3 Lessons From the Past 2 Years
Nobody Yet Episode 1
Nobody Yet
I do a weekly podcast where I ramble and explore these thoughts in real time. You can find these lessons elaborated upon in Episode 1. Properties of work (Episode 2) also released today- expect another write up next week.
In the past October, I quit and started a new job, moved from Chicago to New York City, and turned 25. It feels I’m at a significant inflection point in life; the oppressive malaise from lethargy spawned by impassion towards homecity and occupation dramatically washed away with newfound vigour for a more fulfilling life.
However, this does not mean the past two years have been wasteful. In hindsight, it was beneficial to be in a fruitless occupation residing in a quiet city I did not like. It distilled awareness of theoretical wisdoms into concrete lessons with rollover application in future endeavours.
Here are 3 of the most prominant lessons.
1. It’s Ok to be Unhappy
In the idyllic suburbs of Ottawa, I had the fortune of being raised with a laissez faire parenting style- something pretty out of the ordinary compared to the traditional Chinese parents portrayed in media and perpetuated through stories. I was never forced to do anything that I did not like. I never learned the piano, played the violin, or took after school lessons I did not want (I was oddly excited when I first did Kumon reading booklets).
The pursuit of my happiness during childhood reverberates into early adulthood in which there is a lingering expectation that the steady day by day experience should be sullied with joy.
This makes not having happiness much more painful and the avoidance of confronting this fact much more preferable.
Not enjoying overall circumstance pushed me to seek fleeting frivolous activities. I traded for long term macro happiness and hope for life trajectory for short term micro satisfaction in the day by day. During the weekdays, I expensed copious amounts of mind capacity on the coffee I was going to grab and the lunch I was going to consume shortly after. At night, I threw myself in trivial hobbies or whatever sporting event that capitalized the world’s attention. For the weekends, I filled my schedule with activities that sedated the dread of the inevitable Monday. It was as if I was running on a treadmill, hopelessly spending my energy running in place while being poorly distracted by the accompanying screen showing fake rolling hills. Stopping meant the sinking reality that I was not happy.
Ironically, continuously worrying about not being happy and chasing temporary fixes resulted in more unhappiness.
The weight of responsibility towards being happy only lifted when I finally admit I was unhappy. And only after this admission can I finally make it my singular focus to seek a long term solution. I was ok with having no hobbies, not going out, nor drinking. Being perceived as “boring” and the accompanying loneliness that sprout from isolation became very important early indicators of correct directionality. I didn’t care about anything that did not align with what was not going to increase my macro happiness, because nothing was worth the long term melancholy otherwise.
In this frame, unhappiness is not a negative thing; it is merely a very high leverage tool for powerful action. And the sooner this is realized, the sooner desired action can come.
It’s ok to be unhappy.
2. People Optimize for Different Things
There is no doubt in my mind that everyone wants the same thing- to live an ideal life. It just so happens that the definition of an ideal life and the process to achieve this definition varies significantly across individuals. I like to think of 4 general non-MECE buckets (non mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive aka not McKinsey approved) of factors influencing divergent optimization and day to day living: core values (ie: family vs work), perspectives (ie: is work a negative thing), expectations (ie: satisfaction towards year end bonuses), and influences from societal expectations and social norms (ie: work life balance = good).
This is all to say that people are very different, to which I summarize with “people optimize for different things.”
Although this fact is pretty obvious, the downstream consequences are nonetheless painful.
If you’ve ever caught me in one of those late night conversations in which introspection is the substance of abuse, you would hear me espouse my optimization towards living a life worth living, one filled with euphoria and terror in the relentless uncertain conquest of independently determined goals and the exploration of some preordained innate biological limit. I do not wish to live to not lose. I want to live to win. And I want to win big. (A future subject to explore more deeply)
But from these past two years, this was not an optimization seemingly shared by most in my immediate vicinity. Most people seemed to be go-with-the-flow-indifferent. Perhaps, living to win was simply defined differently. As such, it felt like I had to wear a mask of sorts- to be satiated in a comfortable monotonous work setting with a high stable salary where the only uncertainty was the magnitude of year end bonus. I no longer felt obligated to explore the depth of human emotion and accompanying wisdoms to improve. Steady was the game.
The difference in priority made my own personal set of optimizations more difficult to pursue. One immediate consequence was the pain of present loneliness which was mitigated through comparison with the pain of long term sadness. Another consequence was the difficulty to find guidance.
In the face of uncertainty, it seems human nature to shrivel away and seek comfort, which can appear in the forms of avoiding decision making and upholding the status quo. An over indexing to the advice from friends also prominently arises, which can be especially dangerous if the friends do not align in optimization (point 7 in Mental Models for Decision Making).
Given that everyone is optimizing for different things and no one around me was optimizing for similar things I’m optimizing for, I had to be willing to be different and have a jump in belief that I was going in the right direction, even if there were not apparent supporting evidence yet.
Will I succeed? Maybe. Will I fail? Maybe. All I knew was that if I optimized for what others were optimizing for, I would most certainly fail.
People optimize for different things.
3. Everyone is Human
Everyone is trying to attain their ideal lives- the set of dreams that makes us so uniquely human. Whether these aspirations are the result of simple underlying neuro chemical currents stimulating specific sets of nerve endings or the blessings of some devine entity bestowed upon us, the processes used to realize them are very similar. To achieve what is not present, everyone must work hard within the repeated daily occurrence of 24 hours. As this occurs, everyone sweats sweat, cries tears, and bleed blood. Everyone experiences happiness and sadness. Everyone seeks connection, love, and purpose. Life has great potential.
It’s also very fragile.
No one can guarantee one’s liveliness tomorrow. And in this fragility comes the great fear that spawns all the other ones everyone tends to think more actively about- heights, spiders, isolation, humiliation, etc.
While I may never know the fabric of others’ internal thoughts, it seems that everyone experiences at least some degree of fear and fundamental uncertainty- no one can guarantee they will not die tomorrow. Under this circumstance, no one can be fully confident in their actions; there will always be some aspects of this nebulous feeling of uncertainty present. It transcends the categories of voting lines, class, and achievement and inflicts everyone in some way.
No one really has a full certainty what they’re doing, the consequences of their actions, the occurrence of outcomes, and the fickle direction of dumb luck.
“It’s idiots all the way up” - Chris Williamson
Having experienced stepwise progression between high school to different years in university to my first full time job, I experienced the same mental cycle over and over again. With some goal in mind, I placed those who have already achieved that goal on a pedestal. From my perspective, as someone who was aspiring and had no clue what he was doing, those people appeared to be crowned saints who could never fail, made no mistakes, and were all righteous in their perfectly tuned habits. Then, when the “step” in achievement finally occurred after extensive toil, I became one of those people I aspired to be, only to realize that I feel no different. I did not feel like I had elevated to become one of those people I desperately aspired to be, despite having what they had. I did not find antidotes to uncertainty. I was still my confused idiot self who still had the same simple joys and optimistic perception of the world. And soon this cycle would repeat as I aspired for something else.
The most profound shift was entering the world of quant trading where top university degrees were common, talent was almost a given, and money was in abundance. This was a place I never knew existed when I started dreaming late in high school and aspired towards in the final year of university. Yet, as I worked with traders on algorithms printing money, I still felt like an idiot; I still felt the uncertainty of it all. And the traders I worked with felt it as well.
No one has the full solution manual to what is happening in the market, the world, and their lives.
Everyone is human.