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Self-Awareness Is Not a Character Trait

December 22, 2018September 22, 2022 Nik

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” — Edward J. Stieglitz

While this quote makes it clear that time is a bad way to assess the quality of a human life, it also begs a question: how do we best measure our lives?

When you think back, do you recount how much you did? How much you made? How happy you felt on average? Me, I’m turning inward this year. The more external a measure, the lower my chances of living up to the standard I set. There’s no perfect tool, but I like this question for year-end reflection:

How much have I learned about myself?

It acknowledges outcomes as side effects and zones in on the parts you control about your character, identity, and behavior. Living in sync with your natural tendencies while adjusting to your life’s context is a good way to be happy and content, at least most of the time. You don’t stress about externals. You know you’ll get there by getting better. And syncing is how you’ll do it.

But when I tried to answer this question, I realized I was about to give not just a bad, but a completely wrong answer. Does that make it a bad question?

I think it’s something else. I think we have the wrong idea of self-awareness.

Woke Is Always the Wrong Word

I don’t like the word ‘woke.’ Used to create or point out a lack of awareness around societal and racial issues, it does much for the marketing of an important movement, but little to actually build the understanding this movement seeks to create. Because what it does is split the world in two.

You’re either awake or you’re asleep. It’s a binary state and so, for the people using words like ‘woke’ to identify with or isolate from others, it’s very easy to fall into a worldview that’s binary too. In reality, all of life happens on spectra.

I might be well-aware of some racial issues and completely oblivious to others. What’s more, I only have a chance of recognizing each one in its own context. Unless my mind is in the right place at the right time, I can mistake the cashier’s being unfriendly for being racist or vice versa. I’m not big on politics, but it’s easy to see this how this debate could get very ugly, very fast.

But it needn’t be. Maybe, we just have to reconsider our chosen language. What if we used words like ‘responsive’ or ‘sensitive?’ Words that live on spectra already. It’d make our efforts so much more productive.

When it comes to self-awareness, we have the exact same problem.

There Are Two Kinds of Dictionaries…

I’m not an etymologist, but I don’t think it’s foolish to assume the words ‘aware’ and ‘awake’ being in close relation. The German ‘gewahr’ means roughly as much as the former, ‘wahren’ equals ‘to protect,’ to keep in its current state, and ‘wachen’ literally means to stay awake and potentially guard something.

Clearly, some connection to our state of consciousness exists. But that’s not what we think of when we talk about self-awareness, is it? We see it as a character trait. A quality. And a rather permanent one at that.

Just like an aggressive social revolutionary, we want our world to be binary. To split neatly into two categories. We talk about “self-aware people” as if that call was as easy to make as “he talks loudly” or “her hair is curly.” It’s not.

And yet, even most dictionaries focus on self-knowledge as a feature:

The quality or state of being aware; knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists.

But if you find a good one, like Wiktionary, they’ll include another definition:

The state or level of consciousness where sense data can be confirmed by an observer.

It might seem like I’m nitpicking, but when you try to better understand how you live and move in this world, the distinction between these two definitions makes all the difference. One describes self-knowledge as static, the other as a state of observation. Mere presence is enough. You’re self-aware long before you draw conclusions and file them away. Just observe and you’re there.

Self-awareness is not a characteristic. It’s a cognitive state.

Closing the Archive

When I try to judge my year by how much I’ve learned about myself, I’m making two false assumptions in one go:

There is a fixed set of equally fixed elements to discover.
Knowledge about those elements will serve me permanently.

The truth is that, besides my physical features and abilities, there’s very little about myself that won’t change. That I can’t change. I have no interest in learning to play the guitar, but if I did it anyway, maybe I’d enjoy it after a certain amount of practice. Accepting the status quo is only useful if I’m not looking to change it.

Instead of considering self-awareness to be this internal archive of facts about who we are, we should dedicate ourselves to mastering the cognitive state. To build the thought habit of being conscious of our actions and feelings.

