Here are three quick tips to help you build better relationships when hanging out with friends. These all revolve around a general nuisance: consuming instead of connecting. I encourage you to read these with a certain seriousness as I deeply believe this issue slowly builds up into a serious disease which makes it all the more important despite its seemingly trivial nature.

Movies

If you want to connect with your friends, DON'T watch a movie together. Watching a movie is a bulletproof way to be in the same room as your friends without actually ever talking to each other. It's passive and lazy and a cop-out for the work of finding something active to do... finding something that isn't staring at screen without thinking. Every biological signal that gives you the feel-good emotion of having spent time with someone doesn't happen while watching a movie.

Music

Let's imagine a very specific context for this one although, this rule does generalize to some other scenarios: we are in a car with three other friends two hours away from our destination, and one of them wants to play music while the rest are impartial. If you want to spend two hours not talking to each other, great, play music. If you'd like to actually spend time connecting with your friends, DON'T play music. Playing music metaphorically shuts the door to any conversation that might have happened because nobody wants to fight the music. Do the work of conversation.

TV/Reels

Routinely sitting in the same room as family/friends while doing nothing in particular is vital to your relationship with them. This is the time where conversations might happen – the door is very metaphorically open for this serendipitous, crucial bonding to happen. If you want to squash any chance of this connection, watch the TV or listen to shorts with the volume up. These other people will likely be uninterested or focused on something other than this excessive noise you are pumping throughout the house, and they will soon leave and literally close the door to conversation. Just put earbuds in – the audio will be better anyways.

Don't get me wrong, I love love love movies, music, and TV (probably) more than you do, and I'm saying this so explicitly because it would be unfortunate for these ideas to come across as crazy or easily dismissed given my believed severity of this issue. This is just a wake up call to make sure you aren't defaulting to movies and music because they are easier than figuring out something to do or driving potential connection away with noise that nobody else wants to hear.

We all know how hard it is to get a really great gift for someone, but here is a tip...

Every really great gift I've ever given was found months in advance through serendipity – seeing something randomly while scrolling through social media or watching a video and recognizing that a person in my life would love that. I'm not sure if this is something you can train... this noticing without actively looking for gifts.

For me, I just got to a point where Christmas was so painful and embarrassing that it just started happening – which I have no idea what to make of. I've already got a few things bookmarked for this upcoming Christmas.

Maybe caring a little bit more about wanting to give something nice is a part of growing up. Maybe not giving something nice ruins the receiving of something nice as we get older.

Modern food is very frustrating. Just walk into a grocery store and look around. 95% of the "food" inside should not exist – it should not be put in your body. All of this ridiculous garbage keeps us feeling tired and unhealthy.

So much of the general wisdom about what is healthy and what isn't has not been the case for me – some of this I feel is universally wrong, but you'll have to figure that out for yourself. Our bodies all work differently, and we need the discipline to run personal experiments, which I have done for many years.

This is my comprehensive guide on nutrition.

General Rules

Non-optional

1. Enemy number one is SUGAR: eliminate it from your diet, and you will be shredded.
2. If the food is salty, sugary, or preserved, don't eat it.
3. As long as you aren't breaking rule 1 or 2, eat as much as you want: nobody ever overate on potatoes.

Optional

1. Eat twice a day: skip breakfast.
2. Low variety: I eat black beans, homemade bread, and milk for 80% of my calories every day.

After eating super clean for a while, I can just tell when a food is healthy or not by the way it makes me feel right after I eat it. I think it is literally and metaphorically a gut thing.

An extreme version of this is the food coma feeling you might have had after leaving a hibachi grill. For example, you might start to notice that burgers also give you this same feeling, just to a lesser extent.

Specific Foods

If a food is especially hidden or controversial, meaning general wisdom says it is healthy or unhealthy and I think the opposite, I'll denote it with an asterisk: fruit*.

Don't Eat

Frozen foods*

If it's frozen, it is loaded with salt and chemicals to make it keep. This is the sneaky stuff that really frustrates me – you are eating frozen chicken or frozen breakfast food... healthy right? Wrong. It won't bloat you to 300 pounds, but you'll be 10% more sluggish and fat.

Cereal*

Sugary garbage. Not healthy in the slightest.

Fruit*

Another bs food we have been told is healthy. Fruit is nature's candy; eat something else.

Snacks

We all know these are bad for you i.e. chips, cookies, snack cakes, candy, and basically any food that was invented within the past 100 years.

Drinks that aren't milk, water, or coffee

Sodas, juices, and anything that is liquid calories should not be consumed.

Fast food

This is the biggest scam of all. Fast food is super high in calories, engineered to be unfulfilling, and expensive.

Greasy food

Generally avoid burgers, pizza, etc but these are more acceptable every once and while. Beat yourself up for eating sugar – be easy on yourself if you grab a burger.

Do Eat

Bread*

Do not eat grocery store bread. It is fake bread, and I'm not kidding. Make a homemade loaf of bread and tell me that is the same thing you are getting from the store. Bread is literally my favorite source of healthy calories. (Again, if you buy it in a store, we might as well be talking about two separate foods.)

Beans

This is the most underrated food on the planet. Super cheap, super easy to prepare, and they never get old. Get the unsalted cans, so you get to choose how much salt you add.

Milk

Milk is a really great source of calories when your meal just needs that little extra something.

Rice

Remember, preserved rice is not okay. Rice can be kind of a pain to prepare.

Meat

This is great but expensive.

Vegetables

I suppose these are probably good to eat. Honestly, not too many vegetables make it into my diet. No frozen vegetables.

Potatoes

Solid food, easy to prepare.

Pasta

Be careful with pasta, and I wouldn't eat it too often. If your sauce is yummy, it has too much sugar – might as well eat cookies. Sugar is sugar.

Butter

This is my biggest food vice in terms of sugar I'm willingly allowing into my diet. I freaking love butter, especially honey butter. Luckily you can only put so much on one slice of bread.

Cheese

This is a great way to spice your food up. There are so many great and interesting cheeses out there. Get creative and out of your comfort zone.

Eggs

This is a classic but beware eggs will get old fast.

Peanut Butter/Nuts

A great snack.

Caffeine

Pound as much caffeine as you can before 5pm. It is a miracle drug of free energy.

Dark Chocolate

If you need something sweet, do dark chocolate.

Final Thoughts

Eating right is hard, and it isn't totally your fault. There are literally research teams full of PhD super-geniuses whose only job is to figure out the optimal combinations of sugar, fat, color, and texture that will make you pick up their abomination and not put it down. There is a reason the average person is about 20% fatter than the average person 40 years ago, and it has nothing to do with your willpower.

That being said, it is still your problem to deal with. Personally, it pisses me off to think of these greedy corporations trying to clean out my wallet while simultaneously killing me with weaponized sugar – more so, it makes me furious that it's working on most of the people I care about. The anger helps.

I'm not perfect either. I still have some form of sugar for dessert after almost every meal. Hopefully, I'll kick that eventually. I have successfully removed preserved food from my diet entirely. Godspeed. Let me know if I can help in some way.

I'm constantly finding new ways to make me more efficient on my computer which is really important given the amount of time we all spend on them. While my list of optimizations is very long, there are some simple keyboard changes that offer large increases in comfort/productivity without much effort.

As a reminder, this is the Mac keyboard layout with a legend to avoid confusion about which keys I'm referring to in this article.

Better Arrow Keys

Problem: Arrow keys are too far from home row.

Solution: Map left, down, up, right to h, j, k, l when holding right command.

For all the developers reading, this is my modern Vim compromise.

Better Backspace And Forward Delete

Problem: Backspace is too hard to reach, and forward delete is hidden behind a key combination.

Solution: Map backspace to right shift and forward delete to the original backspace key.

This might not be for everyone. I have never used my right shift key always capitalizing all my letters with left shift.

Better Control And Escape

Problem: Control is too far from home row, and escape is too hard to reach.

Solution: Map caps lock to escape when tapped but left control when held.

I use the escape key a lot with the Link Hints web extension and Vimac app which are both incredible complements to these keyboard changes.

Another Better Control

Problem: Left control makes it hard to switch tabs in various apps with control + tab

Solution: Swap left control and fn mappings.

To switch tabs in most apps using control + tab is pretty uncomfortable with it in its normal position next to the option key.

I hope this also serves as a fun reminder that you can change things. Just remember, the hard part about making things better isn't in the creation or fixing of a problem; it is noticing it in the first place.

(I use Karabiner – Mac only – to make these changes. I'd love to help you get this set up if you aren't super techy – just email me. I'm sure there is a similar app for Windows, but I am not sure what that is.)

Journaling is a crucial habit I've built into my life over the past 4-5 years, and much like social media, I think people journal in lots of different ways. When I mentioned journaling, you might have imagined writing about the things you did during the day or how you felt about them – I know I would have before I started doing it. Originally, that is how I journaled, but now I hardly ever write about those kinds of things. Here is a quick look at what journaling is like for me today...

First, I never consciously sit down to journal, and in fact, I almost never consciously think about the fact that I do journal. An interesting thought will come to mind that feels like it should be written down, and I'll pull out my phone or laptop, click one button, and jot it down in like 10 seconds. Other times if an issue or important topic is bothering me, I'll journal about it, although it ends up being a kind of talking with myself to form full thoughts rather than having a full thought and simply recording it.

I don't ever think about whether something is worth writing down – it is all based purely on feeling; however, I asked Grok to analyze the things that have made it into my journal last month and it said I personally tend to journal about these things:

• Stream-of-consciousness: Raw, unstructured thoughts blending personal and societal insights.
• Philosophical: Grapples with purpose, identity, and existential questions.
• Self-critical: Reflects on past failures and future ambitions for growth.
• Cultural critique: Challenges societal norms and success metrics.
• Emotional catharsis: Expresses anger, frustration, and defiance.
• Creative ideation: Incubates tech and artistic ideas.

This sounds about right, but again, I must reiterate, I'm not consciously choosing what is worth and not worth writing. I have quick access to my journal, and I just let whatever feels right fall onto the keyboard.

To me, my journal is like a superpower that speeds up everything intellectual that I do. Most of the time when we talk with friends and family, we are forming thoughts and testing how they feel; journaling is no different and speeds up clarity, formation of new ideas, and processing of old experiences. I strongly encourage you to journal without any expectation as to what you should journal about. Just write and let whatever happens happen.

In general though, follow these rules:

1. Use plain text (.txt): you'll want to be able to read these long after other proprietary file formats are outdated.
2. Create a keyboard shortcut to pull up your journal in 1 second: I hit command+control+option+t on my keyboard and this month's file gets opened.
3. (Bonus) Sync it to your phone: I use iCloud and a simple .txt editing app on my iPhone to jot things down on the go.
4. Format your entries like this:

date: 2025-06-30

This is a new entry. I'm talking about formatting.

    If the thought continues but requires a new paragraph, add a TAB to denote it is continuing.
Often I'll use a new line for each new sentence.
Like this :)

Now this is a new entry.
I'm talking about music or whatever.

Another new entry.
Add two lines like below before the previous date.


date: 2025-06-29

See how the top is always the latest entry?


date: 2025-06-28

Alright I think you've got it.

I'm not sure what the meaning of life is; however, it does feel like I'm hurling towards something important or someone I'm supposed to be without any choice in the matter. I think whatever or wherever or whoever this destination is, it can really be felt when reading a long chain of my journal entries – they have a familiar theme beyond any label I (or Grok) can give them. The things I find worth jotting down are somehow undoubtedly tied to this. I think this will be very obvious in hindsight despite my current lack of clarity.

I also intentionally try not to inspect what I end up writing down too much. I think somehow if I analyze what is naturally and unconsciously flowing out of me, it'll interrupt or poison the material in some way. This feeling of gradually, as if by gravity, moving towards this thing feels monumentally important, and by extension, so does journaling – perhaps one of the most important things I do.

When evaluating why a company succeeded, we might first consider what the idea was. What made it a good idea? Why was the time right for it? Why didn't anyone else think of it? The truth is there were a handful of start-ups with the same idea as Airbnb that were started around the same time, and this is often the case. Ideas are easy to have, and people have lots of them.

Maybe then we might say well what did they do different in their execution? Michael Sibel a prominent leader at Ycombinator would tell you one of the things they did right was allowing hosts to add their bnb for free whereas a competitor charged a small fee for hosts to post on their site. These kinds of things are important, but I'd argue still isn't enough. I believe even if Airbnb hadn't done many of the things they did well, they still would have succeeded. In fact, I think there is really only one key factor that matters when starting a company. So why did Airbnb succeed?

Brian Chesky wanted it to happen – no you don't get it, like he was going to die before Airbnb failed. In fact, you might not know it, but the two Airbnb founders literally almost did starve to death during the first few years of trying to get traction. Could you imagine yourself being so committed to an idea that you spend years trying to get significant traction? I'd bet they would have gone years longer too. This is the difference. It was going to be successful because Brian Chesky said so.

As an ambitious and curious person, this is fascinating, and I immediately wonder two things: 1. How do I become like that? 2. How did he go about choosing this idea? The answers are not exciting for entrepreneurs because you can't muscle your way to becoming like this; however, that is not to say you can muscle your way to success. You just can't muscle your way to this particular kind of success where you stick out a crazy idea because it has to exist. You can't resourceful your way to becoming psycho crazy obsessive, and you can't resourceful your way to picking an idea that will likely work and you will be crazy about – it seems like the idea picks you. So even if you did have the idea for Airbnb, it probably wouldn't have made you hyper committed to it.

It feels to me that being an obsessive person is not a choice. It feels to me that whatever idea does make you obsessive about itself is also not a choice. So what do we do? What do us people who want to be successful do? Live. Just live. Don't get me wrong, try hard! Try your hardest, but you can't find the answers on Google. You'll have to trust your gut. Try hard; trust your gut.

I think you can feel why a person is doing what they are doing. I don't know Brian, but I get the feeling he is very much an artist. He has a degree in design and has all the key attributes of someone making totally irrational decisions. All this to say I think his creative intentions are pure – he just wants to make great things... art with some density and substance. There are many other successful and unsuccessful people that I do and don't know that feel very much NOT like an artist. On paper, yes, they are tech start-up people too, but they feel off... They feel yucky and desperate – I'm very aware Brian was desperate too, but that is a desperation that feels heroic whereas this other desperation feels sad. These other people feel like their intentions aren't pure – they want something that isn't worth sacrificing for.

