/ I originally posted about this in January 2023 here but I am re-sharing because it is that valuable.
Notes:
The intersection of what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and where you can create value for the world.
I really do think it is worth upfront thought about what you’re going to spend most of your waking time doing.
But I think one thing is you should be willing to move.
And so just helping a lot of people and spending a lot of time with a lot of people has benefited me.
The way things get done in the world are through a combination of focus and personal connection.
The third factor is self-belief. You really have to have a deep-seated personal conviction that this thing you’re going to do, that a lot of people say is really stupid, is going to work and be important.
I think compound interest is a good metaphor here. If you work really hard at the beginning of your career and you get a little bit better at what you do every day, every week, every year, and you learn more and you meet more people and you just get more done, there’s a compound effect.
Life is super unfair. Sometimes you also just get unlucky. And so all you can do is kind of maximize chances there. But I do think that working hard early in your career to get the leverage and the compounding effects is underrated and one of the most valuable pieces of advice that I never got.
And a framework that I have for when to give up and when to keep working is it should be an internal not an external decision.
And so the only motivation that I have seen work for people over a long period of time is enjoyment in what they’re doing and an intense belief that it matters. And ideally liking the people that they go to work with every day.
I found is that burnout actually comes from failing and things not working. Momentum is really energizing. The lack of momentum is super draining.
The answer, I think, is almost always A, you’re wrong about what is risky and what is not risky, and B, most people don’t take enough risk, especially early in your career.
I think what risk actually looks like is not doing something that you will then spend the rest of your life regretting.
So if you really believe in something, there’s an idea that you’re super passionate about, you know, and you take a calculated risk to start a company realizing you may forego a couple of years of steady income at another job and whatever else, and maybe people call you a failure or whatever. That’s a great risk to take.
Ask for what you want. You will get told no a lot. But sometimes it will work.
And they’re just not aggressive enough.
Is that each crisis gets less scary than the one before it.
And the thing you learn is that you generally do survive these and that the world doesn’t usually end.
So I think that one of the few arbitrage opportunities left in the market is time.
You get paid as a founder for the wealth you create for other people.
But the best companies just create massive amounts of value for the world.
You want to have a strong opinion and then be flexible about the details.
That is a strong idea with flexibility in the implementation.
I think strong opinions about the future are really important.
The most successful people that I spend time with is that they have strong opinions, strongly held about the future. They are willing to be convinced with new data that they are wrong, but the bar for that is fairly high.
Sam: Well, I don’t want to give people a specific field to go work on because I think the whole idea is that people need to figure out themselves what they believe in and what they think and what they believe is high impact to work on for the future. So what I will say instead is it is really important to actually think hard about where you think you can make the biggest contribution that you’re good at and the world needs and that you enjoy. And then go meet people to work with, go learn as much about that field as you can, and then have the courage of your convictions to actually take a risk and focus on it, and go do something there, and that it’s okay if you fail. And if you do fail, you’ll not be in much different of a place than you are today, and you can go try the next thing. But I think it’s really important to be willing to go take a risk and make some amount of sacrifice to be able to try to impact the world in some way that you really care about. And I think the sooner you get to work on that, the better you’ll be.
Published on November 13, 2024.