Being self-aware is like being alert or attentive or quick-witted. Sometimes you are, sometimes you’re not. But the degree to which is measurable. We can design tests to measure how quickly you respond to stimuli or count how many puns you drop in an hour. In theory, self-awareness is the same.

Except there’s no device for this yet. Imagine you had a written list of all your thoughts for one day. You could scan it for observations about your actions and emotions, then calculate how much of the time you were self-aware. How much would it be? 1%? 3%? 0.1%?

In any case, it changes the nature of the big, year-end question.

A Simple Behavior Instead of an Elusive Quality

Having external goals can be useful. They’ll spur you on in a certain direction and, to some extent, reaching them can make you happy. But if they’re all you measure your years by, you’ll likely have a bad time.

Measuring your inner progress and drawing satisfaction from how much you did for what you actually control feels relieving and adds balance. Problems arise when we impose the same standards of false permanence of external goals on our development as humans.

The difference between self-awareness as a steady set of ideas about yourself and a cognitive state you can practice is the same as the difference between knowledge and intelligence: one leads to a never-ending struggle for more, the other provides a daily standard that’s possible to live up to.

It’s not how much self-knowledge we’ve accumulated, but whether we assessed our thoughts and feelings at the right times that matters. Don’t ask how much more you know about yourself now than you did a year ago. Ask:

How much time have I spent observing myself?

Of course, this is only one aspect of the grand puzzle, but self-perception as your default cognitive state — or at least for a large chunk of the time you spend awake — seems, to me, a battle worth fighting.

It’s not bent on perfection or pinning down what can’t be fixed in place. Instead, it allows adaptation and encourages deliberate change. It’s a simple if hard to attain behavior, not an elusive quality. And it can start small.

Oh, and I have this feeling that, at the end of next year, you’ll feel a lot better about yourself when you look back.

Everything I Know Is True – My Entire Life in 55 Lessons

December 19, 2018May 18, 2022 Nik

The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said:

“Death is being alive and not knowing it.”

I guess until 2012, I was dead. It’s not like I wasn’t living. I was trying my best and, most of the time, I was happy. But I didn’t realize it and so I was unable to appreciate the vastness of this incredible experience called life.

I didn’t know who I was. How much I could change. That I could shape life as much as it could shape me. So when I read something that hinted at these things for the first time, I began a lifelong journey: the quest to know myself.

Seneca said it takes a lifetime to learn how to live, just like it takes a lifetime to learn how to die. But with each new piece of the ever-changing puzzle you find, you get a little closer to your true self. To being alive and knowing it.

More importantly, you’ll develop the confidence to express that self. To not be trapped by dogma and societal doctrine. I’ve only just begun, and there’s infinitely more to discover, but here’s everything I know to be true right now.

