Understanding the bottlenecks of life is an essential part of gaining perspective. Oftentimes, being convicted in the existance of these bottlenecks is a sign that you have surpassed them, in which case I say good job! What an exciting time to be alive. Limitless.
Here are some bottlenecks I believe exist for us all:
Not knowing where to look
Meaningful output as a person is proportional to the input one has in terms of time, energy, and resources. Having an optimized resource aggregation system for oneself is crucial to be able to do things.
Not knowing where to look means that there are programs and resources that perfectly align with one’s personal mission, but not knowing they exist.
The way to have this is usually through building reliable and relevant information feeds for yourself. Carefully crafting the places you get your information from is pretty important. Follow the right people on Twitter, on Curius, and even in Real Life. This is the best way to get resources.
Another way is to ask. This is a pretty underrated method, but asking for where to look or any general resources can only bring good outcomes.
Not knowing what is possible
The underlying principle behind why people in great programs (The Knowledge Society, Westwood Computer Science, HackClub) consistently output great work is because they are surrounded by people doing the same. Each normal person that joins a successful program is dragged into greatness by others who were dragged once before.
Obviously there had to be someone to output great work without seeing anyone do it (the incumbant), and it is my belief that these people are the true heavy-hitters of the world.
Regardless, seeing someone do something is also a sign that you can do it yourself. Without this, it is hard to think outside of the box. Education should focus more on this.
This is also possible reasoning for why it is important to focus on minority representation in STEM. It is a fact that groups are formed out of shared commonalities; oftentimes this includes race, gender, and sexuality. Bringing in enough incumbants from these groups into some high performing role will show others in those same groups what is possible, and eventually cause all the dominos to fall.