Accumulating Advantages
Something interesting happened between finishing school and starting my adult life: I fell into a loop of running with the right people, at the right time. The lucky part for me: It’s a flywheel and it’s all about momentum.
Perhaps I’m writing about following the right people in the first place because I realize now how rare it is, and more importantly, how immeasurable in value it is.
Paul Graham is correct when he says that ambition precedes direction. Young people are usually ambitious before they know what they want to be ambitious about. They know they want to do something great, but they don’t know where to direct that energy. Maybe they’ll become a YouTuber, a CEO, or a musician. When we don’t know what we want to be, we mimic the people around us. During this critical moment in time, while we’re still figuring out who we want to become, it is essential to start following the right people. These are the people who will inherently build who we are, and although that might sound like luck at first, it’s merely a virtue of self-awareness.
Ambition precedes direction.
Being around high agency people is contagious. When we are young, as human beings, most of the time we’ll not measure our decisions through a long-term perspective. When we start using mental models, it’s clearer for us to distinguish between those who won’t be around us in a few years, from those whom we’ll learn the most — which are the ones who we should strive to build a connection with.
A habit I practice myself is to make long-term life decisions using Regret Minimization: choosing whichever option you’ll most regret not having pursued when looking back at the end of your life. This is how you optimize for long-term fulfillment.
However, finding fulfillment in our own life requires leveraging our perceived “weaknesses” — the same weaknesses that, for instance, Elon Musk turned into strengths as a young child. He has leveraged his anti-social traits, perceived rudeness, and nerdiness into life-changing businesses. In doing so, he’s earned tremendous respect and wealth.
Being around high agency people is contagious.
I’ve always struggled to motivate myself in school. Overall, because I knew that our education system rewards memorization, answer-seeking, and the pursuit of brand names to signal we are valuable. We are taught to hack bad tests to get good grades. However, the hacks we master in the first 20 years ironically lead to a sense of emptiness in adulthood.
If you want to do something meaningful, you do need to ask the hard questions. The process of waking up from a decades-long slumber is uncomfortable but rewarding.
Do everything in your power to surround yourself with people who you can grow from, add value to their lives so they keep you around, and focus on spotting opportunities. Do the unfun, hard, sweaty work early so you can build up capital. Then work smart and keep the flywheel going.
Surround yourself with great people.
This is a post advising you to be more thoughtful about your life because you only have one and your future self is inherently based on whom you’re socializing with right now, at this current moment.
I’m often writing to crystalize my thoughts between the fields I see more opportunities to deep dive into. Post frequency will be certainly higher as I maximize serendipity while educating myself, so don’t forget to follow.