I wish I had examples or anecdotes to explain this better, but these other kinds of people are who I was shocked and appalled by in San Francisco. Only a very small percentage of tech people I met felt pure in their pursuits. Maybe I'm wrong. It probably doesn't matter if the only goal is to make money and therefore something useful. But if you really want to make something that fills your soul and not just something successful, it probably does matter. I'd imagine it is very hard to find that obsessive idea if your mind is distracted by all the other ideas that could very well become successful.

This might best be explained as the fundamental difference between Apple and Microsoft or, in other words, the difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I won't go into the details here because this Mac vs PC issue is well documented, but it is the reason Steve Jobs is cool and Bill Gates isn't, despite both being very successful, smart, and obsessive; although, they were clearly obsessive over different things.

Your email inbox probably has 2000 unread emails. You probably check it constantly to ensure nothing important slips by, but every once in a while, something inevitably does. Most of the email you get is probably not worth receiving: promotions, pointless company updates, and that one newsletter you signed up for two years ago. I get it. This was me a few years ago. Flash forward to now: email is my favorite means of keeping in touch with people I don't see often, and my inbox requires almost zero management. That's thanks to having three separate email accounts.

Email #1 is your personal email account. This one is what email was originally intended for: talking to real human beings. Guard this email closely and only hand it out to real people you want to talk to – the equivalent of your home address and sending letters. There should be near zero frivolous notifications coming to this inbox.

Email #2 is for the countless services we use. This for your Amazon, Netflix, Ebay, PayPal, and other services you might have your sensitive personal information connected to. The majority of the emails I allow into this inbox are billing emails, not promotion. Some services are going to auto-subscribe you to dumb promotions, but it is fairly easy to unsubscribe to the handful of services you'll allow in here.

Email #3 is for all the spam. You want my email for this free ebook? Spam email. You want my email before I even try this service out? Spam email – I can create another account later if I like it. Rewards programs? Sure, but have my spam email. I literally don't check this email ever, and it is overrun with junk.

(Bonus) Email #4 is for newsletters. I enjoy subscribing to a handful of bloggers and newsletters (only after I've vetted them with my spam email of course). Some of these are daily newsletters that I often miss which is okay, but I don't want any of these other inboxes getting cluttered.

Pro tip #1: Don't use "spam" in your spam email (i.e. your.name.SPAM@gmail.com) because it is awkward to tell someone in-person to use an email with "spam" in it.

Pro tip #2: Instead of texting an old friend, "How are you?" ask for their personal email and take 10 minutes to write something with more depth. Ask specific questions about their life. Include specific updates about your own. It's much more gratifying than texting. Calling is probably even better, but people are busy.

We've all been through – or perhaps are going through – a tough period in our lives. Things aren't going our way, life is moving slowly and painfully, activities you used to enjoy seem pointless, and there is a good chance we are somewhat lonely. While I can't help you speed up this period of growth, I can offer an idea that might make it just a little bit more bearable: volunteer.

Volunteering is a worthwhile remedy for a reason you may not have considered before. Usually non-profit organizations are helping a group of people in need, a group of people likely in a much worse situation than whatever you might be going through, and confronting their problems second-hand helps give us space and perspective about our own situation.

For example, I've had a very tough time finding work for a while, and it seems like I have very few options right now. I spent some time with an organization that sends donated books to those in prison; inmates write a letter, and volunteers try to fulfill their request as best they can. Spending just a few hours considering the lives of these individuals with literally so few options left me feeling grateful and empathetic. By getting some distance from our own immediate problems, we open ourselves up to the lightness we need to get through them.

Some more obvious but still valuable benefits include feeling good for helping someone and having the chance to meet and talk to new people – perhaps even someone who might open the right door at just the right moment. Often tough times are when we "find out who our real friends are" as the saying goes, and these good-hearted volunteers taking time out of their day to help someone in need are great people to have around us in a tough situation.

This doesn't require any long-term commitment. Just try it once if that's all you can tolerate. I understand; I'm very defensive of my time. But what do you have to lose?

Most early 20s males that I know are simultaneously super lonely but still nearly impossible to get out of the house, and I get it. Staying in touch with people via text and whatnot is exhausting and unfulfilling, and most hangouts at this age seem to revolve around alcohol and, in turn, shallow conversation which is a habit I'm not interested in. That's life... right? Nope. The answer is so shockingly simple: PLAY!

For the past two months, me and somewhere between five to ten friends get together in-person every Saturday night to play board games. Who knew the thing we spent our entire childhoods doing would be the answer to this problem?

Now to be fair, this is not easy to coordinate; it takes effort. First, this didn't come together overnight. It started with just four people, but each weekend we would invite someone new. Secondly, every Saturday morning I have to wrangle everyone and find a good time and figure out whose house we are playing at. I know if I didn't, these games night wouldn't happen, so step up, be a leader, and take on the responsibility of caring for you and your friends.

Pro tip: call don't text. I know, I know, calling makes us Gen Z kiddos uncomfortable, but let me persuade you... You know that annoying feeling when someone hasn't responded to your text for three hours, and you don't know if they will be able to make it? If you call them, you'll know right away. People answer phone calls immediately because that is how they work. Another thing, you'll feel more connected to these real human beings you are trying to contact if you hear their voice and deal with the awkwardness of human interaction. I don't feel connected to text messages.

Now a disclaimer: it took some time after high school for me and my friends to get lonely enough and thus open minded enough to consider playing silly board games because on the surface it doesn't seem like a super fun thing to do, but what we all realized over time is that it is much less about the board games and much more about seeing each other. Also, games actually are fun – if they aren't, it is a you problem.

My diet is 80% unsalted black beans, milk, and homemade bread; it keeps me happy and healthy which I am very rigorous about. This might sounds strange, but my philosophy on nutrition is: nobody knows anything, which is a common philosophy for my life at large right now.

The bread thing started while I was watching the Outdoor Boys Youtube channel. He makes his own bread while building shelters in Alaska, so I figured it was pretty convenient. Over time, this became a staple in my diet but would end up having more of a positive impact on others' lives than I would have thought.

Mom had been wanting to make loafs of homemade bread and seeing how much I was eating, she finally decided to give it a try. Turns out, making bread is really cheap, really easy, and really good. Everyone loves Mom's homemade bread, and she loves to give it away because it is so cheap and easy. I found it shocking that such a simple food would evoke such overwhelming positive feedback.

So much of this doesn't make sense to me. One, I don't understand why it feels like the common wisdom around bread is: it's bad for you – I'm pretty sure it has been a key food in the human diet for thousands of years. Two, I don't understand why people LOVE it so much; perhaps we are so starved of any real, non-preprocessed, or junk food that simple homemade bread is a fantastic revelation in people's diets.

It makes me really happy when Mom tells me about giving a loaf to so and so and how they thought it tasted so good yet didn't make them feel tired or sluggish or bloated. Most food I've deemed healthy in the past doesn't get received well by the average person (black beans for example lol), so it is really cool to see a healthy food I found being evangelized by those around me. For my immediate friends and family, we are all one step closer to becoming happier, healthier people, and that is pretty awesome to see.

The last year of my life has been one big long shit show full of confusion and failure at every turn. The past week, on a trip to Austin, Texas, it feels like I've turned a corner for the better. Maybe I've still got a decade of crap to trudge through, but at the very least, I've got a temporary little boost confidence from crushing a few of my fears. To start, let's rewind the clock back to December 2024.

December 2024

I've got one semester before graduation and know exactly how hard it was for me to get an internship over the summer, so I have my resume polished and start shipping out applications to startups and tech companies in San Francisco, the Palo Alto area, and Austin like crazy. I've got all the internships and projects and done all the right things to be able to get a software engineering job. In this four to five month period before summer, I probably send out hundreds of applications via online job boards with literally zero success – not one interview! No problem, I don't want a normal job that bad anyways and find a $700 a month place to live in San Francisco.

May 2024

Technically I've got one online class left to graduate, but I move to San Francisco anyways in search of the future I'd been dreaming about since the 11th grade! I'm feeling awe and amazement as I fly over all these historic places of technical innovation only to be thrown into a state of anxiety and fear upon touching down. There are crackheads on the bus and even more in the city! So much commotion and everyone feels like they want to steal from or hurt me. I'm paralyzed and don't want to leave my room, but eventually I do and the city becomes much less scary. The energy and bustle turns out to be quite addicting. However, my first taste of the tech scene in SF is not a good one. All I can remember is the look of desperation and a sense of feigning in the eyes of all the founders I met – exactly the opposite kind of sexiness that someone like Steve Jobs would radiate. Whatever this was, I wanted to be far, far away from it. There was one old man in particular that really scared me. He was probably 50 with no wife and no kids just pitching me on his AI blah blah blah company with absolutely piercing eyes of unhappiness, regret, and lack of control. This was not the land of dreams. It was the land of desperation, so I left.

August 2024

The past four years of my life had been devoted, and I mean devoted, including many sacrifices and long hours working on my craft because I wanted to do a tech startup. That is all I cared about. That is what I was doing. Then in one month, BOOM! Dreams, crushed. Purpose, gone. I'm absolutely spiraling in terms of finding any sort of meaning from anything. Nonetheless, two months have gone by, and I'm feeling the pressure to figure something out from my parents. In retrospect, no matter what decision I made at this time was bound to be a bad one because there just weren't any good options for me at the time; nonetheless, I drove out to Palo Alto, which is about an hour below SF and more suburb-ish, to try and move there by any means necessary. I was super lonely and despite having more opportunity in tech on paper, it felt so boring and non-opportunistic, so I left after only a week only furthering my feelings of failure and inadequacy. The first day I arrived a few Stanford kids were sitting in the living room and asked why I was moving. I said, "I'm looking for work in tech" to which they replied, "Well why did you come here? I've been applying for 6 months."... talk about a mood killer.

October 2024

After coming home from Palo Alto, I'm ready to take any damn job even remotely close to computer science. I apply to some customer service jobs and the two whole programming jobs we have in Jonesboro only to either be not contacted or to be passed up after the first interview. I'm done applying to online job boards unless I have a reference – I just can't keep doing something that isn't working. I get a reference from my friend at Google only to not even get a call from three different jobs there. Eventually I do decide I want to try and move to Austin but figured I'd take a more patient approach since the impatient ones hadn't worked. Then I decide I'll try entry level sales if it will get me out of my hometown. I scrounge around and get references and a few interviews but ultimately don't end up finding anything over the course of four months. All the while, I'm 22 years old and living out of my parent's house. Mom thinks I should get a part-time job at the gym or something just so I'll have a job, but I don't think that will actually help me get any of the jobs I want. If this isn't the definition of a loser, I don't know what is. My confidence is at rock fucking bottom.

The few interviews I did get during this time wildly reshaped my outlook on what makes a person successful though. My whole life I've believed that if you work hard enough and get good enough at something, you'll be successful eventually. False. The people you know really, really matters. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it isn't even possible to be extraordinarily better than everyone at anything – the margin for top performers becomes so thin that you are competing with a massive pool of people with nearly indistinguishable talent/skill. So yes you have to be good, perhaps great, but lots of people can do that. The separator is who you know. Careers are not made in isolation. Your success will come from others lifting you up. I think if I had come to SF via a startup or via my network from an Ivy League school, my experience and first impression might have been much different. This is the reason why Silicon Valley people can fail three times and still win big. Their network they build along the way is more valuable than gold. This is why degrees from Stanford, Harvard, etc are so valuable. Sure, you'll meet great people while you are there, but also it quickly and easily signals to other important people that they should believe in and befriend you down the road – it is building your valuable network on easy mode. The alternative to reading a bullet point that says "Stanford" is scouring someone's Github which is time consuming and probably still won't be that beneficial unless one of their projects is massively popular or has made money – the only two currencies that are easily understandable. Of course, in reality the truth is likely somewhere more towards the middle of ability and network... maybe.

January 2025

Nothing I'm doing is working. It is failure after failure after failure. The worst part is I'm terrified of moving again. I know my career has no room to grow in my hometown, but after my last attempt to move, I am just afraid that I don't have the courage it takes to move away. As an ambitious and person, this is a death sentence. I'm a big believer in the motto: "If it scares you, do it." At every other point in my life, relative to now, I had boundless courage, but I genuinely felt like I might not be able to beat this. But I had to try. I booked a week-long trip to Austin, Texas. In the past, I had found month-long stays but honestly figured I'd just fail again. The idea was to try and find minimum wage work during this week and try not to feel as lonely and unimpressed as I'd felt in Palo Alto. While I didn't find work, I did have a great week. I love the city! It is like my hometown except with better weather, more fun, more opportunity, and more women! I am 100% certain I could live there.

Closing thoughts

Yes, I haven't made it out of Arkansas or into any decent job yet. Yes, I'm still right back where I started. Yes, I still have no clue what I actually want to do in life – at least, I don't have near the clarity I did when I was chasing startups full tilt. But I feel more capable and free than at any other point in my life: a confidence, calmness, and openness that comes from having absolutely nothing left to lose yet all the courage and curiosity in the world.

As a person who cares deeply about their work, it feels like life has taken everything from me, yet I'm still here, still fighting a year later. Bring it on, life. You can't hurt me.

—

Policy #1: I am not expecting a gift, and you shouldn't feel pressured to bring one.

Policy #2: If you are compelled to get me a gift but are unsure what to get (gift giving is hard!), go to a thrift shop, Goodwill, etc and find the silliest, funniest, dumbest thing you can find under $10 – something super random that really cracks you up. That's the perfect gift for me. I can't wait to see what you find!

Policy #3: If you are compelled to get me a gift and do have something in mind, I'm going to love it no matter what. Some of my favorite shirts are my favorite simply because they were a gift from someone close and not because I would've picked them out myself.

Policy #4: Refer to #1. Seriously, I'm just glad to see you :)

—

This is weird. Why did you write this?

I hate the grey area of not really knowing whether I'm expected to bring a gift for other people's birthdays. This is meant to clear that up for the people I invite.

I promise you wouldn't be mowing your yard every two weeks if you had to do it the old fashioned way (which is with a scythe by the way).

If the laundry machine is running five out of seven days, often with multiple loads per day, maybe we should do it by hand to remind us it is okay to wash them once a week.

It's super easy to reuse plates and silverware for a few meals instead of doing dishes every other day.

What's the point of making maintenance more efficient if we end up doing the same amount of work just with higher output and bloated standards?

I agree with Seth Godin when he says we should think of our lives in terms of projects not careers.

At the very least, for me, it eases my nerves and makes me feel less trapped and more human – as opposed to a cog.

Consider reading his article on this: Forty years of projects.