The most important part of figuring out how to live is asking the question.
“I don’t know” is not an admission of defeat, it’s the start of empowerment.
Most of the solutions to life’s challenges lie in sitting with yourself.
The only person you’ll spend the rest of your life with is you.
Imagination is our most powerful ability. It is also the most dangerous.
If you run out of kind words for yourself, stop talking.
Empathy is learning to look in the mirror and not hate what you see.
The truth about ourselves is what we choose to believe.
Freedom is always internal. Whether ‘to’ or ‘from,’ it starts in the mind.
Having a choice matters more than whatever choice you make.
Love is not a noun, it’s a verb. And it starts with loving yourself.
We should believe more in what we create, less in what we emulate.
We can’t choose what we’re raised to value, but we can choose to change.
What we learn alone is what we carry into our interactions with others.
All relationships in life have mutual effects. Everything is connected.
Comparison is not just the death of joy, it is also the birth of misery.
It’s better to be curious than judgmental and impossible to be both at once.
Study the failures of those around you, not the wins of those far away.
Our fixed point of view is an individual limit, but a collective strength.
Changing your perspective is hard, but let it always be your first try.
How much we learn is limited by how open-minded we are, not time.
Aging won’t free you from stupidity. Only learning will.
A mistake is only as valuable as the time you spend thinking about it.
Minimalism is not about physical space, it’s about making room to think.
Every lesson in life comes at the expense of unlearning another.
Seeing clearly is holding different truths in your head at the same time.
The more you listen, the smarter you get. Listening leads to learning.
The smarter you get, the more you listen. Learning leads to humility.
The best tools always put you in control, even when you’re not using them.
Books are infinite. If you treat them right, they’ll keep on giving forever.
We can’t delegate our responsible use of technology to technology itself.
When we make technology our ideology, we let our tools form our identity.
You don’t need an identity to have a life.
The only way to stay true to who you are is to change every day.
There is no right set of habits. Just the ability to adapt at the right time.
Know how to build and break habits and you’ll always flow with change.
Reality consists of subjects and verbs. We supply all the adjectives.
The only place where we can truly live is the present. It all happens here.
Peace of mind relies on having faith in present-you.
Often, the easiest way is the hard way. More effort, but less competition.
Few things that are risky are actually dangerous.
Social acceptance is a bad metric for making choices and tracking success.
When the outside world is loud, be quiet inside.
Your work should reflect who you are, not what you want your life to be.
Detachment bears authenticity, expectations cloud your thinking.
The easiest way to attract what you desire is to deserve what you want.
Wanting what makes you happy requires wanting the right things.
Half of happiness is learning to love everything you don’t have.
If you travel because you’re unhappy, you’ll never reach your destination.
Happiness is a spontaneous byproduct, not a permanent state.
Death will be an interruption.
Your legacy will be determined by the perception of others. Not you.
Everything that’s part of the grand circle is destined to die. Including us.
What you do in your one life will be everything you ever do.
If we act accordingly, life is long enough for most of us.

How To Avoid a Life of Regret

December 7, 2018October 1, 2022 Nik

I’m sitting alone in my apartment. It’s Sunday night. Too late to be productive, too early to sleep, and I’m too hungry to do either. A flash of insight reveals my immediate fate: dumplings.

I don’t know where the gods of culinary inspiration sent it from, but the thought instantly grows roots. As they wrap around my stomach, squeezing it ever tighter, I message some friends to see if anyone wants to go.

One said he was out of town. Another on a date. Some didn’t reply and one already ate. With “no”s piling up faster than even the speediest cook could fold and fry the delicious dough bags, I began to think.

“Maybe, I should just stay in.”

“I still have food at home.”

“It’s cold out anyway.”

But then, another observation — not sent by a god but my gut — hit me. It took some mental debating, but, eventually, I snapped out of it.

“Screw it. I’m getting dumplings.”

I got dressed, walked to the restaurant, went inside, sat down, ordered, and, within a few minutes, I was munching on a dozen of a Chinese delicacy called wonton. The owner even gave me a free mango pudding for dessert. Score!

I won this round, but the conversation that had to happen earlier in my head for me to do so was just one of the many encounters we all have with a dire, devastating force called ‘potential regret.’ What was really going on was this:

I was afraid of doing what I wanted because I was alone.

A Feature We Can’t Turn Off

Being alone is a weird state for a social animal. First, there’s the physical discomfort, from the silence to the goosebumps to the sensory triggers our brains begin to manufacture. Then, there’s the psychological toll.

If you’ve ever sat with emptiness for a while, you’ll have noticed that, at first, your mind continues to tell the story it always tells. Maybe, it’s the one about work or the one about the friend you just dropped off or the one about what you should eat. Maybe, you’ll even flick through a couple of those. But soon you’ll realize — and this rarely happens in everyday life — that you are telling yourself a story. That most of what you do is just fighting your inner silence.

We’re having this big, public discussion about our technology fostering a culture of escapism, but if we’re honest, that’s nothing we needed devices for. It’s built into the human experience. A feature we can’t turn off. We say we ‘think,’ but mostly we’re just letting whatever thoughts come wash over us.

