Honor is important. Having self-respect and wanting others to respect you is a very natural desire. And so the biggest risk you can take is to put your honor on the line. There are so many people out there who are afraid to take risks. Afraid they would be considered foolish. But that’s how you grow.

It is boring being the smartest in the room. There is a sense of peace of mind, not taking yourself so seriously, not being afraid of being hilariously wrong. The day you stop what people think of you is the day you start learning about the world around you.

They say you either win, or you learn. Learning from failure helps you grow, so why not speed up the process and fail repeatedly? The quicker you figure out all the wrong answers, the quicker you know which ones are correct. And consequently, the quicker you grow. [1]

There’s a quote attributed to Confucius. I’m not good with history and I certainly can’t translate Chinese to English, so I don’t know how accurate it is, but the quote is something like “The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

Sometimes you can be in a class and raise a hand to ask a question. You can feel time stopping and the entire universe looking in your direction listening carefully to your question, whose answer should be “obvious” and something you “should’ve known.” You might sense people laughing at you. Making fun of you for clarifying a doubt. It can be intimidating. But who cares?

It does not matter what others think. With enough apathy towards their opinions, one might just become completely ignorant about them. That ignorance is powerful and allows you to do things that a person afraid to harm his reputation could never think of doing. [2]

Having the courage to fail and be mocked leads to growth. When you grow, you find yourself better prepared for life. All those afraid to ask questions, all those who might have laughed at you, will naturally be left behind. Time is the greatest filter. With enough consistency and curiosity, you outperform others, and they can never see it coming. To them, you’re just a guy that asks foolish questions and makes a lot of mistakes.

Notes

[1] Failure is not the only factor for growth, you also need humility, which is why I stress so much about not being afraid of mockery. Failure can often end in embarrassment, but when you are not afraid of mockery, you can quickly recover and learn from what you did wrong, as opposed to those who get their ego hurt and refrain from trying new things again.

[2] What I meant here was being ignorant to the idea that you were being “foolish”. From your perspective, you’re just asking an innocent question, not knowing others are mocking you for it. It is also how most end up taking big risks in their career, ignorant about the challenges it causes them. If they overcome those challenges, they are pushed to the top of the ladder in their field. But, if they would’ve been aware of the challenges beforehand, they might’ve not even started.

Thanks to Ali El Shennawy for suggestions and for reading drafts of this.

When you entertain their idea and ask them to quit their job, they will make excuses, because deep down they know money is, in fact, important. It is all a cope because they have a job they don’t like, but they’re too insecure to admit this.

They spend their whole life afraid to spend even a single penny, in hopes they can save just enough money to escape from their nightmare, which is their job. Those who realize the hypocrisy of the first type of people come under group B.

Group B adopts an ideology that is the polar opposite. They say things like “only money matters, and nothing else.” or “money makes the world go round.”. They think that as long as you have a high-paying job, the money can make up for everything you sacrificed, no matter what it was.

But what if that is not true? What if what you sacrificed did matter? And what if it determined how much money you’d make? Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine you have two choices. One is a six-figure job with great benefits and pensions. The other requires you to be broke for 10 years until you suddenly make billions. Which do you choose?

The latter may be the obvious choice, but it is not possible until one has a passion for the work. Group B not only lacks passion, but the self-belief to bet a decade on an uncertain future as well. This is where you have group C.

If groups A and B are two extremes in a spectrum, then group C is at the dead center. They realize that money is important and that there is nothing wrong with monetizing their hobbies, but also understand that it is controlled by external factors such as happiness, which can not be sacrificed. [1]

As a result, they will naturally outperform groups A and B and leave them in the dust, because even if they are broke for 10 years, they will continue to persevere as long as they are happy and working on their passion, and when it is time to reap the benefits, society will reward them handsomely for their work.

Amazon was founded in 1994, Tesla was founded in 2003, and OpenAI was founded in 2015. Bezos, Musk, and Altman spent decades on their companies before they became rich and famous. They had belief in themselves to bet on an uncertain future for an uncertain amount of time. That’s passion.