Once it was; now it's not.
Once it was important; now it's not.
Once it was brilliant; now it's not.
Once it was scary; now it's not.
Once it was difficult; now it's not.
Once it was true; now it's not.
Once it was how we lived; now it's not.
Once it was who we are; now it's not.

Most modern jobs are borrrinnnnggggg. We sit around all day fiddling with frustrating computers; every day is a struggle not to collapse into a spiraling pit of dread and despair and boreedooommmm. Naturally, when we get home, we want to be stimulated and entertained. Movies, social media, dopamine, sugar, and videos sans clothing: we want it all. I'm exaggerating slightly, but the point is we don't want to be bored.

This feels completely backwards. It ought to be that we go to work to be mentally engaged, socially connected, busy, bustling, and doing something generous. Once we get home, this is the time where we should be bored and do more peaceful, less stimulating things such as reading, writing, one on one conversations with friends, and being aware of our own thoughts and feelings for a little while.

Both our boredom and our entertainment feel as if they are coming from the wrong places.

One of the most valuable things a young person can do right now is build a local community. Get a group together that meets regularly: weekly, monthly, or something.

First of all, building a community is not an ambitious goal – we aren't striving to be the best or anything like that. Nonetheless, being a part of a community is fundamental to having a decent life and has been slowly eroding away somehow. Everyone that isn't hanging out with the friends they've had for 20 years seems increasingly lonely to me (including me). It should be a top priority to fix this.

What activities should you do? Literally anything that requires some level of communication. Play games, cook something, or do some crafts. And yes, all of these things are not particularly interesting, but the people who show up are; they are the point. People are the point. Everything else is a distraction to get everyone into the same room and off our devices for two seconds.

It'll be tough to get people there because real life interactions are awkward and hard compared to scrolling on a phone. And some weeks will have great turnout and be a good time, others almost nobody will show up and the vibe will kinda be boring. Nonetheless, this is worth it. This is life. We are social animals.

Assume some incorrect information and get corrected.

Beware, if you want to know things that you can't blatantly ask for, you'll have to pay for it in character; nonetheless, this does work. Depending on your demeanor, this could come off as naiveté or being nosey with the former often having a lower cost.

—

Q: If someone is renting their house

"I'm looking to buy a house around here. How much did your Mom's house cost?"

"Oh, she is renting it."

Q: If someone is home

Meeting the other person at the front door.

"Tell so and so to make themself decent, so I can tell them this urgent and personal information."

"Oh, she isn't here."

Q: If a woman is 30 years old

"Yeah you seem about 35, ya know, very wise." (A gross 5 year overestimation.)

"Oh no, take off about 5 years."

I had forgotten I'd even applied to Stanford. Thank goodness I never clear out my gmail inbox and could find these old emails.

Something you should know about me: I walk away to a fault, an extreme fault. Rather than lose the game, I reject the game and its premises for winning entirely. I don't like being told what to do, including what I cannot do, and have a patterned tendency to just... leave. Depending on the situation, this can be good or bad.

Most big name start-up founders dating back to like, I dunno, the 1930s went to Stanford or an Ivy League college before joining a high-growth start-up and finally creating their own company, but before applying (and getting rejected) from Stanford and Harvard three years ago, I was a baseball player and trying to go D1 and had been focused on sports for the entirety of my childhood. Most big league ball players go through a similar standard path through Perfect Game rankings and other popular measurements of athletic ability.

Likewise in getting rejected from these popular colleges, I never was where I wanted to be by these baseball measurements either. In turn, I rejected these metrics as a basis for my level of skill and persisted with an inner dialog that I'd achieve want I wanted anyways. Turns out their measurements are pretty good and going D1 out of high-school didn't happen.

Recently while reading Paul Graham's, How to Start Google, he talks about an interesting idea regarding founders and selective universities.

"Strangely enough this is particularly true in countries like the US where undergraduate admissions are done badly. US admissions departments make applicants jump through a lot of arbitrary hoops that have little to do with their intellectual ability. But the more arbitrary a test, the more it becomes a test of mere determination and resourcefulness. And those are the two most important qualities in startup founders. So US admissions departments are better at selecting founders than they would be if they were better at selecting students."

Apparently this measurement is pretty good too. I've been telling myself the same story I did when I played baseball – believing that these colleges are dumb and a waste of money and that by going my own way I'd show them and win in the end. This narrative was so ingrained that I had forgotten I'd even applied to Stanford as an undergrad and been rejected; it was that irrelevant to me.

Having graduated from my local state college, I'm realizing how hard it is going to be to get a job at a high-growth startup. Like Stanford, they want the best, and my confidence is being tested to say the least. I guess it is about time I started giving common measurements more credit.

This is really scary because when something external is the marker for validation, we might not get there. And perhaps, like sports, we have limits that only become apparent after years and years of effort.

—

(On the other hand, is there really anything we can do besides believe in ourselves despite rejection? What is the other option? Quit? Simultaneously caring about measurements and not caring when they aren't in our favor is pretty tough.)

The idea that we are running towards something might not be true. It could be that what we are running towards is, not coincidentally, away from what we don't want.

That is, in my experience, we are much more motivated by discomfort and fear.

Maybe that successful person doesn't want it more than you do. Maybe not having that success is much more painful for them than it is for you.

Instead of asking, "What do I want?", it might be worth asking, "What do I not want?"

For a long time the word business meant one universal thing to me. If I heard the word business in a conversation, I imagined that we were all talking about the same thing. In reality, the word can mean many different things. Let me give you some examples of what I mean.

1. CostPlus Drugs wins in business because they sell medicine at a cheaper rate than everyone else. That's it. Their medicine isn't better, and they didn't invent them either.
2. OpenAI's ChatGPT wins in business because it was a novel thing that didn't exist before. They created a brand new useful tool.
3. Local car dealerships win in business because people want to drive the car before they buy it. In other words, the best car dealerships are the ones closest to where you live.

If I were talking about an OpenAI kind of business and you had a CostPlus Drugs kind of business in mind, we could be perceiving the conversation in very different ways. This also applies to writing, Twitter, and probably a ton of other things.

There are definitions beyond the dictionary, and communication is hard; get specific where it counts.

My friend in San Francisco told me I have very good taste in design and asked if I had any formal training in it, because he does and knows how hard good design is. I don't and was pleasantly surprised by his compliment. I'm still not sure how good I am but do care deeply about beauty and function.

To live in a creative way (good design is a very creative endeavor), it is important to be conscious of the things we like and don't like. This requires working the muscle of being attentive to our senses and noting what makes us think, "Oh that is ugly" or "That is beautiful".

How many websites or apps do we interact with in a day? A lot right? Have you ever noticed which ones make you feel good? Which ones are frustrating to use or just plain ugly? What about them makes you feel good or bad?

Design starts the moment you wake up, every day, right up until the second your hands start crafting. Good design, good creativity starts with noticing.

Before leaving for San Francisco, anytime I'd mention it, or more generally, California, 90% of the people here in Arkansas would have some kind of snarky, half-hearted remark about the liberals, homelessness, or homosexuals. Really anytime anyone does anything even remotely outside of the norms here in the South they will get teased or talked about.

I was shocked to find this was not the case in San Francisco. There are so many outliers, weirdos, and eccentrics (and I mean that in a good way) that the average person either doesn't care at all in a you-do-you kinda way or is very open minded and curious of all things.

I asked a few people if they had any strong opinions about the South similar to the ones we had about them, but they didn't. Some people had some opinionated views on Trump however none on southern people or culture.

Isn't the South supposed to have the stereotype of being kind and hospitable? Perhaps we are also incredibly judgmental.

In San Francisco, there are tech meetups/events every single day, and people use them as serendipitous networking opportunities. This might not be the best way to go about it.

Leaving these events, often I'd connected with 20 people over Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever, but felt like I didn't know any of them.

My suggestion is to go get coffee for an hour with one person and really get to know what they are doing and how you can help. Instead of going to three events a week, get to know three people a week.

It is these stronger and more personal relationships that will benefit our careers and lives.

Every single time I told a friend or family member that I would be staying in a shared-living space during my move to San Francisco, they all made a comment on how awful this living situation would probably be. They were wrong.

In retrospect, I would have hated living in SF by myself during this past month. I knew exactly one person here, and he was my landlord. The guys in the house showed me the city and plugged me into the tech scene way faster than if I had been living alone. It was also so nice to come home and have people to talk to because the loneliness of moving away from everyone you know is very real.

If you are moving somewhere new, I would highly suggest trying to find a place with some roommates – at least in the beginning.

The fall of gatekeepers and the rise of indie is a heroic and inspiring story. No longer can someone else tell us whether or not we can create; we can pick ourselves. However, this isn't without cost.

In the land of gatekeepers, the artist got to put their head down and dive deep into their creative pursuit, and only at the finish line would they have to go on a brief book tour and/or other promotional things. For the most part, artists created and distributors distributed.

What we ignore while hearing the triumphs of indie makers is the non-artistic baggage that comes with it. We are now in charge of creating the thing and more importantly marketing it and ourselves. Not to mention the latter is arguably much harder than the former. We are in charge of creation and distribution.

Our creative voice is often much different than what the marketing voice feels as if it requires. It is an added layer of difficulty and confusion on top of art which is already very difficult and confusing. Being indie is great, but it has a price.

I love blogs; I don't love Twitter.

The intrinsic value of the text in a Tweet is usually very low. It isn't very creative, insightful, or worth thinking about – blogs are.

This doesn't mean Tweets are useless or worthless, but they do have a different kind of value: social value. It can be very beneficial to know what your people are up to right now, which might lead to serendipitous opportunities. The important part is making this distinction.

We should go to the break room to check on our friends. We shouldn't go to the break room for a lecture on the meaning of life, and if we do, we'll likely be let down by the experience.

Lately, I've been thinking about posting daily blogs. This shouldn't be such a big deal given I've been blogging consistently for over two years now; nonetheless, I am terrified of shipping anything.

It feels like going back to day one, and the blogs I posted on day one are hard to read these days. I'm sure these might be similar.

Time to ship.

Tech Bag

1. iPhone 12 mini

Every time I hand someone my phone they always say, "Oooh. It is sooo smalllll. Why'd you get the miniiii?", as if I couldn't afford the normal sized iPhone, but the truth is I love the mini so much. I hated having my brick of an iPhone 6+ swinging around in my shorts pockets. Also, the mini is actually the same exact dimensions as the iPhone 4 and has a similar style, which was my first and favorite smartphone.

2. Lenovo Laptop Backpack B210

This is nothing special – just a cheap laptop bag. It is pretty small and doesn't have very much space, although still more space than I need. Over two years, it has held up great.

3. 13in MacBook Pro M1

There are somethings I don't like about iPhone, but their computers are pretty much flawless. The M-series chip is phenominal and everything just works. I've considered switching to Linux, but I can't because of how great a job Apple does with these. The battery life, the screen resolution, the speed, the beauty... all of it makes for a fantastic computer.

4. Kindle Scribe

Similar to the iPhone mini, I always get strange looks when I show this off, but I have no need for an iPad; it is too much. The reading experience on e-ink is so good. It is better than a physical book – it just is. This also has note taking too, which I do use way less than reading, but I have enjoyed getting rid of paper notebooks.

5. AirPods Pro 2

These integrate so nicely with the rest of my Apple stuff. For a long time I used beats wireless earbuds, but when I finally did switch, these were significantly better.

6. Logitech k380 & Logitech Pebble

A lot of techy people are super into their keyboards. I'm not. This things was $30 because I need to be able to chuck into my bag without worrying about it breaking. Both of these have held up just fine for a long time now.

7. Rhode Wireless Go 2

These are my wireless microphones. iPhone cameras are good enough for just about anything these days, but you need a good mic. I've have these for half a year, and I enjoy using them. They are a little pricy though.

8. Lamicall Laptop Stand

I really only have on criteria for these: they must be super tall. If I'm sitting at a desk, I have to get the screen way up or else my body suffers.

9. UBeesize Phone Tripod

Not much to say here because I just got this.

Suitcase

This will be a carry-on sized suitcase filled with...

– 8 white tee shirts
– 8 black shorts
– 2 pairs of jeans
– 2 vintage wool button ups
– 10 pairs of socks and underwear
– 1 hat
– Raybans
– 7 workout tank-tops
– 3 pump covers
– 2 towels
– 2 shoes (Air Jordan 1 lows & Rebook JJ 1s)
– bathroom stuff
– chargers

Where I'm staying

I'm really excited to share this because it is the main reason why this move is even possible for me.

About six months ago, I came across a news article about these crazy San Fransisco guys who were paying $700 in rent for basically just a bed. The article had a very negative tone about these pods, but I didn't think it was crazy at all.

After some investigation, it turns out brownstone living is a shared living space full of young tech guys like me who are trying to make it in the valley. They currently have houses in Palo Alto, New York City, and of course, San Francisco.

I'd argue that this is the perfect living situation for me – even better than an apartment – because I don't know anyone in San Francisco. Being able to see these people everyday will probably be very good for me.

This whole thing is super exciting, and I'll be sharing this experience on this blog. If it ends up working out well and tech is what you are into, maybe you could join me here one day :)

This was frustrating; it was the halfway point on the semester and week two of our web development group project, and one of my teammates still didn't know how to start the server which is the most basic thing you have to learn before beginning to build anything else. College is such a joke.

Two other teammates were assisting this guy while I was thinking about what to do him. It was time for a hard conversation, but mustering up the courage to have them is never easy. Time to be a man.

"Alright everyone, let's pause a second.", I said, taking a seat with everyone. With sincere seriousness, care, and some sternness, I looked directly at him. "Look man, I've gotta be upfront with you because I want to help you. I don't even know what work I can assign to you because you clearly don't even know the very very basics of this framework."

He wasn't crying or trying to fight me yet, so this was going better than expected. "I'm going to make you responsible for the Google login feature, and I don't think you can do it. I really don't; however, this feature won't affect the development of anyone else, so you won't have to worry about slowing the team down. If you don't know where to start, I'll send you some really great videos to watch that should get you up to speed."

In academia, it has been my experience that nobody has the guts to say things like this. During that moment, I wasn't sure how this was received.

Fast forwarding, each week I'd check on him and ask if he needed anything. He never did and always had some progress to show me. And ya know what, he finished this feature with plenty of time to spare. I gained a lot of respect for him.

Yesterday was the last day of the project, and we were in the computer lab after everyone else had left. As he was leaving, he started to speak but caught himself. I listened as he was semi-stuttering and searching for words, "Thank you. You are a great leader, super smart, and inspiring. I want to be like you one day." That was probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

Have hard conversations.