To some extent, this is normal. Permanently squeezing your gray matter with pressing questions — “Who am I? Why am I? What is life’s purpose? What’s mine? Who am I meant to be? And why am I not there yet?” — only drives you insane. But if we shut them down every time they creep up, we stand to lose our minds just the same.

The way we architect this second, equally inevitable collapse, however, is a lot more fascinating.

Agency Over Accomplishment

When she asked 90-somethings what they regretted most, Lydia Sohn made a fascinating discovery: old people don’t get nearly as much satisfaction out of their past careers than young people expect out of their future ones.

“Their joys and regrets have nothing to do with their careers, but with their parents, children, spouses, and friends.”

As it turns out, it’s not their work, but their relationships that contributed most to their happiness. They didn’t crave a longer list of accomplishments, but more quality moments with their loved ones. This finding contradicts the popular idea that our life’s happiness curve shapes like a U-bend, with spikes early and late and a big trough in the middle. People felt their best while being hard-working fathers and busy housewife mothers (and vice versa).

Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse, regret researcher, and author of a popular book on the topic, identified a different, but equally powerful source of remorse: living a shadow-life.

“Of all of the regrets and lessons shared with me as I sat beside their beds, the regret of not having lived a life true to themselves was the most common one of all. It was also the one that caused the most frustration, as the client’s realization came too late. ‘It’s not like I wanted to live a grand life,’ Grace explained in one of many conversations from her bed. ‘But I wanted to do things for me too and I just didn’t have the courage.’”

Everyone is different and no one person’s experience can dictate your own best path of action, but when it comes to aging, the advice of those who’ve done it already is sure worth considering. These two insights are interesting all on their own, but if we piece them together, we can learn even more:

We may be our best self when we’re not focused on it all that much.
In order to feel like we are, we need to decide some things on our own.

Whether they were happily married or not, these people’s relationships with their partners took a back seat as their family grew. But for those where either ended up suppressing their own desires altogether, a busy life turned into an estranged one — and that’s not something we’re fond of looking back to.

Now I’m really glad I decided to go eat those dumplings.

Miserable Always Does The Job

A friend of mine is currently trying to settle on a topic for her thesis. But, as she says of herself, she’s not very decisive. After researching multiple angles and approaching several faculty members, it came down to two options. When she got accepted for only one, I congratulated her. I was wrong.

Having had no clear preference for either topic before, she was now sad about one road being blocked — and back to brainstorming more options. This may sound silly, but it’s not uncommon. A very real struggle for a very real group of people, particularly those around my age. We know we have a wealth of options, so we try to look at them all, and, without ever deciding, feel bad about the ones we miss, the ones we might have missed, and the perfect ones we think should exist somewhere, even though they never do.

We know abundance does this to us from science. Barry Schwartz wrote The Paradox of Choice about this. The more choice, the harder it is to choose and the easier to make mistakes. And even though finding ‘perfect’ is as impossible as it ever was and we know it, we’re still disappointed if we don’t.

What my friend is doing — what most of us are doing — is not distracting ourselves with meaningless entertainment or existential problems.

We do it with an abundance of good options that don’t reflect who we actually are.

For a lot of us, life is too easy. We know we’ll get dinner. A date is just a swipe away. Our work may be boring, but it pays. At worst, we’ll cancel Spotify. But instead of using all this amenity and time to figure ourselves out, instead of saying “this one feels like me” and running with it, we choose whatever outcome we get to be the one that makes us feel miserable.

But, as we learned from those senior to us, being happy is not about choosing the best, but about loving what you have chosen. How much you dictate the outcome won’t matter nearly as much as having had a say. Whatever agency you have, as long as you don’t second-guess yourself, you’ll likely be content.

And sometimes, that is as simple as eating the first food that comes to mind.

Everything Starts Small

Maybe, you really want to try a new style of pasta. Or to go see that movie. Or just get ice cream. But then you ask around and find out no one wants to go. They might be busy. Maybe, they’re not around. Not hungry. Or they don’t want to hang out today. That’s okay.

