If you're young, here's my advice for you

Experiment as much as you can!

I've been in love with computers since I was 8 years old but I never really had the chance to play with them as much as I wanted until I was actually 14. Until that age I was only supposed to play games and focus on school, and since I wasn't able to repair my own computer because I didn't have the knowledge, there was no way (or permission) for me to see what works and what doesn't.

Later in life I discovered that once you break a computer (I'm talking about software here) you can repair it and what's most importantly, there is a lot of information available on the Internet that can help you do that. It doesn't matter if you do something that makes your computer run slow. Five minutes on Google can give you a solution to that.

But what I didn't do related to computers when I was younger was experimenting. I mean, I learned how to use Photoshop and I played with all kind of software from the Adobe suite, and I also learned some web designer & development. I even used Linux for a few years and learned some basic Python.

The thing is that I never really invested my time in experimenting as much as I should have. One of the main reasons for that was going to school. My entire family lived (and still does) under the impression that unless you're a great student and unless you do great in school, there's no way for you to make money.

I proved them all wrong now, but back then I had to believe them. So, instead of experimenting as much as I wanted, I just focused on school. After spending 6 to 7 hours in that institution, coming home to work or learn a new skill isn't exactly the most pleasant experience, so I was "stuck" in a loop of "Go to school, get tired learning nothing, come home to learn nothing for school again, and what you do with the rest of the time it's your problem, even tho you're tired by now".

Now that I'm finally done with school, I could have all the time in the world to experiment and try new things in order to see what else I like besides what I already do. But it's not really like that. You see, once you get older, the world has some expectations from you, and if that doesn't concern you, then the fact that people around you will put a lot of pressure on you and expect to see some results from your work should make you have second thoughts about how cool growing up is.

People will constantly ask you what you do for a living, how much money you make, they will also judge you when you tell them all that and if you don't care about the opinion of others then prepare to be more or less judged by your own family at some point in the future.

There are bills to be paid, there are things you need to buy and even if you still live with your parents, there will come a moment when they'll ask you to pay for stuff. Good luck experimenting then. The majority of your time will be spent trying to make money in order to live a decent life.

But unless you're lucky or really good at what you do, it's gonna take a while to make all the money you need and you'll be stuck working every day for a certain amount of time, avoiding experimentation and focusing only on what you know in order to get better and make more money.

That's why, my advice for you, if you're young, is to experiment as much as you can. Try all kind of things, learn new skills even if you have no idea what you can use them for and if you can ask your parents to buy you something that will allow more experimentation (or if you have your own money to buy those kind of things) then do that.

One thing I wanted to try at least once in the past was creating a video game. Nothing big, of course, because I am a beginner in this area, but I just wanted to try. My old and really bad computer was an impediment to my desire and as I grew older I realized I had responsibilities (one of them being making money) and that my time for experimentation was limited.

Now I'm in a position where I have the computer I need to be able to work on whatever I want, but not the time to actually do it. I have to work, I have to read a lot in order to get new ideas for the content I want to create and I need to constantly practice in order to get better at what I do.

After doing all that every day it's hard to be motivated enough to try all kind of new things and learn skills that could help you in the future, especially since you know you can always fail after hours of trying and learning. That's gonna make you focus even more on what you know already in a desperate attempt to take care of your responsibilities and someday have all the time you need to do what you like.

So, my advice for you, once again, is to experiment as much as possible, at least if you're young enough and/or if you have the time. Try all kind of new stuff, learn everything you want to learn and don't worry too much about anything else. That will help you realize what you want to be doing in the future and allow you to learn just that instead of doing a few things you don't really love but you're kinda good at in order to survive.