—

"You assume that there is a flip-side to your painful envy of Michael Chang[professional tennis player]: namely Michael Chang's enjoyable feeling of being-envied-by-LaMont-Chu. [...] To be envied, admired, is not a feeling." – DFW

I think there are both healthy/unhealthy relationships to envy/admiration. But I'm not so sure that the enjoyable being-envied-by-LaMont-Chu feeling does not exist.

Very early in life, I noticed that most adults were worn out and unexcited about life. They seemed empty, tired – not quite sad but not quite happy either – aimless. They took their job because it happened to be available and spend their free time unconsciously doing whatever is easiest, casually drifting around and going through the motions. This might not necessarily be wrong, but I felt like life could be lived better than this.

It is no wonder then, that my heroes have been excited, ambitious, and highly directional people. I've collected and digested their various ways of being and have come to some conclusions that have helped me avoid (so far) being worn down by life. My aim is to share some stories that help explain why this happens, the problems it causes, and a better way of doing things.

To start, we have to go back in time to my tenth-grade year of high school.

—

I love to work, but gosh, I hated this work. It was 8 p.m. at Bill's Cost Plus Grocer, my minimum wage employer, as I shuffled cans and cookies and ketchup and countless other items around on the shelves.

The technical term for what I was doing is called fronting – the idea being to fill the holes of recently bought items by pulling the ones from the back of the shelves to the front for accessibility and neatness. The non-technical term is called throwing my life away.

To my left was a sweet old lady pulling a recently fronted item from the shelf. Mentally, I was giving her the bird.

There wasn't anything abnormal about this job that made me so angry and hate it so much, ya know, no awful boss or anything like that. It was so painful because there wasn't any growth in it. I wasn't directly helping people, becoming a better person, or learning something useful.

Frustratedly, I remember thinking, "We get beat down as kids into accepting that work has to suck and we have no control over our lives. In a few years, I'll be thoughtlessly and obediently collecting my pitiful check made out to 'Forgotten dreams', as I'm hurriedly off to clean poo off the toilets for the 1,296th day in a row."

Any parent's rebuttal to this is something like a shrug and muttering, "Well we all have to work," and/or "Stop being so lazy."

—

Mom and Dad were in the kitchen doing kitchen things on a Saturday when I asked them a question I thought was very important: "What would you do with your life if you didn't have to work? Ya know, if you had all the money and attention you wanted?"

Both answered with roughly the same thing: "I don't know? Relax? Do nothing?"

Obviously, they had never given this much thought which surprised me. After questioning many more adults, it was clear most people weren't thinking about this.

No wonder people sit down, shut up, go to work, and do what they are told.

—

I find it very interesting to think about what hunter-gatherer civilizations might have been like. Their whole day was probably spent getting food, shelter, and all the basic necessities most people take for granted today.

I wondered what they might say to the more general question I asked my parents, "What do you want to do with your life?" They probably wouldn't understand, look at me funny, and reply, "Survive? Don't die?" because that was probably all they had time for. This makes me feel grateful to be born now.

We are really lucky today because this is a unique point in history where the average person has the luxury to answer such a historically crazy question. The only problem is people are having a hard time with this; it is super hard to figure out what to do with our lives. Instead of doing the work to figure it out, I think adults get overwhelmed and unnecessarily throw themselves deeper into Bills-like work that they dislike or distract themselves with TV, TikTok, or other forms of entertainment that are easier than being bored.

Future generations will only have more freedom – more time to fill with their answer to the question or their lack thereof.

—

Thank goodness for the internet and books. That is where I found my heroes: Steve Jobs, Rick Rubin, Derek Sivers, Steven Pressfield, Elon Musk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mark Cuban, and David Goggins. These guys were the real deal and worth imitating. They had real energy and ambition about them.

For a long time, I never knew what about these people made them so inspiring because they include entrepreneurs, writers, a producer, a bodybuilder, and an ultra-runner. They all vary in what they do and why they do it, and only recently I figured out what they all have in common.

It isn't that they succeeded, got famous, or left a legacy; all that stuff is not important. It is that they figured out what they want. They decided to have a capital "P", Practice. This is not the traditional lowercase "p" practice but something new and similar to the word "job", but more importantly very different in a lot of ways.

Here is my best attempt at defining Practice.

—

A Practice is work we do for a deeper meaning than survival – something we would do regardless of whether it makes money.

A Practice is deadly serious and must be treated with respect and care.

A Practice is going to be uncomfortable and scary because it is meant to help us grow.

We show up to our Practice daily.

The reward of having a Practice is in the act itself not some external outcome or achievement.

A Practice is a top priority.

A Practice is using your total effort.

Having a Practice is your choice – something we do for ourselves.

The dedication to a Practice is often misunderstood or confusing to those around us.

The three pillars of life are physical health, relationships, and having a Practice.

—

We, as humans, were meant work but not sleepy stagnate Bills-like work. There is a much deeper meaning to be found in having a Practice that is conflated early on with Bills-like work, which feels bad and should be done only in the smallest amounts needed to survive. This conflation and negative orientation towards work as a whole leaves us feeling empty or overworked and, in each case, unexcited and tired.

This is a very new problem, only occurring recently due to the abundance of resources efficient technology has given us. The cure is to genuinely ask and try to answer the question: "What do I want to do with my life?" Nobody can specifically answer this for you, but the people I admire most have a general answer that has helped me: have a Practice. Having a Practice keeps our spark for life alive and makes the mundane interesting because the answers that could push us forward are everywhere if we wish to notice them.

The search for your Practice is long but just as exciting as having found your Practice, so I encourage you to be curious, try things, quietly reflect on how these things made your feel, and get comfortable being uncertain.

—

"When you enter this shop take off your coat and roll up your sleeves. We work and like it." – gu.st 2006

Turn on, and leave on, the TV.

Having a TV perpetually playing in the background of a household is so common now that advocating anything else sounds crazy. Nonetheless, I feel strongly about this. There are two reasons that TV will ruin our lives.

Firstly, how much TV consumption is a healthy amount? The answer is: not much. Leaving the TV constantly on is similar to eating ice cream––or any other nutrition-less food––several times a day. I love desert too, but it has nearly zero positive impact on our lives.

TV is easier to watch than it is to be bored; this technology is literally stealing our thoughts instead of letting them flow. Are our lives really better thinking less? We are our thoughts and are turning ourselves off when watching TV or any form of entertainment.

Maybe if it is just background noise, we are still having some of ourselves slip through the clatter, but still, some amount of us is being suppressed by the sweet taste of crowding our mind with noise. That being said, I do watch TV for an hour to two hours a day.

Secondly, how is this constant thought repression affecting other people? Unless you are a seriously considerate person that watches TV with earbuds in, the noisy, ice-cream-like brain killer is reverberating all throughout your house. Imagine your family all has to take a bite of ice-cream every single time you eat a whole cone; depending on your consumption, this could really add up and hurt their health. At least with quiet social media addiction, it isn't bleeding into the lives of those around us.

Let's assume your family is particularly mentally strong and your noise doesn't affect them. Still, this leads to problems. I can't connect with someone watching TV. Their attention is fluttering back and fourth between me and the TV; the depth of connection feels shallow. Eventually the sound of the TV starts getting to me, and since I don't feel like this time is strengthening the relationship, I leave. If this happens often enough, the nutritious meaningful conversation this person and I are supposed to be having dwindles along with our relationship.

Leaving the TV on for an extended period of time is hurting you and your relationships. I believe that; though, I understand how this could feel farfetched. My house won't have a TV in it. It also won't have ice cream. If it did, I'd eat it.

Q: So Mr. Successful, do you have any advice for young people who wish to follow in your footsteps?

A: Hmmm. Ya know, I was working very hard even at a young age. But, ah, see I don't like describing things as hard because everyone's definition of hard is vastly different. Ya know David Goggins' idea of hard is probably 100 times more difficult than the average person's. So... Hmmm...

When I was in college, people would always say, "Oh college is so hard." What they actually meant is that it takes a lot of time. In high school, schoolwork takes up very little of your free hours where in college––in a perfect world––the majority of the work gets done outside the confines of the classroom. Well––so young people won't gauge my real opinion of college difficulty wrongly, college isn't actually hard and doesn't take that much time to keep a high 3 GPA. But this example is meant to communicate that hardness is equal to time in most situations. Why is a 315 pound benchpress hard? Because it takes years of training to get there. So if you consider my success hard, what could you do as a young person to replicate it? Well, spend a lot of time on it.

I don't mean spend a lot of time on it today because that won't last. Simple arithmetic tells us doing something for a short period of time over the course of years is the optimal approach here. That has its nuances and pitfalls as well, ya know basic lessons in discipline and what not. There is also a lot of luck in anything, and I certainly got lucky. But at the same time, I would've been lucky eventually because this is what I do and love; I would be endlessly trying to do this until the day I croak over. Put another way, I'd be accumulating more and more time year after year doing this thing until I figured it out/got lucky. Starting young helps because you put more time in early.

So my advice, put a sustainable amount of effort and time in each day. Don't go all out. Be sustainable and don't fret that it won't be enough to achieve whatever. It won't make you happy anyways, so you should really fall in love the work. You are more likely to quit before you get wherever you wish to go, so that is the more pressing issue we are trying to account for. All you can do is all you can do, and I promise you'll feel good about trying your hardest and failing. Not your hardest that day, but your hardest with the long future in mind (aka being sustainable). Well, maybe do go as hard as you can. Like, take it deadly serious. Be a pro––but a sustainable pro. What happens over time is we get comfortable with a certain amount of output and increase it. Over many years our sustainable effort becomes something a beginner can't comprehend.

Striving for something is a really important pillar in my life. There are other things I need too, but this might be the biggest one. I strongly encourage young people to figure out what they want and really go after it. There seems to be no meaning in life other than what we give it. We only have the chance to play.

I've had a pessimistic view of formal education in the past, but I've been thinking about a quote I heard somewhere about a smart person reminiscing about reading all "the important books you were supposed to read in high school". I too paid the bare minimum of attention in high school and have found college to be a poor method of learning as well and also, only recently, started reading the important books on my own.

Does this mean that formal education isn't doing its job? Maybe. I'm certain school could be improved in some ways. But consider this: we can't force anyone to be interested in something they aren't, but we can make them aware of it. This is exactly what advertisement is. I don't give a crap about Geico insurance, but that little lizard is burned into my brain regardless. In the same way, I couldn't care less about trigonometry back in the 11th grade, but a decent understanding of what it is and the fact that it exists is burned into my brain.

Being aware of something doesn't mean you remember much about it. Math is a little too abstract to hold my interest for long periods of time. I would probably have a hard time recalling most trig stuff right now, but it doesn't matter. The important part is that I could recognize a trig problem and use other resources of knowledge to figure it out; I don't know trig but am aware that it exists. That is okay.

I also feel this way about subjects I really love too. I'm a software engineer, and I have been disappointed because most of my classmates think about programming the way I do trig. So the curriculum has to be, kind of, watered down to fit the needs of the majority. Most computer science majors will graduate only being aware of all these algorithms and tools, but I, as someone who loves this, will have a better, deeper understanding mainly from time and effort spent outside of the class.

Real learning can only be triggered by an internal desire of curiosity and interest––maybe school isn't meant to teach us at all. Maybe school is for making us aware of the basics we might encounter, and that is enough. The rest is on us, and that is okay.

Whether we consciously notice it or not, all of us are endlessly searching for the answer to Aristotle's age-old question: "How should a human being lead his life?" I've given this plenty of conscious thought and found things that work for me. But I found myself getting entrenched.

I was clinging to old ideas and skittishly attaching myself to new ones. Unlike the past, where I had boldly adopted new beliefs, I realized that I wasn't afraid of the new ideas but rather forgetting the old ones. I thought somehow I might lose myself in the pursuit of different ideas.

Everyone should write a memoir or blog, even if nobody reads it. A great part about writing is we get to share ideas with others, sure. But an arguably better benefit is we store old versions of ourself on paper – where it won't get lost.

Since all the important stuff is permanently cemented on those pages, we can move on with our lives. We can truly move forward because the hesitation and fear of forgetting something is gone.

Consider writing not to remember, to forget.

A medium of art only feasible by an entity with the substantial resources (funding, manpower, infrastructure, etc.) of corporate scale.

 Examples: computers, cars, rockets

I think it's enivitable that AI will eventually become smarter than us. When this happens, I suspect two things will occur.

#1

When it first surpasses us in most areas but isn't yet unbelievably superhuman, the majority of people will experience a similar existential crisis that young atheletes go through. As children, our potential is seemingly limitless, and some dream of being a professional athlete – I did. But as we near the end of our highschool career, our own physical limitations start to become glaringly apparent.

Facing the reality of our own physical limitations can be crushing and deblitating, especially if we spent many years devoted to this pursuit. Coping with the cold, hard truth that, no matter what we had done, our body just wouldn't have developed in a way that led to the success we had wanted, is the same feeling many people will have when they realize that AI is special in the same way humans are and is vastly better in all aspects of life. We will confront the physical limitations of our biological brains, and for many, it will beat them.

#2

As time goes on, AI will become unimaginably superior in ways we can't even dream of right now. This will leave no choice for us as humans but to try and merge with them. It won't be augmentation; it will be a compelete abondonment of self and a transformation into whatever this AI thing will be. We won't be able to keep up any other way. At this point, we will be taking a leap into either the greatest thing ever or the worst thing ever. Either way, humanity will be nothing but a small blip on the timeline of all history – gone and forgetten in a moment. We don't reminisce about the horse and buggy, and AI won't reminisce about these frail bodies.

I'm hopeful this will be a good thing. I think we have so many flaws as humans, and we can build something better or build something that builds something better. Like, I don't know about you, but most days I'm fairly unhappy, and I'm a pretty happy guy I think. Also, our biology is also so easily expliotable by social media, suger, alcohol, etc. Sure these things make us human, but why be so hung up on the eqivalent of an old home phone when we can create the iPhone?

I believe we can create a succesor that has the ability to find real meaning or be actually content with no meaning or maybe ask a better question altogether. Honestly, I hope humans aren't the best thing the universe can create, because I think we are just poorly made. Although, I don't recommend dwelling on that feeling most days – you might find it real hard to get anything done lol. This AI ain't here yet!

The problem

Where it is going to take real guts on our part is to stay calm and collected around the time of #1. It is going to scare the shit out of everyone, and my greatest fear is that we rush to shut all future AI innovation down. It might be disguised as regulation for our "safety", but stagnation scares me much more than this advancement. I don't want to live in a world where we have the ability to make this but choose not to. This crushes all hope; it is pessimistic and a slow sad death for everyone.