What’s not okay is what we usually do next: we stay at home.

We choose to feel sorry for ourselves instead of doing what we want, even if no one’s stopping us.

We do it because moving in a state that’s already uncomfortable when you’re still is extra disconcerting. We do it because we pressure ourselves to optimize among a sea of options despite secretly knowing most of them are irrelevant to us. And we do it because of what people would think; what they would say if they caught us being happy on our own.

I love sharing. I love doing things together. But when your support goes down the tube, you can’t just throw your life right after. Don’t stop living when no one’s watching. Have pride. Get dressed. Show up. Not for others. For yourself.

The person who should be most excited about everything you do in life is you.

But if you can’t live true to yourself when no one’s around, how do you expect to do it in the face of a growing set of responsibilities? How do you expect to do it with more and more agents thrown into the picture? A partner, two kids, an elderly parent. A team you’re leading, a host of fans, or a stubborn boss?

What we want is rarely impractical. Eating alone doesn’t make the food taste worse. But sometimes, it is uncomfortable to be authentic. To act on what you know you want. And yet, we can’t let that prevent us from going after it.

Because it starts with dinner or a movie, but that’s not where it stops.

One day we resort to frozen pizza, the next it’s going back to our shitty job. All because we were too scared to be the lone fighter for the right cause. Yes, your friend should not have chickened out on that startup idea. Yes, finding a great job takes time. But you were never meant to face those struggles unprepared.

Because staying true to yourself, like everything, starts small. It’s not about nailing your Ph.D. or choosing the perfect partner. It’s about listening to your gut when you want to eat dumplings.

Even if it means that, sometimes, you’ll have dinner by yourself.

How To Deal With The Adversities Of Life

November 11, 2018October 1, 2022 Nik

On July 19th in 64 AD, a fire broke out in Rome. Within just six days, the world’s most prosperous city was almost completely destroyed. Ten out of Rome’s fourteen districts burned down to the ground, leaving dozens of buildings in ruins, hundreds of people dead, and thousands more homeless.

To this day, historians argue whether emperor Nero ordered the fire himself to take credit for the splendor of a rebuilt Rome. Regardless of the disaster’s origins, rebuild the city he did, in part thanks to a big donation from Lyons.

Just one year later, Nero had a chance to return the favor: Lyons, too, burned down. While he sent the same sum, Rome’s premier philosopher thought about the irony of it all. Remembering when he stood in the rubble of his own city’s decimated remains, Lucius Annaeus Seneca shows empathy for a friend:

“Sturdy and resolute though he is when it comes to facing his own troubles, our Liberalis has been deeply shocked by the whole thing. And he has some reason to be shaken. What is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster. The fact that it was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person’s grief.”

You may not have had to mark yourself as ‘safe’ on Facebook during a fire, an earthquake, or a tsunami, but you’ve surely had things go very wrong very suddenly. Maybe you got fired instead of promoted. Maybe a loved one died unexpectedly. Maybe an illness disabled you for three months out of the blue.

We’ve greatly reduced the toll on human life taken by natural disasters since the Roman age, but as individuals, we’ll all encounter surprising twists of fate at least a few times over the course of our life. If these twists are unfortunate, their suddenness adds to our pain. At worst, it might incapacitate us for years.

When adversity is all but guaranteed, how can we stop it from paralyzing us?

The Jurisdiction of Fortune

Never one to point out a problem without a solution, Seneca offers multiple comforting alternatives. The first and most obvious is preparation:

“Therefore, nothing ought to be unexpected by us. Our minds should be sent forward in advance to meet all problems, and we should consider not what is wont to happen, but what can happen.”

Humans aren’t perfect. Our brains are flawed and as individuals, we all have a unique, but limited perspective. Nonetheless, being the simulation machines that we are, few things are inconceivable to us. We might never be able to expect everything, but we can make a lot of accurate projections.

