What I wish I’d known (5/20/2025)

What I wish I’d known in high school:

• Interrogate default assumptions. Conventional wisdom is often an opaque view held by many people. Seeing clearly presents an incredible opportunity.

• Have confidence in contrarian beliefs. Sometimes you’ll be looking at a zebra, and everyone around you calls it a striped horse. Don’t choose to be obviously wrong just because others are.

• Delete social media.

• Find a purpose that’s bigger than any single accomplishment. If you have a transcendental passion, there will always be something to work towards.

• Finding people with similar thought processes is really hard.

• There’s a lot of pressure to pursue a traditional path. Take the time to deeply think about what you want beyond what the world presents to you.

• You can do more than you think simply by taking action. In many cases the reason things aren’t as good as they could be is simply because nobody has tried to bring change.

• Nothing good is ever easy. Find things that have high barriers and spend time learning to overcome them. If it seems easy, then other people have probably done it. The things that people tell you not to do because they are “too hard” are exactly the things you want to be doing.

• Writing is the best and only way to deeply think about something.