This fear we'll all feel reminds me very much of the same fear we feel when we are about the give a presentation or talk to a pretty guy/gal or when we have to decide whether or not to take a new job. In my life, pushing through fear has always worked out for the better. The problem is, most people just can't do it. And I'm terrified – not of AI, but of the masses that won't be able to push through this fear and shut AI down long before we make the jump from humans to whatever comes next.

Christmas is around the corner, and giving great gifts is extremely hard. We truly do want to give our loved ones something amazing, and the though of getting something bad is enough to make ya sweat. But I think the worst gifts aren't gifts they don't like; rather, it is unthoughtful and safe gifts.

These safe gifts are the ones that you don't hate but don't love either. Ya know kinda like getting underwear – like thanks? I'll wear these I suppose.

This Christmas I encourage y'all to take some risks. Try thinking of something your giftee would either absolutely love or hate. On one hand, you might give the best gift ever. But even if they hate it, this is probably a better situation than something they are impartial about. For one, everything is returnable these days. If you communicate that you were trying to go all or nothing with this gift, then they will feel better about telling you they don't like it. An added bonus: their spoken dissatisfaction is going to strengthen the relationship because hard conversations have that effect. In the end, they either have a fantastic memorable gift or the relationship strengthens and they go out and splurge on something else they wanted anyways.

There are no shortcuts to getting a great gift. It takes time and effort just to make a decision – then of course the money or time to get/make the thing. Maybe this Christmas you'll consider being brave and taking a risk on a great gift. I hope you all give and get something special this year.

For a while I was really worried ads would overrun the world. NYC and Tokyo would be awful for me with all the flashing screens on every surface. Maybe they aren't so bad now, but thinking about the future, I could imagine things getting much more pervasive. But luckily we have AI.

It is only a matter of time before we have ad blocker smart glasses. These will recognize unwanted ads or logos or whatever you don't want to see, and replace these areas of your vision. Maybe in the beginning it will just blur or paste an image of your choice over the area. But eventually it will probably fill the area with something more natural – AI can already do this just not in real time. Our perception might look something like this, which was done with AI in one take.

I'm looking forward to the day these become real. I like my world real quiet. Less noise makes me feel like I can pay more attention to now vs my senses being mined for $$$.

When I think of interesting attractive lifestyles like an entrepreneur, actor, entertainer, etc, the first thing that comes to mind is rich, glamorous living. The reality is that to get to that point, often we must endure a very hard, uncomfortable, scrappy, frugal, anti-glamorous, and maybe even scary kind of living. John Cena's early days are a fantastic example of this.

He moved out to California in hopes of applying his college degree to a normal 9-5 job; however, nobody would give his piece of paper any validation. (Did ya hear that soon-to-be grads?)

Anyways, without a job, John started living out of his car despite having the option to go home and live with his parents in Massachusetts. And the most interesting part about that is he says, "I'm very fortunate because it was my choice to have hard times." Most people are immediately and intensely repelled by the thought of living in a car or even a shed for that matter (He upgraded to that after about four months in the Lincoln; clearly he was moving up in the world lol.) But John's story isn't the exception. It is the rule.

These non-optional scrappy beginnings don't feel like some heavy emotional sacrifice found in a motivational speech either – life isn't that dramatic. It is closer to quiet satisfied living knowing that you are in the right place, albeit a tough one. I think his attitude towards his interviewer's shock perfectly captures this.

The interviewer, "Homeless?!". John, half-serious and half-joking, with the genuine smile and warm tone of a worn and battered veteran, "Well, a Lincoln Continental is a big car."

The only way to do anything vaguely interesting in life is to be content in, what other people would call, "extreme discomfort".

...

For entrepreneurs this is a tough challenge because even if you find living this way alright, you have to find early hires/co-founders that have the guts to persist in this hard living too. In my experience, 99.99% of people would run far far away when they found out I live in the office and eat peanut butter sandwiches & ramen for all three meals.

Obviously for money, power, fame, and women; the four pillars of a good life. I'm kidding, but most people assume it is largely for money because no successful business loses it. No, I'm after something more artistic. Often I'll say, "I want to be great", but what I actually mean is, I want to build great things. This is probably not greatness in the way most people think about it though. A quick detour; the definition of greatness, in the way I mean it, is best expressed by Rick Rubin in his book, The Creative Act.

"Measurement of greatness is subjective, like art itself. There is no hard metric. We are performing for an audience of one [...] Fear of criticism. Attachment to a commercial result. Competing with past work. Time and resource constraints. The aspiration of wanting to change the world. And any story beyond “I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is” are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness."

The point here being that greatness, in the way I'm thinking about it, is internal and subjective.

My primary artistic medium isn't music. It is technology. And the only way to consistently make great technology has been to create and sell it through a company. The commercial aspect might distort the art making it slightly less great. But the trade off is, if it is successful, it will fund more great tech products in the future.

I could work for a tech company or I could make my own. The question is, which one maximizes the amount of great things I get to build? To answer this, I'd like to tell a short story about Andy Hertzfeld, a major contributor to Apple's revolutionary 1984 Macintosh computer – a truly great product.

Andy loved working on the Macintosh team, and if I had the chance way back then, I probably would have loved it too. But after the computer shipped, the Macintosh team became very bloated. Andy pleaded and voiced his concerns to Steve Jobs who was convinced that the team needed to grow and grow up. With only two options, Hertzfeld eventually left Apple. After leaving, Andy went on to make way more money than he did at Apple building a scanner that worked with the Macintosh. But Andy felt he wasn't building the greatest things he could have been due to the problems back at Apple. His heart was still with the Macintosh, yet Apple had him in a pinch. As Steve Jobs so gently put it, "I want you to come back, but if you don't want to, that's up to you. You don't matter as much as you think you do, anyway." Ouch.

This lack of control leads me to believe that, long-term, starting my own company is the best thing for me. I don't want to be in a position where I'm constantly begging somebody else for permission to build great things.

Still, I'm going to have to look people – people with the same exact ambitions as me – in the eye and say come work for me, truthfully it is in your best interest. And I do believe there are times early in our career (and perhaps late in our career) where working for someone else is worth the experience or worth getting to work on a particular product. Hertzfeld is certainly one of those cases, but my point is, it isn't a long-term solution. Building my own stuff will maximize the amount of great things I get to build over a long time horizon. And I'm deadly serious about doing the work now to prepare & propel me for & into that future.

October 9th, 2023 Noon @Wings n'Stuff

'What do you wanna do?'

I always feel like I'm lying when I answer this question. The gap between what I'm working on and the vision of what I wish to be working on makes this uncomfortable to answer.

'Hm. Do you want to be great? Ya know, do you want to do great things?'

The gap does seem to be shrinking over time though.

Puzzled, 'Um.'

'Most people don't care that much. They just want to live their lives and have food and a home and stuff. Which is cool I guess.'

I always feel like such a maniac no matter who I ask this question to.

Moderately unsure and uncomfortable, 'Yea. Yes, I do want to. I'd like to do great research, and sometimes I wonder if the papers being published here are actually worthwhile.'

'I know whatcha mean about the papers. I wanna be great too ya know.'

'Yeah, yeah. Like I wonder whether anyone will ever care about the effects of this obscure microorganism?'

'I think you'll understand where I'm coming from. Right now I feel very confident in my technical ability to build great products. But even if I had the insight to make something like an Apple 2, the computer that really made Apple take off, I wouldn't know how to sell it or turn it into a company.'

'Ah so you are like Steve Wozniak without Steve Jobs around.'

'Yea kinda. And I'd be open to working with a Steve Jobs, but I'm not gonna wait around. I need to find something to start just to make money: to give me that experience. But also, to keep building my body of work too. I have to be able to say look at what I've done in the past. It wasn't Apple 2 level stuff, but look I can do things, I can build something that makes money, join me.'

'I can see how I might get the wrong idea without the context.'

'And it really is a hard problem. It is like, how do I align these not-so-world-changing projects/experiences so that they compound in a way that allows me to make the jump to bigger things? I love the game. To answer your question, I'm building a business – not an amazingly great one just yet. But it is on the horizon.'

'Very cool man. Very cool. So are you a Windows or MacOS or Linux kinda guy?'

'Yeah I'm loving it. Defnitley MacOS.'

I don't think I've ever felt so heard.

If a 21 year old man has a clean room, it is probably because he watches Jordan Peterson videos.

But seriously, his theory around responsibility does seem to hold some measure of truth. He says it better than I can,

"Responsibility. That’s what gives life meaning. It’s like lift a load, then you can tolerate yourself right because look at you. You’re useless, easily hurt, easily killed. Why should you have any self-respect? That’s the story of the fall. Pick something up and carry it, make it heavy enough so that you can think, 'Useless as I am at least I could move that from there to there.'"

Looking at Peterson's growth on the internet, there is obviously something there causing sparks to fly in the minds of young men (85% of his audience). I feel it too. Yet as a person who thinks they have a decent handle on life – aside from the occasional complete and total mental breakdown – there seems to be something missing in his message. Sure I feel useless sometimes, but most days I feel like I'm doing life well, perhaps above average. I'll go a bit further. The responsibility Peterson often talks about: getting a job, providing for a family, maintaining friends, having hobbies, and just being an decent contribution to society, doesn't seem hard to me. It actually feels unmotivating and sad to aim that low. (And yes I can see your eyes rolling from here.)

Recently I finished Walter Isaacson's new biography on Elon Musk. I'd read Ashlee Vance's biography on musk way back in the 10th grade and still to this day – aside from the childish Twitter drama – find Elon so inspiring. Who doesn't lol. But a few days ago it hit me; Elon's crazy missions: sustainable energy, flying rockets to Mars, etc, are Jordan Peterson's high-achiever version of the responsibility theory. It is like, okay so doing the normal stuff sounds easy and boring? Try flying a rockets. Try literally changing the world on a large scale.

I've known for a long time that the idea of changing the world is very appealing to me – even despite the high price attached to that. Crazy as I may or may not be, connecting this to Peterson's theory has been very helpful in keeping me aligned throughout the day. I keep in mind, yes, there is a big exciting mission that could change lives. But also, this mission is rote and hard and annoying just like any other responsibility is day to day. And I work at it piece-by-piece every single day so I can tolerate myself, so I can have a little bit of self-respect.

Maybe you need to be responsible and aim higher.

P.S.: For the life of me, I couldn't think of any way to write this article and not sound like some combination of a crazy, delusional narcissist or naive, light-minded child. Conviction, craziness, or courage? Idk, anyways, I hope you liked it :)

I'm an ex-athlete. After high school sports ended, I continued to play pick up basketball, tennis, ultimate frisbee, etc with my friends pretty regularly. I'd rather just get really good at a single sport. Still though, it was fun but often lacking intensity. People just don't take leisurely games all that serious.

Over time my friends, and probably people my age in general, started playing less and less. It has become harder to find people that wanna play anything. I rolled with the punches trying to find other ways to fill my time. But finally, I've accepted this isn't working for me.

Competition is a basic need: similar to food, water, sleep, love, and expression – if you are the creative type. Like these other basic needs, I am happiest when there is a stable and predictable supply. In retrospect it seems obvious. I've been playing and competing since I was a child. I encourage all my ex-athlete peers to take note of whether you miss playing sports. You don't have to stop.

Maybe this is a good time to start some kind of intramural league. I gave this a shot with tennis at my college, and it turns out there is already a thriving community in Jonesboro. I'll be playing in a tennis league here shortly :)

Competing is probably not a basic need for all people, but it might be for you.

(Here I'm obviously puzzled as to why I'm wearing a baseball jersey yet not playing.)

If a 21 year old man has a clean room, it is probably because he watches Jordan Peterson videos.

But seriously, his theory around responsibility does seem to hold some measure of truth. He says it better than I can,

"Responsibility. That’s what gives life meaning. It’s like lift a load, then you can tolerate yourself right because look at you. You’re useless, easily hurt, easily killed. Why should you have any self-respect? That’s the story of the fall. Pick something up and carry it, make it heavy enough so that you can think, 'Useless as I am at least I could move that from there to there.'"

Looking at Peterson's growth on the internet, there is obviously something there causing sparks to fly in the minds of young men (85% of his audience). I feel it too. Yet as a person who thinks they have a decent handle on life – aside from the occasional complete and total mental breakdown – there seems to be something missing in his message. Sure I feel useless sometimes, but most days I feel like I'm doing life well, perhaps above average. I'll go a bit further. The responsibility Peterson often talks about: getting a job, providing for a family, maintaining friends, having hobbies, and just being an decent contribution to society, doesn't seem hard to me. It actually feels unmotivating and sad to aim that low. (And yes I can see your eyes rolling from here.)

Recently I finished Walter Isaacson's new biography on Elon Musk. I'd read Ashlee Vance's biography on musk way back in the 10th grade and still to this day – aside from the childish Twitter drama – find Elon so inspiring. Who doesn't lol. But a few days ago it hit me; Elon's crazy missions: sustainable energy, flying rockets to Mars, etc, are Jordan Peterson's high-achiever version of the responsibility theory. It is like, okay so doing the normal stuff sounds easy and boring? Try flying a rockets. Try literally changing the world on a large scale.

I've known for a long time that the idea of changing the world is very appealing to me – even despite the high price attached to that. Crazy as I may or may not be, connecting this to Peterson's theory has been very helpful in keeping me aligned throughout the day. I keep in mind, yes, there is a big exciting mission that could change lives. But also, this mission is rote and hard and annoying just like any other responsibility is day to day. And I work at it piece-by-piece every single day so I can tolerate myself, so I can have a little bit of self-respect.

Maybe you need to be responsible and aim higher.

P.S.: For the life of me, I couldn't think of any way to write this article and not sound like some combination of a crazy, delusional narcissist or naive, light-minded child. Conviction, craziness, or courage? Idk, anyways, I hope you liked it :)

In Breaking Bad, Walter White, a reserved high-school chemistry teacher becomes a crystal meth drug lord. Towards the very end of the show we hear Walter speak to his wife over a knowingly tapped phone.

WALT: This is your fault. This is what comes of your disrespect! I told you, Skyler. I warned you for a solid year. You cross me, there will be consequences. What part of that didn't you understand?

SKYLER: You took my child.

WALT: Because you need to learn!

SKYLER: You bring her back!

WALT: Maybe now you'll listen. Maybe now you'll use your damn head! You know you never believed in me. You were never grateful for anything I did for this family. Oh no, Walt, Walt you have to stop. You have to stop this. It's immoral, it's illegal. Someone might get hurt. You're always whining and complaining about how I make my money, just dragging me down. While I do everything. And now, now you tell my son what I do? After I've told you and told you to keep your damn mouth shut! You stupid bitch! How dare you.