We can ruminate on the duration of the good times we live in and consider what’ll happen if they end. We can extrapolate some of the bad eventualities bound to come and make guesses where they will come from. Finally, we can acknowledge that, contrary to Murphy’s law, not everything that can go wrong will — but it might. As we make plans and execute them, this helps.

The second thing Seneca offers to his friend Liberalis is perspective:

“Therefore, let the mind be disciplined to understand and to endure its own lot; let it have the knowledge that there is nothing which fortune does not dare — that she has the same jurisdiction over empires as over emperors, the same power over cities as over the citizens who dwell therein. We must not cry out at any of these calamities. Into such a world have we entered, and under such laws do we live.”

It’s true that life may sometimes render even our best efforts useless, but in this powerlessness, at least we are not alone.

Even nature itself is no match for a universe governed by the forces of change, Seneca says. Mountain tops dissolve, entire regions perish, hills are leveled by the power of flames, and landmarks are swallowed by the sea. And yet, not one of these events can live up to the rumors about it we indulge in. Especially because often, setbacks are actually the beginning of something better.

While these are all formidable coping mechanisms, somehow, none of them seems to capture the true essence of the problem. Lucky for us, Seneca did.

Finding True Equanimity

Despite Seneca’s various attempts at providing relief, when it comes to fate’s toughest blows, there is a sense of discomfort that’s hard to shake. The mere thought of losing a friend or watching our house burn sends shivers down our spine. That’s because at its core, all adversity reminds us of a dark truth:

“It would be tedious to recount all the ways by which fate may come; but this one thing I know: all the works of mortal man have been doomed to mortality, and in the midst of things which have been destined to die, we live!”

We live in a world in which everything has been designed to die. Including us.

As a result, it matters not so much if our misfortunes are unpredictable or if they happen to someone else rather than us, for these modalities merely determine the intensity of the underlying, universal reminder: all things die.

It’s painful to watch anything crumble, knowing full well we’re bound to meet the same fate one day. Every dried plant, every dead animal, every decaying building, broken chair, and crumpled piece of paper; they’re all constant little notices that, one day, our time too will be up.

Facing this truth is uncomfortable, but it is exactly in this confrontation where true equanimity lies. According to Seneca, death is the equalizing constraint allowing us to “make peace again with destiny, the destiny that unravels all ties:”

“We are unequal at birth, but are equal in death.”

Emotional suffering is a subtle complaint about the unfairness of life. Why didn’t your relationship last? Why weren’t our career expectations met? Why do fake news, armed robberies, and disturbing videos exist? All of these are moot questions once you accept that everything eventually comes to an end.

We can’t predict all of life’s eventualities, but we also don’t need to, because every possible outcome is still an outcome that will pass. Life has always consisted of both creation and destruction, the universe’s balancing forces.

If anything, we are the ones beating the odds. Our very existence is defiance. Maybe that’s why we’re so easily upset by it. We’re the ones who get to live the longest, to witness the world and what’s in it, to contemplate the circle of life.

This is the condition we lament when, actually, we should be grateful for it.

A Strange Fact of Life

Earth has always wreaked the occasional havoc on its inhabitants. And while our grasp on fortune’s worst calamities gets stronger and stronger, no one can dodge all of life’s curveballs.

Because abruptness adds emotional anguish to our many challenges, Seneca suggests we should prepare for all imaginable possibilities. Like setting the dinner table every night, it won’t protect us from uninvited guests, but it’ll allow us to welcome them when they show up at our door and at once begin.

We are also not alone in facing our ordeals, for fate makes halt for none. Neither our cities nor our neighbors will be spared; even nature must remake itself. Luckily, every rock bottom we hit is a chance to build something better.

Unfortunately, none of Seneca’s great advice can shield us from the true source of adversity’s paralyzing discomfort: we live in a world destined to die. The transience of life is tragic and we don’t like being reminded of it.

At the same time, it is this very fragility that unites all things in the universe.