Unfortunately, many in STEM fields lack passion, making their dreams small and repulsive. The world is changing rapidly and we need people with ideas that are larger than life. [2]

Why even spend so much time and effort when you live in a world where people can be rich just by dancing on TikTok? Alternatively, why work on a hobby for free when you can monetize it and feed your family?

When you have passion and a desire for competition, you can persevere and outperform others, and as a result, positively contribute to this changing world. [3]

Notes

[1] I want to clarify that seeking money and happiness are two different goals. One does not necessarily lead to another. Group A runs away from money in search of happiness, but since food, water, and shelter have a price tag, all they get is misery. Since group B sacrifices happiness for money, they hate their job, which in turn makes them hate their life. Group C prioritizes both goals and as a result, can make them work in parallel to each other. When you have a job that makes you happy, it feels like play. No one likes working 24x7, but wish they could play and enjoy all the time. When you have work that feels like play, you can’t help but outperform the one that does the bare minimum for a simple paycheck.

[2] As someone pursuing computer engineering, I often come across people who look down upon programming. They disregard the beauty behind it and reduce it to a means to an end. Yes, clever programming can make you money, but if that is your only intent, you can spend the next 40 years of your life in web dev, making fancy animations for websites that will be read largely by LLMs in the near future.

[3] We have seen a lot of new technology over the last couple of decades, and although it is very exciting, sometimes it can get a little scary, especially when you have a small minority of people behind closed doors making decisions for the large majority. Protests and status games can only help you so much. Only when you decide to compete can you truly ride the bandwagon of change without fearing for your safety. It is for this reason it can be necessary to actively contribute to the market instead of just being a slave to someone else’s vision of the world.

Thanks to Yazan Moghrabi for suggestions and for reading drafts of this.

Most people read “distraction” and think of TV or scrolling on social media, but what I am talking about is “work” that isn’t really work, or in other words, it is distraction disguised as work.

A couple of months ago, I was convinced I had to write the lecture notes for my class in Markdown. I was convinced it was a superior method of note-taking as I had more control over how my finished notes would look as a PDF. I spent so much time beautifying my notes that a few months later I received the fruits of my labor. A final grade of C.

It is easy to say to not be like me, but everyone has had moments in their life where they wasted their time on the wrong thing. I had some of my friends who spent the majority of their freshman year partying and hanging out.

The usual thought process was like this. I’m meeting new people, therefore I’m networking, which means I’m gaining leverage for my career, therefore I’m working, and therefore I’m not wasting time. They are stubborn that this is the case until they get multiple F’s and have to repeat a whole year.

The world is competitive, and your biggest enemy is yourself. It is very easy to overthink and get distracted focussing on the wrong thing. However, these thoughts do not exist by themselves.

Thinking is like watching a movie. The movie doesn’t watch itself, it needs you to be watched. Your thoughts are projected on an imaginary screen in your head, and they need you to be watched. You can either focus on watching those thoughts in your head, or you can turn off the TV and focus on what’s in front of you. When you do this, most of time you realize the solution to the problem you are facing is much simpler than you initially thought.

This is also why it is important to limit what ideas you consume and from where. When you have a thousand people telling you a thousand things about what you are and aren’t supposed to do in life, it can get very overwhelming and can hinder your ability to make the right decision.

The less voices there are outside your mind, the less there are voices inside it. Once again, turn off the TV in your mind, and focus on what’s immediately in front of you. The answer is much more simpler.

You don’t need to beautify your notes, you don’t even need notes. You can still ace your exams if you can just understand the lecturer to a good enough magnitude. In fact, that is exactly what I do nowadays in my classes. Similarly, you don’t need to network to get leverage. You just need to get good and show people that you’re good, and if you’re good enough, they will want to be around you all the time.

Thanks to Yazan Moghrabi for suggestions and for reading drafts of this.