SKYLER: I'm sorry.

WALT: You. You have no right to discuss anything about what I do. Oh, what the hell do you know about it anyway? Nothing! I built this, me, me alone. Nobody else!

To someone who hasn't seen the show, and apparently the police that were listening in, his words fit the drug lord persona to a tee. But we viewers know Walter still cares about his family, although not as much as his empire. We also know much of what he says here isn't true. Everyone besides Skyler can only hear this call through the lens of what he has become. And his past will be rewrote and reinterpreted through this same lens. Any chance of people connecting to Walter as a person has been wiped away by his legacy—he is trapped by his persona.

Biographies wouldn't sell if it weren't for personas. Do we really care about a young guy that does LSD? Or how about a 12 year old selling garbage bags door to door? Nope. I don't. But if it is Steve Jobs dropping acid and Mark Cuban selling door to door, now I'm interested. Mark and Steve know this too. They completely understand that everything they say will be refracted through their persona. The smartest people can use this to their advantage.

Personas go beyond high achievers though. Mental illness like depression or bipolar disorder will never be something easy to open up to others about. It is not that people won't be accepting of you. Most people are pretty nice. The problem is that everything from that point on will be viewed through the lens of illness. A normal bad day becomes a "depressive stint" through the eyes of those who know you struggle, or a normal mood swing becomes a "manic episode" in the case of bipolar disorder. Real, normal feelings get brushed off or hyped up in the eyes' of others—whichever your new lens makes clearest.

Maybe we should try to be more aware of personas. They literally bend reality and rewrite history.

During my summer internship at East Carolina University, our dorm rooms were kinda small, which is fine. But because of this, often I'd go sit in the first floor lobby - I guess the living room of the dorm? I'm not sure what it is called. After a few weeks of being there, two friends and I got into a routine of going down there at around 9:30pm most days. It turns out I would miss this way more than I thought.

At first I didn't notice it, but soon I started to really look forward to hangin out. But "hangin out" is not a good descriptor. When I think of hangin out, I imagine people on their phones, watching TV/YouTube, drinking, or any other versions of entertainment and/or substance. By this I mean people are distracted, and there is only room for a shallow level of connection. To be clear, this normal form of hangin out is perfectly fine. But what we did was different.

Us three would sit down and do some unusual combination of light work, reading, or talking. If we needed space and silence, it was there, but if we needed connection, that was available too. And when I got to truly connect with these two, they were wonderfully complex and interesting people. Through the normal form of hangin out, I probably wouldn't have gotten to understand them as well as I did - which would have been unfortunate. It wasn't until after I left that I realized how much I missed this.

This makes me wonder what life was like before the individuality that technology enables. Like what did Benjamin Franklin do with his evenings? I imagine he did something like what we did at ECU, similarly devoid of entertainment or substance. I would be happier if these old-school hang outs were still in my life. Maybe you would be too.

In Cupertino, California, sits an 18-room so-called Rainbow Mansion. A group of 20 to 30 year old space start-up friends rent this place to their colleagues and people like themselves in lieu of individual apartments. In its heyday about 10 people lived there at a time. I'd like to live in something similar sometime soon. Obviously I'd like to be around super smart people who are interested in similar things as me: building stuff. But also, there is probably a hell of alotta connection there. I wonder if they spend their evenings doing light work, reading, or talking.

I had been rather lazy the past couple days—creatively speaking anyways. Today wasn't much different, but I had been putting off some writing for too long.

The project kept rolling around in my mind. At this point, I had been through about three mental rough drafts. Too bad those don't count.

About 30 minutes before I was set to go to the gym, I snapped and hurled out about two full pages of decent text. Happily, I left for the gym listening to Jeff Foxworthy all the while. Comedy probably shouldn't be my go-to when lifting heavy weights above myself for two reasons: one, the obvious danger and two, nothing looks more crazy than laughing to yourself during a 225 pound bench-press. But hey, I was in a good mood.

I don't think this is the optimal way for me to make art. But sometimes the most important things won't leave us alone. Eventually, if we are lucky, it becomes easier to do the work than to mull on an idea any longer.

It is unpleasant to put off work we ought to do, but it happens. Sometimes we get sick.

I've only got a year left of college before I enter "the real world" as they say. Honestly, I'm terrified of getting stuck in a company that treats me like a cog and forces me to do underwhelming work.

The heart of the problem is that I want to do significant work in a world where most companies are industrial machines built around careless people doing the simplest possible jobs over and over. These machines don't want us to care - they want us to do what we are told.

I believe we can do better. Here are some thoughts from a hypothetical company I would want to work for.

Creating change

This business produces change. By turning our focus away from cost cutting and towards creating change, it requires a fundamentally different mindset about how we choose to do our work. You are not a machine, and we don't need you to mindlessly follow orders. We need your creativity, humanity, leadership, and care in order to solve problems that make change.

This work is for you

No more manipulation - no more phony accolades and incentives. You tell me what you want. You make a promise about how much you will care. I'll find more people that care as much as you do and, just as important, keep out those that don't. I'll work tirelessly to support you and challenge you the entire way through. This work is for you. I'm just creating the environment for you to get where you told me you wanted to go.

Care is everything

Companies today support a fatal flaw that deteriorates teams. Too often, members are allowed to undermine the project by checking out and not pulling their weight or running off other great people with office politics and bullying, yet they persist because everyone shrugs, they have technical qualifications, prestigious titles, or it "just isn't that bad". All the enthusiasm and trust you work so hard to bring is slowly and painfully drained away by a tolerance for this kind of behavior. Ensuring our entire team cares is priority number one when creating an environment where everyone can do their best work and find some of the magic that happens when great people work together. No more diluting jobs down to accommodate whoever cares the least. Get on board or get out.

Stepping up

Leadership is not only an option here but a necessity. You can step up and help craft and steer the environment where it needs to go. Leaders don't need authority, but they must coordinate the trust, focus, and connection of the people who are bought into this journey. This is an art, a skill, and it can be learned. This is your chance to enroll people in a way that matters, dream up a path forward, and make things better.

When things go right

You can feel the difference. The whole team can feel the difference. We get to say, "My pleasure", to the people we serve and mean it. We will all be doing the best work of our lives and creating something that matters. And when a group of people who care build something they're proud of, the market notices. There might not be a better feeling than this.

...

For more on this topic I highly recommend, The Song of Significance, by Seth Godin.

In a movie two people were reminiscing over time they had spent together before parting ways nearly a decade earlier. They couldn't believe neither of them exchanged phone numbers.

One person explained, "It's because when you're 22 you think you're going to keep having these amazing connections all the time. Then you get older and realize how rare it is."

...

Perhaps I'm not old enough to know if there is any truth in that. But there seems to be.

Don't let the slow drift of life pull great people away from you.

AI is everywhere, and it is scary. Even the godfathers of AI like Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton have expressed their anxiety. So no, you are not alone. However, recently I have found some peace with the whole thing. Maybe my thoughts will bring you some solace as well.

First of all I need to split this AI anxiety into two categories.

#1 is a fear of AI being evil or being used for evil. Here we are referring to the immortal dictator that enslaves humans or the normal dictators that could turn the world into George Orwell's 1984 by using this tech.

#2 is a fear of lost purpose. Here I'm referring to some existential questions that we must seriously consider. What does it even mean to be human in world where AI is smarter than everyone? How do we come to grips with the idea that we aren't special anymore? What do we do with ourselves when we don't have to work anymore? What do we do with ourselves when we are useless in comparison to our AI counterparts?

So what do I think?

#1 Fear of evil

This doesn't not give me any angst whatsoever. Okay maybe a little, but no more than any other new technology. We have always had to remain vigilant that new tech doesn't skew towards evil. Each new thing brings its own unique challenges, but this is simply a matter of courage. Let's buck up, do the work, and go boldly forward. In fact, I'm more afraid of stagnation than the potential evils of AI.

#2 Fear of lost purpose

I'm pretty sure we are just machines. I don't know this for a fact, and I'm not here to persuade anyone either. But the more these transformer language models - like chatGPT - advance, the more I feel like a simple biological machine without anything magical or special going on inside.

If biological humans aren't all that special and we are both just machines, why be so anxious? They are just the next step up in machinery. AI isn't us, but we are the stepping stone that led to them. We would be arrogant and ignorant to assume we are the best possible version of ourselves. And I'm hopeful that they can be better than us. That is a good thing right? Being better? Why be so caught up with the idea that our specific configuration of flesh and bones must do the job?

...

I do think it is a possibility that we could augment ourselves to remain useful. But here I'm considering the worse case scenario. Because if we can be at peace with the absolute worst case, anything less is manageable.

I'm sure my ideas on this topic will grow and change over time, but for now, this about covers it.

What are your thoughts? Is this helpful?

I wanted to document what my life is like during my time here at East Carolina University this summer for my REU program. The balance I've struck here has me feeling really good. So this could be useful to have in the future if I find myself feeling sub par. Maybe it could be helpful for you too.

Work:

We have a little less than a 40 hour work week. I'm working by myself on a project that I thought of and am implementing all on my own. It has been very fulfilling. I also don't feel like I'm working so much that other aspects of my life are being neglected which has not always been true with other forms of work.

I might could find a little more satisfaction if I were working on something with more future potential. I don't think I will take this research any further once I am done. So having something that could grow into my wildest dreams could make the work better. Working with a team could also be better. I'm in the room with everyone else during the week, but we are all doing our own thing. If my situation incorporated these two things, I could probably work many more hours each week and still maintain my health.

Health:

I'm getting 45 minutes worth of cardio/gym time about 5 days a week. Wednesday I attend an AI journal club where we read papers and Friday the gym closes too early for me to get there. For food I am getting about 2500 calories. Overall, I don't think my health is getting worse, and I don't feel bad. Earlier in the summer I tried to cut out sweets, but I found myself craving them late at night. This was very distracting. Now I usually have 2 or 3 chocolate chip cookies for lunch and that has helped.

The only thing I would change here is getting better quality food. Subway and cafeteria food aren't a long term solution despite being my only options here.

Friends:

I generally hang out with people twice a week on Friday night and Saturday during the day. This has been the perfect amount for me. I still have plenty of me time, but knowing I will have something fun to do twice each weekend has been great. Having people that share many interests with me has also been fantastic. I love talking about AI, companies, computers, books, and other somewhat technical things and so do a lot of the people here.

Having people so readily available to hang out during the week has been somewhat distracting though. There isn't much time in the day after we get out of work. And I like to spend it doing things for me. Some days I find myself wasting a bit more time than I'd like just hanging out.

Housing:

Living on my own has also been terrific. I do have a roommate. But we don't bother one another almost at all, which is good. It is always quiet - unlike home. I have almost no stuff with me and that is nice too. Our room has a patio outside the window. And given the perfect bug-less 75 degree temps, I love going out there to hang out on the roof.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"
- Henry David Thoreau

This quote is referring to the people who are living empty lives due to unfulfilling work and too little freedom. However, nobody wakes up and says, "Ah yes. Today I'd like to find some meaningless work and a boss that won't let me go to the bathroom without pulling out a stopwatch." People never purposely decide to live poorly. So how do they fall into a life like this?

Have you ever been scrolling through a website on your phone and the text is way too big? You can change that. Have you ever been annoyed by the distracting ads and pop ups on every single page? You can change that. What about those websites that don't support dark mode and burn your eyeballs late at night? You can change that. Literally every single thing about your internet experience can be altered however you would like. Yet many people fuss with their phone in quiet desperation.

Often people live their lives the same way they interact with the internet. They take whatever situation the world hands them without question. Most of the time, the situation they are handed is purely random - a roll of the dice. If the odds put them in a tough position, so be it. Their job was an opportunity that just so happened to be available when they needed it. They never left their hometown because they just so happened to be born there. There are endless examples like this. Yet despite the ability to change everything, they don't.

We are the only thing in the known universe whose wants are unbounded. And almost anything we want, we can change. Push, poke, prod, and will things into existence. It is our gift, and we should use it.

The perfect work requires four things.

#1 The product of this work must be beautiful as it can be - a true work of art.

This will require an extreme level of care in order to ensure the product is as beautiful and great as it can be in form, function, and the story it tells.

By the very nature of art, the product is a reflection of ourself, a reflection of our taste that has been slowly curated through every experience we have ever had. It is a product of our existence.

This doesn't just mean painting and music either. Art and beauty can be found in any medium.

#2 The work must require greatness from ourselves.

In the pursuit of the best product we can possibly make, the work should challenge us and push the limits of our abilities.

#3 The product of our work must be in service to other people.

Almost anything can be for others. Sharing the product of our work - thus ensuring it is in service - is a top priority.

#4 The work should be something we would do even if we never got paid or recognized for it.

Work worth doing, is work worth doing today.

So next time you are thinking about what you should do with your life, consider asking these questions.

Is this art to me, and do I care enough about this work to make it as beautiful and great as I possibly can?
Is this work going to push the limits of what I'm capable of?
Is this work going to serve others, and what do I need to do to ensure it can?
Would I do this work even if I had all the money and attention I wanted, and if so, why not start today?

...

I used to think there was a fifth thing.

#5 The product of the work must be innovative.

My preferred medium is technology. And innovation and tech often walk hand in hand. However, I don't think innovation is essential to fulfilling work anymore.

...

I'd like to start a company. As far as I know, it is the best way to work on technology. (My perfect work.) But how can I start a company if I'm not concerned with making innovative things?

I think pure taste is valuable enough to make a company successful. The brand, the story a company and its products tell is enough.

Some kids are dreamers. Though, on the road from childhood to adults, almost everyone stops dreaming.

We can probably all remember (or imagine) the first time we nervously shared a big dream with our parents, teachers, or another adult only to be scoffed at, not taken seriously, or told some watered down version of "You can't do that". It was a gut punch. It hurt. It was frustrating and unexpected. Who are they to make that call?

In my case, sometimes my parents and teachers were supportive with their words, but when it came time for them to step up, their actions didn't match. I didn't understand. I was angry. Sure the things I wanted to do were unusual, uncomfortable, and likely to fail, but that was the cost of admission. Why wouldn't my biggest supporters believe in me? I felt crazy.

This led me to believe modern education needed to be reformed and tailored to all the creative dreamers out there. They were the ones pushing everyone forward, so why are so many of their dreams getting crushed as children? It was wrong and needed to be fixed. Turns out, I was wrong. Nothing was broken in the first place.

