I&#x27;m pretty frustrated in life right now. I&#x27;m at a stage of life - end of college - which should be my prime years for socializing and learning valuable interpersonal skills. But they are also the prime years for gaining coding chops, contributing to open source to get some experience, and so on.<p>I feel like I&#x27;m caught in a catch-22 situation - if I spend all my time coding, then my desire to interact with others (and others&#x27; desires to interact with me) decreases - because I become boring due to spending time only in my own skill development. This will have negative consequences - I miss out on opportunities cause nobody is an island. I also have emotional anxiety which impacts my productivity.
But if I spend time trying to socialize&#x2F;trying to make plans&#x2F;have a few easy-going days, then my skill stagnates and I feel that I&#x27;m losing sight of my endgoal (to be a better programmer). Then there will be no use of my network because I won&#x27;t have the capacity to create anything significant.<p>To clarify more, my drive to be a better programmer is because I want to have enough skill to create a hugely valuable and profitable startup. I think I&#x27;ve got enough skills to get a decent-good programming job(so I don&#x27;t need to code 8-10 hours a day for just that) BUT obviously I want to exceed expectations, and win at life. My definition of winning at life is make genuine friendships, make a boatload of money, and not need to work in a conventional company&#x2F;career.<p>So, all the above means I want to code 24x7 to be as technically proficient as possible. But spending all that time coding would leave me a boring and lonely guy I think. How do people balance their skill with their time? How do I become smarter and more efficient than I am now, while also becoming more of a fun and attractive personality to hang around with?
Interpersonal skills vs. coding chops