For the first time, our worldview is not bounded by language or geography. We have more access to knowledge than the greatest scholar and world leaders a generation ago.
The Internet gave us access to information on everything, everywhere, all at once.
But it also overloaded us with information on everything, everywhere, all at once.
We have access to an abundance of knowledge that overwhelms us with choice.
When I embrace distraction out of boredom, I’m robbing my priorities of their time and attention.
If I were more mindful of what I chose to invest my time and attention to, I would be more successful in progressing toward my goals.
Instead, I’m shooting myself in the foot over and over again, paying the hospital fee and spending too much time recovering.
the hedonic treadmill
In 2022, I set goals and expectations based on the goals and expectations of my peers at Waterloo — get golden cuffed by a big tech company (being a FAANG simp), sell my soul to the green bible (grinding leetcode), and “optimizing” my life to pad my resume. I was a clout-chasing, exaggerating imposter. I felt inauthentic; I was stagnating and unhappy with where I was and where I was going if I continued with my current habits.
I assume I wanted what my peers wanted.
I wanted recognition and praise as a proxy for happiness.
I fell into a happiness trap of chasing after my distorted expectation that happiness revolves around success.
I obsessed with co-op and school at the cost of the diminishing quality of my health, relationships, and overall well-being.
I was stuck running on the hedonic treadmill, and it was emotionally damaging.
“On an exercise treadmill, you can increase the speed all you want, but you stay in the same place. In life, you can work as hard as you want and accumulate all the riches … Because you can’t change your “natural and usual state of tranquility,” the riches you accumulate will just raise your expectations and leave you no better off than you were before. Yet, not realizing the futility of our efforts, we continue to strive, all the while doing things that help us win at the game of life. Always wanting more than we have, we run and run and run, like hamsters on a wheel.” - Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis.
I can always run more, work harder, and burn out faster.
Rest and recovery are essential for growth, so I’ll get off to take a breather before working out again.
It’s not like the treadmill will run away anyways.
¯\(ツ)/¯
being rich vs. being wealthy
Being a broke college student taught me the value of saving money and time.
I had more time to spend than money.
So I exchanged my time for money and experience through work.
From my three internships, I know what I want and what I don’t want.
Knowing what you want is essential, but even more important is embracing the unknown unknowns; you don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s fine!
Good predictions tend to have good abstractions.
I can’t predict the details of what I’ll work on in a year, who I’ll work with, where I’ll work from, or how much I’ll make.
But I can predict with certainty that I’ll be writing, challenging myself, and cultivating the art of living.
I embrace my unknown unknowns by surrounding myself with good people; I hedge against my future self by investing in relationships that challenge me to be my best.
This social safety net is a fault-tolerant system with real-time feedback loops, so I’ll know when I need help and get it because I’ll know who to ask.
I’m accumulating social capital for optionality in what I can do in life.
I want to live a life worth writing and write about a life worth writing.
I’m choosing a life designed for connecting with people and connecting with ideas.
That’s why I write.
P.S. The writing process makes me happy, and it’s the perfect excuse to talk to interesting people about interesting ideas!
To double down on that, I’m starting a writing fellowship with good people, and I want you to join!
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