We should replace Chief Executive Officer with Chief Executive Punching-bag. An entrepreneur's job title is to get told "No. You are crazy." over and over and over by potential investors, employees, and customers. Every single day feels like the gut punch from childhood. For most people, starting a company makes no sense. It requires enduring extreme pain for a very risky potential payoff. So why is anyone an entrepreneur?

Simple. They can't live without it - they have no other choice. True entrepreneurs are going to do what they do regardless of any advice or discouragement.

Dreaming of any kind is no different. It is hard. And seemingly the whole world is against the dream. For most people is it easier to stop dreaming than to pursue whatever it is. So they do. It doesn't take long either and is nobody's fault. There is nothing wrong with it. It was going to happen eventually. They could live without it.

Of course I'm all for giving children endless love and support for their dreams. I would rather have people fail as adults than be discouraged as children. But in some cases, the world doesn't work that way, and it might be okay.

For those who have no other choice - I'm talking to you, dreamers - y'all will have to fight like hell every single day to keep that spark alive. But I'm excited for you. Keep dreaming - as if you even have a choice ;)

What do you like?

We all have so much potential. Many of my peers hide the best parts of themselves. It is a shame. Every once in a while, seemingly by accident, I'll catch a glimpse of who they really are. For a moment, they let their guard down. These small sparks of personality are beautiful. We all should do our best to find and share who we are.

It is time to leave our high school days of dogma, cliques, and following instructions behind. The real world celebrates individuality, uniqueness, obsession, breaking the rules, or making a new game entirely. Our own path is the only path. We won't find fulfillment or excitement by blending into the pack any longer.

Start by listening to yourself. Try being present and really attentive to how things and experiences make you feel. Paying attention is all it takes. Ever so slowly, we might find a little more of ourselves. Thus, we might have a little more to share - something real, something you.

When exposing our thoughts, feelings, and interests we leave the door open to be attacked. We also leave the door open to even deeper connections and love. It is worth the fear and discomfort. Be bold and share who you are.

Go.
Listen.
Pay attention.
Feel.
Be courageous.
Share.
Smile.
Be you.

If you know what you like, why is figuring out what you want so hard? Perhaps, you don't.

Every day during my spring semester I headed to The Den at 5:30am. If anyone asked, it was my office. But in reality it was a 10x10 storage unit I had rented out. Inside was a desk, a chair, and a small heater.

I wanted to explore what creativity was without any preconceived notions about it. For that I needed a quiet, consistent, and safe place to focus.

I didn't want any expectations as to how my hours would be spent each day. My only rule was that I couldn't distract myself. For example, sitting in silence and allowing my mind to wander was fine, but I couldn't watch YouTube or scroll through Instagram. Often I'd make music, write, program, draw, or use any creative medium that seemed interesting. I never had any plans or projects I had to finish. All I wanted to do was to put in my 3 hours of creativty and see what happens.

I feel like I learned a lot about myself, even though that is hard to quantify. Working with so many different mediums also taught me that all creative work feels the same day to day. Before I thought I could never be a musician because it wouldn't be intellectually stimulating enough compared to engineering. I was dead wrong. The grind of making music day to day is just as difficult and exciting.

However, the long term significance a project holds is different. Think about building rockets or making the next hit video game. The long term fulfillment of these two things will vary a lot between people - they carry different amounts of significance based on the person. But the day to day grind will feel very similar. Each will have similarly compelling problems to overcome on a short enough timescale.

This is important because we can get lost in the grind of someone else's mission. Day to day we might be stimulated and intrigued but over the long term we aren't pursuing what would bring us more fulfillment and satisfaction.

What could you contribute to the world over a 10 year period?

A few key moments will define us. I've noticed when I'm faced with these impactful decisions, there have been two choices: normal or crazy.

The crazy choice is almost always blatantly harder, requiring more work, consistency, and creativity. But also this route forces us to go against the grain of social convention. This causes friction with friends, family, bosses, committees, etc.

The crazy choice hurts so good. The pain is immense. But the satisfaction is too.

The crazy choice requires humility. It could be, well - crazy.

The crazy choice will reveal our friends. Some people won't stick around when we go our own way. But the relationships that hold up become stronger.

The crazy choice is scary/exciting. It requires us to put something on the line. We could publicly fail.

The crazy choice often minimizes regret. We can always be normal. The window for crazy can be fleeting.

The crazy choice might be the courageous choice. Most of the time choosing crazy has turned out great for me, far greater than the normal choice. Next time you are feeling a lot of opposition, consider that you might not be crazy. Maybe you are being courageous.

We need your courage.

...

To my friends and family that have put up with my craziness over the years, Thank You :)

Engineering or picking guitar strings used to be necessary and important. Today, all creative skills are quickly becoming irrelevant.

Before, there was no other way to bring new creative ideas to life. We had to have skill. But now AI can churn out an endless amount of paintings, stories, and soon - everything. Skills are quickly going away. Only our perspective is left. Our voice, our story, our filter, our taste. That is where the value lies.

Soon we all will be painters, musicians, writers, engineers, animators, film makers, game designers, and whatever else we wish to be - no skills required.

What will you build now that AI handles the execution? After all, your taste is everything.

...

It will take more time for AI to catch up to some things. Running a business is a difficult creative task. But it will happen.

Maybe by that point AI will have its own taste. Maybe we will be competing with something we can't beat. Something we struggle to even understand.

I'm not sure what happens then. But I'm optimistic it will be beautiful.

Getting what you want is not the hard part. Choosing what you want is.

Because the more we get, the more we realize the cost of getting.

We might try making better choices but to no avail. One day, we might stop choosing. We might realize getting isn't worth it.

But we must choose something. Life forces it. This leads to frustration.

The only liberation is to continue strategically choosing until you don't have to anymore. At some point, we can find a place where we can, but don't need to, choose.

Sure, we will probably still choose. But the outcome of our choice no longer matters - internally or externally.

Being purposely dissconnected from getting and choosing is the ultimate freedom.

Every night before you go to sleep grab a towel and soak a corner of it in cold water.

Gently wash your whole face.

You can't have too much or too cold of water. So it is better to overdo it.

That's all. Forget the expensive face washes and creams. Do this without skipping.

My face is considerably clearer.

We are social creatures, no doubt about it. Friends are a biological necessity. But hanging out has its challenges.

If we are thirsty, we can go get a drink. However, our friends aren't always free whenever we want (or perhaps need) them to be.

For too long I would deal with this uncomfortable feeling. If nobody was free, tough luck. I would feel bad and nothing productive would get done.

One day I called my friend. They were busy and couldn't hang out for whatever reason. Ugh. It was alright but disappointing for sure. They said, "Wanna make plans?" We did. I didn't think much about it. And a few minutes later I found myself in a really great mood. This caught me off guard.

All I had to do was make plans.

Knowing that I would see my friend in a few days quenched my thirst. It was enough.

So you have a project idea in mind. It is exciting, but you don't know if it worth pursuing. Perhaps you have tried starting, but the work is awfully strenuous. Still, it has potential. Do you choose to keep looking or commit to this idea?

Maybe we should let our body decide for us.

This might blow your mind, but we are not reasonable creatures. Over the long-term, we do what feels good. However, we can force ourselves to do things that don't feel good for a short period of time.

Before I get to the creative side of things, it helps to understand how habits are formed. Going to the gym is a great example.

When we first start exercising, it is a double whammy of suck. It sucks before we even get there. Just thinking about working out will make us feel like crap. And it definitely sucks while we are working out. Finally, if we make it through, we get a release of feel-good chemicals in our brain.

Training your body to do anything habitually takes time, but most habits - like eating sweets - don't take an immense amount of effort up-front, like exercising. That is why it is easy to form low effort habits. Eventually, our body starts to understand going through this pain period makes us feel great. Then exercise becomes just a single whammy of suck. It doesn't suck before you get there because your body isn't rebelling, it knows the good feeling will come later. Of course, the actual workout will always be hard. But getting there won't. Boom. Habit formed.

When wrestling with a project commitment try and form a habit of showing up first. Force yourself to work long enough for the potential to be there. The difference between this and starting to exercise is we don't know if this project can turn into a habit. We know working out makes us feel good. But despite whatever logical story we are telling ourselves, this creative project might not. If it doesn't, we won't be able to show up everyday. If it does, then we know that we can commit to this. Our body will decide whether or not the project is worthwhile.

There are still other factors to consider when committing to a project. But there have been many times where I thought I was in love with an idea; however, I couldn't get myself to habitually work on it. This allowed me to stop wrestling with the commitment question altogether.

The downsides of confidentiality might not be considered as much as they should. When the people involved in a project can't talk about what they are working on, the secrecy causes inadvertent problems.

Government projects seem to hastily put shields up around their work. There can be good reasons for this but consider the cons.

When nobody can know what a project is, progress is only measured internally. This lack of outside accountability causes inefficiency to run wild. If the project funding is taxpayer money too, there is no significant financial risk either, only making things worse.

Since you can't tell your friends and family what you are doing, there is a lack of recognition. Also, since the leaders can't sell the public on this idea, the project won't be able to attract the best talent an otherwise open project would. Nothing kills our motivation to work like being overlooked and working with half-rate employees.

The ethical standards can start to degrade as well. Without information the public can't check the government's actions. Aside from an abuse of power, an environment where this is accepted will cause good hearted people to leave. Culture rot will slowly ensue.

I'm not informed enough to decide whether a project should be confidential or not. But have the conversation. Don't assume there are no downsides to unnecessary secrecy.

Great teams are beautiful. If you ever get the chance to be in a group working extremely hard towards a shared interest, please give it all you've got or leave.

This is one of the rarest experiences. We will only get a handful of these opportunities, if we are lucky.

Great teams are more capable than the sum of their parts. Extra care gets compounded in ways it normally wouldn't. However, lack of care compounds in the opposite direction.

We should consider caring deeply. Nobody lives too full a life. And when we choose not to care and not to leave, we are corroding something beautiful and fragile.

Nothing excites me more than these rare opportunities.

I enjoy living slowly.

This feels like: peace, contentment, mental clarity, empathy and care towards others, joy, calmness, patient ambition, confidence, curiosity.

Living fast feels like: anxiety, insufficiency, brain fog, unintentional selfishness, misdirection, hurry, restless ambition, insecurity, boredom.

The pace of my clock can be steadied by the things I do.

Some slow setting activities are: reading, writing, jogging, doing nothing, being alone, working on interesting things, focusing on one thing, silence.

Some things that will speed me up are: watching tv/Youtube, social media, notifications on my phone, working on uninteresting things, being around people for long periods of time, leaving a TV or music running in the background, or staying up to date on current world affairs.

Only you can figure out what speed is desirable. I really enjoy hanging out with friends or watching a great movie just like anybody else, but the amount really matters. I don't want to get too sped up.

Slowing down is harder than speeding up. Reading makes you smarter and running makes you healthier. They both can be enjoyable, but they also suck a lot of the time. It is work.

I live slowly because it makes me feel good. We are our habits. Eating chocolate will make us feel good. Also, having a fit body will make us feel good. The difference is one takes a lot more effort to find.

I love consuming great art and paying attention to what it rhymes with. I ask myself, what other emotions, experiences, and ideas does this cause to bubble up to my awareness?

This is fun, but it also helps me create. Because creating is just going the other direction.

It is being able to capture a state of being in paintings, music, text, etc.

Artists are feeling rhymers.

How much money do we, as individuals, need? It seems that somewhere between 1 and 10 million dollars gives you complete freedom. Ya know you can work, live, and spend time however you want, more or less. This is a very general statement, but for brevity let's assume this is true enough.

These people are content. They don't want anymore money. They live off of the 10% interest with a S&P 500 ETF. Now they work on whatever is fun and interesting regardless of how much it will pay, if at all.

For most people, I think this is very fulfilling. Perhaps, one of the most fulfilling lifestyles out there.

Why not make a company like this?

Let's say you built a company. It gets big and has 2 billion in cash reserves. Lots of companies have many more billions than that.

But then as CEO you say alright we are content. We are slashing all but 1000 employees. All costs will be paid for by the 10% interest - 2 hundred million. Employees get a 150k salary, so that leaves 50 million for research and development costs each year. We no longer care about profit. We will only build what is fun and interesting.

Thus, we have a perpetual company.

Maybe this becomes the most creative and awesome company ever. Maybe culture rot would turn it into a zombie of crappy/nonexistent products. But if companies are in the infinite game, this would be an optimal strategy on paper right? Maybe giving the company an artificial death date would protect the company's health?

Life is hard. Life can be lonely. But sometimes you will pass someone you know.

Often, we are too busy to acknowledge them, too caught up with my our own lives.

Instead, gather all the energy you have got, smile and wave. It is worth it.

The happiness it brings you and them is far greater than the small amount of effort it requires.

Life is always better with a little more love.

If I know you and I don't smile and wave, remind me :) I probably need a smile more than usual.

It is addictive. Not posting ensures that I'm spending my time on what I actually want, not what the algorithm wants. In general, a product that thrives on addiction gets a thumbs down from me.

Traditional social media posts feel too self-centered, too selfish. It feels like I'm shouting into an open room, "Look at me!" I don't want to waste people's time. I prefer to share things that could be useful.

Most posts aren't a real representation of who I am. The most significant things I do aren't Instagram material. I don't want likes for that one insignificant weekend trip. That trip is not my life nor who I am. It almost feels like lying.

Posting takes me out of the moment. When I am with someone, I really try to give them my attention. I never want to be thinking about what I might post later. I'd rather be fully there. Staying present is hard enough without any distractions. (Although, I do wish I took more pictures, but just for me.)

I don't want my friends to feel like an accessory. I think my Mom uses Facebook too much, but to each their own. However, I won't let her post very many pictures of me because I often feel like a trophy being flaunted. This isn't my Mom's intention of course. But I don't want to do the same thing and make my friends feel like I'm spending time with them for likes.

With all of these combined, I'm happier not posting. Anything worth sharing can be found here, on my website.

I used to be terrified of telling people what songs I was currently listening to. I was afraid of being judged. (A self conscious teenager? No way! Haha.) But I think this fear is fairly common.

Music is such a powerful medium. Unsurprisingly, sharing that takes a lot of vulnerability.

The first person I ever shared my music taste with became one of my closest friends. We liked a lot of the same stuff, and it created a really strong bond between us. This upside completely caught me off guard. They also introduced me to a lot of great music too, which was also a first.

Because of that experience, these days I am quick to share what I'm listening to. I've been laughed at for sharing a song, but that is alright. The chance to really connect with someone makes it worthwhile.

