Ideas/statements about the world that I think are true and that shape my values.
Seeking discomfort is the best mechanism to pursue meaning.
- A life pursuing what is intrinsically valuable is better than one that doesn’t.
- Meaning is intrinsically valuable and can be found in the world.
- Meaning is found through deep experience of emotions and feelings.
- But specifically, deep experience within what you value (see values).
- Deep means of high degree. Emotions and feelings are matters of degree.
- Emotions are universal, bottom-up, neurobiological processes like happiness and sadness.
- Feelings are individual, top-down, mental interpretations of our emotions that integrate with other facets or our lives (our memories, religion, relationships etc.) like freedom and fulfillment.
- Seeking discomfort is the best mechanism to pursue deep experience of emotions and feelings.
- This is what David Goggins raves about. I used to find it a little extreme, but now I firmly believe everyone needs to find the dog in them to feel most fulfilled.
- This conviction grew gradually over the past six years of cold showers and various other uncomfortable endeavours like running a marathon with no training, leaving the religion I was born into, sitting in the front row of my upper year classes after never asking a single question for years, and running a sub 40min 10k.
- But it was cemented during my 2025 summer. I was doing a challenging internship, so I had architected with my friends a robust accountability system for us to collectively stick to our habits, and built up really strong momentum. I was exercising 5x/week, sleeping consistently from 11pm-7am, restricting successfully my social media consumption to Sundays only, and was hitting a few other key habits. Yet, I still felt something was missing. You’ll often hear people say this that exact phrase, and that’s because it’s a universal problem. Robust systems aren’t enough. Everyone, deep-down, desires to find that dog in them and do crazy uncomfortable things. Because that’s where the Deep Life begins.
- This is related to the idea of using your fears as signposts on where to go.
- Therefore, seeking discomfort is the best mechanism to pursue meaning.
(philosophy nerds may criticize this logical structure, but it’s good enough for my purposes)
Being effective is more important than being efficient.
“Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible.” - Tim Ferris
Seeking discomfort has an inherent action-bias. But action-bias alone isn’t enough. You can easily end up running in circles, never finding the right things to invest in. This belief has an inherent direction-bias, and helps me be more intentional with everything I do.
Another framing: moving in the right direction is more important than the speed with which you’re moving. Don’t just blindly go from A to B (that’s right in front of you). Think carefully about what the right B is.
The “what” that is right will depend on your values, goals, priorities. Thus, this is a point about continuously going inwards to identify the right things to invest time in.
Personal pointers for living by this belief:
- Grow comfortable with the discomfort of divergent thinking. People often stay busy because they’re too afraid to confront themselves, face that they may be doing the wrong thing, and consider alternate options.
- Learn to separate yourself into two agents. The planner and the doer. The boss and the employee.
- The planner thinks critically about what’s important across longer time frames like a week, a month, a year, and the doer follows the planner.
- The doer is action biased and doesn’t obsess over perfect action.
- The planner asks: “If this is the single most important thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied”
- Craft a life that has systems that continuously embed self-reflection in the day-to-day.
“Being selective is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.” - Tim Ferris
Don’t follow your passion, let it follow you. Passion is a side effect of mastery.
Because how tf can you know your passion without first collecting a lot of data across many fields you’re interested in.
The best relationships naturally bring out your generative drive.
If you want to run far, run with others.
There will be more words to come on the power of community.
You can’t choose what you believe.
You have to be genuinely convinced that something is true.
This, unfortunately complicates a lot of things, and is what, in combination with many other things, led me to leave Christianity and become agnostic.
Use your fears as signposts on where to go.
You can’t properly assess your performance in most areas of life.
So you have to go out of your way to seek out feedback. And drop your ego along the way.
This was made obvious to me during my time as a software engineer intern at Copperleaf, where I tackled large, complex software systems for the first time, and really struggled to get started (things turned out fine in the end! when I sought out feedback ﾂ ).