Only if we embrace it can we move past the expendable questions that make our lives miserable. There is no need to prepare for every case, because all cases are subject to change. Mortality is the great equalizer, but what prelude could offer more cause for gratitude than the experience of being human?

It goes back only to medieval Persian poets, but the old adage might as well stem from our favorite Roman philosopher himself: this too shall pass.

It’s a strange, but also rather beautiful fact of life, don’t you think?

The Day I Realized I Couldn’t Beat Time

October 3, 2018August 10, 2023 Nik

Today would’ve been my grandma’s 76th birthday. Sadly, she’s been dead for ten years. Cancer. Ugh. I hate the very word. And while no one should lose their grandma at 17, let alone a parent, people do every day. That’s life.

Luckily, I had a great time with my grandma while she was here. She taught me a lot. I guess all of the people closest to us can, if only we pay attention.

Grandma was born in East Germany even before East Germany became a thing and she embodied that mindset down to the clichés.

She was very frugal, downright cheap at times, but it kept the household and my grandpa’s architecture firm together. Except when it came to making gifts, where too much was never enough and she always gave freely.

First and foremost, however, my grandma was a comic. She was kinda clumsy, so she’d always get herself into some mess and then laugh at it from the bottom of her heart. One time she backed right into a stall at the farmer’s market, sending fruits and veggies all over the place. She’d often drop things and laugh at everything that happened whenever we played board games.

She dipped literally all foods into her coffee, from cake to cookies to ham sandwiches. Nothing was safe. She also had the sweatiest feet anyone’s ever seen and she laughed at that too. I can’t think of anyone who lived more by that famous quote:

“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” ― Oscar Wilde

Laughing at life is the thing my grandma taught me that’s most worth remembering. But there’s another big lesson I wouldn’t have wanted to miss:

None of us can beat time.

How To Stay Calm While Chasing Big Goals

September 14, 2018September 30, 2022 Nik

When my best friend and I graduated high school, we came up with “the List.”

We thought about our wildest dreams and put them on a timeline. Three months, one year, then five, then ten. There was only one problem: they were all stupid goals. Like, downright delusional.

For starters, our top priority was to become a billionaire. And it only got worse from there. We thought we’d have made it if we managed to…

Own a car for at least $100k, a penthouse, and a private jet.
Get one of those black credit cards that probably comes with its own yacht.
Spend $1,000 in a club in a single night, all cash, and oh, pour some Cristal on the floor.

If you’re not facepalming yet, now would be a good time. I wish I could go back and punch that kid square in the face. But despite the horrendous outcome, there’s one thing I have to give him credit for:

For the first time in his life, he made a conscious effort to think about what he wants.

What Most People Get Wrong About Setting Goals

If you never reflect on your desires, you live your entire life driven by impulse.

This happens to a lot of people when they bury their childhood dreams deep inside and stop questioning the status quo. Wake up, go to work, hit the gym, have a few drinks, zone out in front of the TV. Then, at 63, suddenly realize what you’ve missed all these years.

While we have no way of knowing for sure unless we’ve lived it, the alternative might be just as painful: You’re constantly fretting about what goals to chase. Did I pick the right one for this year? What if this is a mistake? Was it a good call to leave that job? When am I gonna have time to paint?

We tend to think tracking our goals will always lead to a better result, but that’s only true for the completion of the goal itself, not how we feel about it when we’re done. We miss the bigger point:

Keeping score always leads to anxiety.

The price of tracking your goals is doubt. Worrying is a natural, human behavior; one that is inseparable from the process of organization. It’s true, we can go after both our big goals and the small ones, but one always comes at the expense of the other. The tension of having to manage the ratio, the pain of choosing which to sacrifice, over and over again, will never go away.

As a corollary, the person who satisfies only their short-term needs might eat one big bowl of regret some day, but for 40 years or so, they avoid the stress of managing desire. That’s no small thing. Again, we can’t know for sure, but my guess is that much of that same regret is also baked into our prioritization of dreams. Except it’s unconfirmed. We create it in our own heads by doubting our decisions.

