a few thoughts from the past few weeks spent in search of the next:

energy is everything: building is so much about finding your tribe, people who make you feel extra alive. people who deeply care about the work they do & are borderline paranoid about it. when you find them, keep them close.

working on important problems: there is something surreal about taking a crack at problems which, when solved, can unlock unprecedented potential for humanity. when you are non-relenting about the problems you want to solve, you end up solving important ones.

feeling of working on important problems: it's funny how so much of it is narrative framing & how you can position almost any problem to be quite an important one. but at the end of the day, how you feel about what you are doing matters enormously.

working very hard: when you "feel" you are working on really important problems w people who make you extra alive, you experience something deeply immersive. work becomes play, and you can work extremely hard and constantly live up to your potential.

overthinking is harmful: you can't sit with yourself and figure out all the answers. sometimes jack needs to play, and it's important to let jack play. stressing too much about answers is just sophisticated avoidance.

constraints are helpful: you can think you can solve anything under the sun w anyone you want and end up solving nothing. play to your strengths, time-bound your decisions, factor in some ambiguity, but operate within a certain realm of choices.

listen to your gut: it is important to be logical but it is equally important to factor gut and feeling into decisions. most things are not black and white, so sometimes taking the leap of faith is all you can do.

don't operate with a lot of open threads: too many active threads is energy draining. most of the time we already know the answer; we just want more evidence before acting on it. collect evidence quickly and ruthlessly close threads.

stand your ground: you need to take a lot of bets on yourself. that's how you maximise your odds of winning.

*used opus 4.6 for last minute minor edits :)