Notes to self

Things I Keep Re-Learning

I come back to these ideas more often than I’d like to admit — usually when I’ve drifted, gotten comfortable, or started optimizing for ease instead of growth.

None of this is original. Most of it is borrowed, learned the hard way, or repeatedly re-learned. This isn’t advice, and it’s definitely not a claim that I live by these principles consistently. I don’t.

Think of this as a working list, a set of reminders to myself about how things seem to work when I’m paying attention. It’s incomplete, occasionally uncomfortable, and very much in progress. I expect it to change. I hope it does.

Theme I: Agency, Asking, and Exposure

1. Let reality say no, not you.
Once you’re genuinely okay with rejection, you’re free to ask for almost anything. Most limits exist because we enforce them on ourselves before testing them.

2. Increase your surface area for luck.
Luck isn’t constant. It grows when you show up, talk to people, ask directly, and stay in motion. Be optimistic. Be visible. Assume goodwill until proven otherwise.

3. Reach out more than feels reasonable.
Send the cold email. Ask the naive question. Knock on doors that look closed. You’ll be surprised how often someone answers.

4. Visibility is a pre-requisite, not a reward.
Hiding behind a screen or staying in your home office won't bring luck, people do. The connections that change things happen when you physically show up, stay present in the world, and resist the pull of comfortable solitude. You cannot be discovered if you cannot be found.

Theme II: Environment and Leverage

5. Your environment will beat your willpower - and so will your company
Put yourself where average isn't enough. If you can get by comfortably, you probably will. The same logic applies to people: being surrounded by the wrong ones quietly cancels out years of self-improvement. Change your surroundings, change your trajectory.

6. Watch your production and consumption ratio.
If you’re mostly consuming, something is off. Creating is slower and riskier but it’s where learning, leverage, and meaning come from. Aim to produce more than you consume.

7. Find the people who make you want to move mountains.
Some people leave a conversation and you feel smaller. Others leave you ready to start something. The second type is rare. Seek them out deliberately, keep them close, and don't settle for the easier company of people who merely don't drain you.

Theme III: Learning, Change, and Aging

8. Don’t confuse learning with entertainment.
Real learning takes effort and is often uncomfortable. If something is perfectly digestible and endlessly agreeable, it’s probably entertainment. That’s fine, just don’t call it growth. A useful filter for anything you consume: did it shift how you think in a lasting way? Will you remember it in a month? Did it actually change a decision? If the answer is no to all three, it was noise.

9. Speed up as you get older.
Lean into change. Stay curious about new tools, ideas, and perspectives. Many people retreat into certainty and routines over time.

10. Form a view, then try to break it.
Develop a real position on something, then go and find the most serious argument against it. The goal isn't to abandon your views easily, it's to hold them honestly. Revise often enough that changing your mind feels routine rather than like defeat..

11. Talent shows up as the absence of friction, not the presence of brilliance.
It rarely announces itself. It shows up as the things that seem to block others simply not being a problem for you. Stop asking where your gifts are. Start noticing what other people seem to find really hard.

12. The most important things about a place can't be read, they have to be felt.
Travel is irreplaceable because the texture of a society, how people move, trust one another, eat, and relate, lives in experience, not description. No amount of reading substitutes for the bodily knowledge of actually being somewhere.

Theme IV: Risk, Iteration, and Feedback

13. Most bets fail. That’s expected.
Any single attempt is unlikely to work. Progress comes from making many bets and executing each one seriously. Volume, quality of effort, and fast feedback matter more than brilliance.

14. Shorter cycles beat better plans.
Fast iteration compounds. Long deliberation rarely does. Learn by doing, then adjust.

15. Write down the worst that can happen, then look at it.
Most people are more risk-averse than the situation deserves. When you spell out the actual worst-case scenario on paper, it usually turns out to be survivable, temporary, and far less catastrophic than the vague dread that kept you from acting. Do the exercise. Then decide.

16. Act as if, until you actually are.
Confidence rarely arrives before competence, usually it has to precede it. Stepping into something before you feel fully ready is often the only way to become ready. The performance isn't dishonesty; it's the mechanism.

17. The feedback that matters usually hurts.
If it stings, pay attention. Discomfort is often a signal that something important is being revealed. Flattery feels better but it rarely changes anything.

Theme V: Time, Pain, and the Price of Outcomes

18. Everything passes.
No matter how permanent something feels, good or bad, it isn’t. This doesn’t erase pain or inflate optimism. It restores perspective.

19. Wanting outcomes without their costs is a dead end.
We admire results like strength, freedom, love and independence but those are inseparable from struggle. The question isn’t what you want. It’s what you’re willing to endure.

20. Every meaningful pursuit charges upfront.
A strong body requires physical stress and restraint. Independence requires risk and long stretches of uncertainty. Love requires rejection, silence, and emotional exposure. The cost isn’t hidden, we just like to pretend it’s optional.

21. You can’t win games you refuse to play.
Avoiding discomfort feels safe, but it quietly disqualifies you. The struggle isn’t a detour. It is the path.

This list changes. I add, remove, and rewrite entries as I learn.
Last updated: May 2026.