Every morning, I take tally of my age. Whenever I encounter a technical article, I immediately and compulsively investigate the author's age. If I'm behind — which I always am — I will lock myself in my room and force myself to work, even though I still end up on HN half the time. It's exhausting and terrifying, but I also don't want to loosen up. At my core, I am intensely ambitious. I have so many great ideas, and knowing that the main obstacle between them and me is only myself keeps me in an endless state of panic.

It's been getting better. For the first time in my life, my procrastination is starting to get tamed. I've been working hard on my first big project, and I expect it's going to be a great one. But I can't help but feel that if I had started in earnest at 25, at 21, at 19 — then maybe the list of accomplishments at the end of my life will be longer. Mentally, I've resigned to the fact that I've procrastinated away a decade of valuable time, and it just endlessly haunts me.

Does anybody else have this problem? How do you deal with it?