Category: Short-form

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”

— Steve Jobs

Last week, I flew to SF after officially dropping out of school. I broke down my time allocation since coming to the Bay, and found that it was highly skewed towards social interactions.

I’m at a stage in life where I feel like I know enough people. Meeting new people is no longer a bottleneck for my progress. In fact, because of how networks compound over time, I find myself flooded with opportunities to meet interesting people. That’s the trap.

Associating with highly accomplished peers fools me into thinking that I’m accomplished. If I’m at a dinner with a well-known investor, I feel as though I’m special somehow. In reality, this networking schtick only serves to inflate my ego.

I don’t want to seek out great people; I want great people to seek me out. This is only possible if I do great work. Whenever I make progress, that information will naturally flow to the people who matter.

The goal is not stochastic schmoozing, but instead directed energy on hard problems.

Focus is a prerequisite for great work. This is because most hard problems are soluble in deep effort, but insoluble in shallow attempts. Focus is the process of refining merely good ideas into great ideas.

Great work usually entails spending what would seem to most people an unreasonable amount of time on a problem.

— Paul Graham

Focus and sacrifice are two sides of the same coin. Historically, I say no to 40% of opportunities. This should be 99%.

Buffett’s “2 List” practice was an exceptionally clarifying exercise. I cut projects, podcasts, climbing, MMA, social media, social events, meetings, and misc. It hurts to eliminate hobbies I love, but it’s the price of being more intentional and selective.

Over time, I have gotten more comfortable turning down invites. I think this is a result of becoming more secure in my abilities: I don’t need validation through association. I know what I’m missing out on and I don’t care. It’s not a priority.

I think this next stage of life will be characterized by intense focus on what’s most important to me: work and friendships. Anything that falls outside my circle of focus will have a high bar for my attention.

Thoughts catalyzed by feedback from Adam Majmudar, Sigil Wen, and Will DePue

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

— William Shakespeare

When I pay attention to the behavior of smart, thoughtful people around me, I sometimes notice that they act strangely. Strange in the sense that most people don’t behave as they do. As an example, a friend of mine is strict about not drinking water from plastic bottles. Weird right?

I asked him why and he mentioned that microplastics are bad for the body and that plastic water bottles contain a relatively high concentration of microplastics. He also pointed out that tap water in the US is usually pretty safe to drink anyway. I had never heard of microplastics before, but this sounded fairly reasonable. So I did what any normal person would have done in my shoes: I moved on and forgot about this interaction.

A couple months later, I was at an event that handed out plastic water bottles and I recalled the conversation with my friend. After reflecting for a minute or so, I realized that it was really weird for someone to go out of their way to create a restrictive rule like “I won’t drink from plastic containers” and it was even weirder because I knew my friend was smart and thoughtful.

In times like these, noticing my own confusion is the first step for updating my models of the world. When something feels strange, it’s usually a signal that there are holes in my understanding, maybe worth investigating.

I did some research and it turns out that the effect of microplastics on human health is largely unknown, and several impressively-cited literature reviews have laid out possible paths for harm. In addition, avoiding plastic water bottles is among the best ways to prevent the digestion of microplastics—all things considered, a pretty negligible cost for reducing potential health risks.

But nobody else I know avoids drinking from plastic water bottles, and it’s not as though potential risks aren’t worth worrying about: just consider the caution around the uncertain long-term effects of the early Covid vaccines. In general, if peer-reviewed science tells me that there are potential long-term harms to my gut and cardiac health and I could avoid these risks without much cost, then obviously I’d listen. Right?

Well… not really.

Humans are stubborn about changing their beliefs, and the sad truth is that our beliefs about facts(!) are socially shaped. It’s weird to be the person who refuses to drink from plastic water bottles, it’s weird to act as though diseases are little microorganisms instead of a miasma or the devil, and it’s weird to act in principle with a personal hourly rate when nobody else does.

But living a life in line with who society thinks you should be might result in plastic toxins flooding your body. It might be the difference between achieving your dreams and not. Acting in accordance with true beliefs means ignoring social rules about acceptability. You shouldn’t shield yourself from the truth, as strange and uncomfortable though it may be, because the funny thing about the truth is that it doesn’t care about how you feel.

So the next time you notice thoughtful people doing weird things, imagine “what if they’re right”? Because very often, the people who stare uncomfortable truths in the eye are the ones who see the most clearly.