Share your music :)

P.S. What are you listening to?

Spend 10 minutes after your college classes talking to your professors and classmates. This has accounted for 80% of my degree's value.

The opportunities, friends, and sense of community that results from this small amount of time is kind of wild.

When the professor is teaching you can't connect with anyone. So after class, I often take 10 minutes or so just to talk. I'm never trying to use people. I'm just a curious guy in a room with people who are interested in similar things as me.

College may be inefficient, but I would probably never meet these people on my own.

I started learning about AI about three years ago. It seemed like a technology that would have a large impact, and I thought it was interesting. Because I love the stories of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or any number of people that have been the face of some fantastic achievement, I thought AI might be the technology that tells my story.

Flash forward to today, AI is taking off. It is everywhere. I used to feel like I could keep up with everything that was happening. I probably still could today, but it would take a toll on me. It would throw me out of balance. My grip on the industry is slipping due to the growing size.

This brings new challenges. I get anxious as I scroll through Twitter or my AI newsletters. I feel like, oh great more information to drown in, more things that I don't have time to read. I don't really know the best way forward.

For now I'm feeling that balance and long term persistence are best. Mainly for two reasons. One, you can't force greatness. You can only invite it in, and the more I need something the faster it seems to run from me. Two, I think I am more likely to fail from burnout than getting washed away by the growth. There will always be the next thing, the new innovation. However, if I am too crushed to work at all, that next thing isn't available to me.

I am open to suggestions.

I do think there will come a time when I start a business, and my working hours go way up. But I suspect it won't throw me off balance. Creating something with super smart friends is the dream. Here I'm talking strictly about maintaining a competence on the bleeding edge of AI.

In the College of Computer Science here at Astate, there is a heavy debate about what a CS degree is for. Most believe it is about learning the theory behind CS. Others believe it is about building things with software - practice.

These two are not mutually exclusive. It is actually the opposite, you can't have one without the other.

We can start at either one, but we always end at the other.
1) We create things because they are interesting and exciting. We learn what is necessary in order to create that thing.
2) We learn theory to expand the possibilities of creation. We create to solidify the theory.

My most efficient years of education were when I bounced between both cases purely based off what I felt like doing.

I've never had a college class with too much practice. The worst classes have always leaned too heavily towards theory. Perhaps the issue is something else entirely: laziness.

A few days ago, I was standing on the fifth floor of the Astate library, overlooking the busy parking lot below. Vehicles would enter only to snake up and down the rows of the completely full lot.

I couldn't help but think about how much congestion this causes everyday across the entire world.

From my viewpoint, it was obvious there were no empty spots. If only each driver had my birds-eye view, this could be fixed.

Perhaps some of our own problems could be solved with a simple change of perspective, if we were so bold.

A few steps back, or maybe a hundred or a thousand, could be just what we need.

What does the world look like once the machines do everything?

They will be the primary source of innovation and creativity.

You will have everything in abundance.

All of our problems will be solved.

We won't be special anymore.

There won't be any meaning beyond what we create ourselves.

You could do anything.

Do you really want all of this free time?

Could you really ask yourself, "What do I want to do?"

Or are you too distracted?

Maybe the question is too hard?

...

The world has 8 billion people that do everything.

Everyone else is the primary source of innovation and creativity.

They are providing everything in abundance for almost nothing.

They are solving all of the problems.

You aren't that special - but surly unique.

We don't know the meaning of life.

You can do anything.

Do you really want all of this free time?

Could you really ask yourself, "What do I want to do?"

Or are you too distracted?

Maybe the question is too hard?

In my dream, my Dad and I were fascinated with this Chameleon. We thought it was so cool this animal could change colors just by touching something.

We wanted to test the limits its ability, so we found the most colorful thing in the room, a spiral tie dye ball. The ones about the size of an old school dodgeball, but much lighter and not as rubbery and thick.

We moved the Chameleon on top of this ball, and it starts flashing all of these different colors. I'm smiling as I watch. I think this is really cool. But as I look across the table, my Dad is growing extremely upset by it.

A few seconds later he yells out with fury, "Turn pink!" Frantically the animal's colors begin changing in a seemingly unnatural way. It looks like it is trying to force itself to become pink out of guilt, but it can only manage a few pink spots here and there.

My Dad yells again, but with a bit more rage, "Turn pink!" This time he aggressively smacks the Chameleon directly over his body and head. The poor Chameleon looks so ashamed as he keeps flashing colors but only with occasional pink patches.

To me the problem is obvious. On the ball there is only a small area of pink right where the spiral begins. He doesn't have enough pink to lay on in order to fully become that color.

The Chameleon can only create using his inputs. He doesn't get to choose.

Still asleep, I thought to myself, "This is a great metaphor. I should write about it."

It is common to think of college as a ticket that guarantees a stable uninteresting job allowing you to buy stuff. Supposedly, this will make you happy.

I hate this so much.

I think the previous generations' storage units full of crap didn't make them happy. The security they were promised is becoming less secure every day. More importantly, they traded their mission for their employer's greed, and that shit is fatal.

If that is what a degree gets you, I don't want it.

From that perspective, my degree is worthless. However, my college years are not.

I'm not against working for someone. There are plenty of really desirable companies out there. Even if they don't share my mission, I can't help but applaud their's.

All of these great companies all ask the same thing to job applicants. What problems have you solved, what things have you built, or what teams have you led? But only having a college degree leaves you with one answer: I'm sorry for wasting your time.

These questions offer fantastic guidance though. I try to spend as much effort and time on those three things as possible.

To be clear, this isn't so I can get a job at these companies. Really, it is all about my mission. Those questions just further prove that the ability to pursue it is super valuable. And no wonder.

It is a chance to be useful, connect, and touch the hearts of people around me today.
It is making something that I love (and hopefully others too.)
It is fixing things that are ugly and broken.

To me this is obviously so much more important than my degree. I often trade extra time chasing my mission for worse grades. I do good enough to pass and keep my scholarships, but I treat my classes as introductions to new ideas - not vital information for the test.

The world barley cares about my degree, and so do I.

Only do stuff that benefits you. Don't treat others with respect or kindness. Ask but never give. If it doesn't help you, why bother?

This is obviously a bad long term strategy.

I wouldn't call this selfishness. It's actually just being dumb.

In order to be truly selfish, we have to be selfless.

Selfishness and selflessness are two sides of the same coin. You don't get one without the other.

To maximize our own profit and pleasure, we should maximize the problems we solve for others.

Help the most people = Reap the most benefits

However, you can't help lots of people without helping one. So start helping those around you first. Love and respect go a long way. Gifts are great desert.

So go on and be selfish... err, I mean selfless ;)

Legacy - measured by making things better - is a noble aspiration. But the process is tricky.

If you are desperate to leave a legacy, you lose.

The world seems to hate needy things.

People like this always feel inauthentic - always peddling themselves. Even their best intentions seem inconsiderate.

Contentment makes you more open to smaller humbler projects. Finding something useful and good to do is easy, but legacy necessity will make these things feel too insignificant to invest in.

Besides, nobody can plan the next path to greatness anyways.

Make it easier on yourself and let go of the need to leave a legacy.

If you want to change the world, you probably feel aimless. You have no clear path at all, but despite the unknown, you still feel compelled to do something big. That is okay, and it is the only way to reliably achieve great things.

These ideas come from "Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned", so this is very condensed. I encourage you to read the whole book, but I introduce the two main concepts from the book in this article.

• When trying to achieve large goals such as changing the world, objectives don't work.
• Instead of objectives, we should chase interesting and novel ideas.

Objectives are out

Imagine that you’re given an enormous petri dish the size of Earth. On this petri dish are single-celled organisms that are equivalent to the very first living cells on Earth, from which all other life eventually evolved. Your objective is to evolve organisms with human-level intelligence by selecting which organisms should reproduce. The basic idea is to replace natural selection with your own decisions about who gets to reproduce. Of course, it may sound difficult, but to make the problem easier you are allowed four billion years to finish.

The great thing about this experiment is that we know it’s possible because those very single-celled organisms did evolve over billions of years into human beings. The main challenge is just to be a good breeder because selecting which organisms will reproduce is ultimately nothing more than animal breeding. All you need to do is select parents to mate that are increasingly human-like and voilà, you are done before you know it.

So what should be your strategy to breed single-celled organisms all the way to human-level intelligence? We’d like to suggest a clear-headed approach that gets right to the heart of the matter: You can administer intelligence tests to the single-celled organisms! Then all you need to do is pick the ones that score highest to be the parents of the next generation. Soon enough, we’re on our way to a real Einstein, right?

Or maybe not. Clearly, this strategy is deeply flawed. If you really administered IQ tests to single-celled organisms, you would be lucky if they even survived, let alone evolved intelligence of any sort. But why wouldn’t something like that work? After all, it respects the general principle that we measure progress towards our goals by comparing where we are to where we want to be. But that principle is increasingly suspicious, as this thought experiment exposes once again.

The problem is that the stepping stones to intelligence do not resemble intelligence at all. Put another way, human-level intelligence is a deceptive objective for evolution. Once again, deception rears its confusing and misdirecting head. Rather than increasing intelligence, the stepping stones that lead from single-celled organisms to humans include such unrelated innovations as multicellularity and bilateral symmetry. Millions of years ago our ancestor was a flatworm. It would not score any accolades for its intellect, but its one great achievement was bilateral symmetry. Who would ever think that bilateral symmetry is essential to writing poetry? But it was an essential stepping stone on the road to Shakespeare. The problem with the intelligence test approach is that it entirely fails to detect such monumentally important discoveries. Instead it wastes precious effort measuring a property that will not come into play in any important way until eons in the future.

That may seem obvious because subjecting a cell to an IQ test (or any intelligence test) is unquestionably ridiculous. But the fact that it is ridiculous is exactly the point, and is why this experiment should ring alarm bells for anyone who still believes in the myth of the objective. Is it any less ridiculous to try to achieve any far-off, ambitious objective by measuring how close it is to our best candidate so far? What this thought experiment exposes is that the traditional approach to achievement, driven by and informed by objectives, can lead to genuinely ridiculous behavior. But ridiculous or not, the assumption that objectives should drive achievement dominates our culture and our everyday lives.

Evolution in nature is a stepping-stone collector. These stepping stones are collected not because they may lead to some far off primary objective, some ultimate uber-organism towards which all of life is directed, but because they are well-adapted in their own right. Each organism on the path to humans reproduced because it was successful in its own niche at its own time.

Chase the interesting and novel

Novelty can often act as a stepping stone detector because anything novel is a potential stepping stone to something even more novel. In other words, novelty is a rough shortcut for identifying interestingness: Interesting ideas are those that open up new possibilities. And while it might sound wishy-washy to go looking for “interesting” things, interestingness is a surprisingly deep and important concept.

The important point is that novelty (and interestingness) can compound over time by continually making new things possible. So instead of seeking a final objective, by looking for novelty the reward is an endless chain of stepping stones branching out into the future as novelty leads to further novelty. Rather than thinking of the future as a destination, it becomes a road, a path of undefined potential. Evolution in nature and human innovation are ratcheting processes that build stepping stone upon stepping stone, branching and diverging ever outward to everywhere and nowhere in particular.

But there might still seem to be a problem. Chasing novelty suggests a kind of aimless uncertainty. How do we know where we’re going? But that’s exactly the point. The greatest processes of innovation work precisely because they are not trying to go anywhere in particular. In this sense, we’ve abandoned the false security of the objective to embrace the wild possibility of the unknown. Of course, there’s still reason for concern. Such a search for novelty still feels unanchored and perhaps even almost random. Would it not simply chart a course from one fleeting novelty to another? Why should we believe that such a process has any meaning to it?

Because we can look to the past and see it works. I chose the natural selection example because I think almost everyone is familiar with the concept, but these ideas can be seen in all innovation whether it be the creation of the computer or the airplane... both of which are included in the actual book. Sure there is still the possibility that you spend your entire life working and never achieve greatness, but if you are reading this, you are probably the type of person that is going to forge ahead anyways. That fear will always be there, but now you can stop being so anxious about not having a clear and detailed plan. Chase the interesting and the novel if you want to change the world.

Greatness is possible if you are willing to stop demanding what that greatness should be.

So what am I doing?

I am trying my best to push humanity forward by letting go of objectives and pursing novel things that are interesting to me.

Even if all of this is not true, what else would I do with my life? I'm open to better answers, but so far this is the best one I've found.

So what interests you? Email me.

Great stories inspire. Great stories teach. Great stories move people.

When David Goggins is asked, "What is your greatest fear?" He could answer, "My greatest fear is not living up to my fullest potential."

But Goggins is a master story teller. Here is his response.

What would you do if you could have anything? If you could go anywhere? If you were completely free of all obligation and constraint? What would you do?

This is the most important question.

We should all ask ourselves this on a regular basis.

noun

They have an insatiable curiosity and have experimented with a little bit of everything. When you look at their resume, you see a broad range of experience in terms of industry, technologies, and roles.

Perhaps the strongest sign of an adaptomaniac is not the experience they already have but the willingness to take on any new experience.

If you hear a developer say "Oh, no, I'm not a front end guy" or cringe at the thought of having to learn a new programming language for their next project, they are probably not an adaptomaniac.

Real adaptomaniacs love to learn new things regardless of the problem domain and whether they have any experience in it.

Like me, many years ago, I assume your idea of a programmer is this mystical creature that is only seen in broad daylight on rare occasions. You have a vague idea of what "coding" entails, but for some crazy reason - I was interested in Ai - you have decided that you want to learn how to code.

Take Harvard's free online course, CS50x: Introduction to CS.

I took this is high school, and it was and is better than my entry level CS classes at my current college!

You will get the perfect blend of depth and breadth in this entry level course. Once you finish CS50x, they actually have three follow up courses CS50w (websites), CS50ai (Ai), and CS50g (games). I have only taken the two former classes, but I have no doubt the latter is just as fantastic.

I can't express my gratitude and excitement enough. David Malan, Brain Yu, and Doug Llyod are all fantastic teachers, and their style and enthusiasm should be imitated by professors around the globe.

If you guys see this... Thank You.

If you are someone who creates things it is imperative that you jot fleeting ideas down.

Ideas don't come out fully formed.

By jotting down any thought that is even vaguely interesting, you allow it to grow. Just trying to remember it is deliberately killing your ideas of out laziness.

Once the idea is safely and briefly recorded, your mind is free to be creative and follow other long rabbit holes without worry.

You will be amazed at just how creative you can be, if only you would stop killing your ideas.