The result is that we can either ignore our goals, ride the wave, and roll the dice with long-term regret or suffer constant, short-term discomfort from fretting about our choices, but feel more in control about the life we build.

From a cosmic standpoint, this is rather hilarious. There’s a good chance we’re all left with the same amounts of joy and pain. The procrastinators and the go-getters. The only part we get to decide is how we distribute them over the course of our lives.

Most of us opt for the latter. It often feels better to have chosen something, even if the choice ended up being wrong. At least you made the call.

But the behavior that follows is somewhat paradoxical.

Adrift the Ocean of Desire

When I made that list eight years ago, I, too, chose to choose.

Since then, I’ve written, crumpled, highlighted, marked, taped, and trashed hundreds of lists of goals. Because sometimes, the only way we can deal with doubt is by caving. By saying “alright, I think I screwed this one up,” and tossing the plan.

As a result, we might sway wildly between extremes. One day, you might decide to become a world-class music producer and that, from here on out, the only thing you’ll focus on is releasing a new beat every week. But four weeks in, you realize the memories of Friday night poker with your friends are more important. So you stop.

That cycle might go on for years. Ironically, this is not unlike the mindless procrastinator, who reacts to all the antics of his mind instantaneously. And while some of this course-correcting is normal, if we do it too often, it’s as if we’re adrift at sea, tossed about by waves of desire, with zero control at all.

But wasn’t that what we originally demanded? Isn’t it control that we chose to pay the price of stress for? What a mess! Obviously, there’s no perfect solution to all this. But I’d still like to show you one tool that has particularly helped me in dealing with it.

I call it my Not-A-Bucket-List.

A List With a Strange Purpose

A lot of useful metaphors exist that can help us balance our goals. There’s the story of the teacher, filling up a jar with rocks, pebbles, sand, then water — to show the most important things have to come first or there’ll be no space left.

Then, there’s the tale of Warren Buffett and his pilot. Apparently, he told him to make a list of his top 25 career goals, then split it into the top five and the remaining 20. Instead of telling him to allocate his time equally, Buffett then said he should toss the second list and avoid it at all cost.

A Not-A-Bucket-List is basically the opposite of the second list. Unlike goals 6–25, which still feel like you should prioritize them, there’s nothing on there that means a lot to you. Nothing you’d die regretful of, having left it undone. It is a list of all the things you’d be happy to sacrifice for a greater goal.

I keep mine in my notes on my iPhone so I can add to it whenever, wherever. I use five categories:

Stuff

I really wanna buy a sandwich maker. Except I’ve been getting along fine without one for the past eight years. I’ve also been procrastinating on buying a new watch after my old one broke. And ordering a 23andMe kit. Don’t even get me started on online courses. Then again, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Books & Reading

If I read all the books and articles recommended to me, I’d be the smartest guy on the street — because I’d literally be homeless. Life is short and I wanna get things done. I love reading and I do a lot of it, but there’s never enough time to read everything.

Movies

Watching a movie a day and then writing about it is the easiest way I can think of to start your career as a writer. And while I write about movies a lot, I already have more ideas than I can write about. Sorry, Netflix backlog, you’re gonna get longer.

Fun Business Ideas

It would be really cool to start gaming again and make a Youtube channel. Or create mashups of my favorite songs. Produce electronic music, rap, and open a café. But none of it is worth sacrificing what I’ve built with writing so far.

Call-A-Friend

We all like to tell ourselves we’re a good friend and to a few people, we are. But most of our kindergarten, high school, and college friendships fade as we get older. Instead of convincing myself I can hold on to all of them, I’d rather admit that other things are more important, but note the names I fondly remember. This way, I can always pick up the phone and call them if we happen to find ourselves in the same place at the same time.

The goal of a Not-A-Bucket-List is to never look at it.

It shouldn’t become your go-to list to pick the next movie. Just the place you turn to if you want to watch a movie and haven’t already got one in mind. Nine out of ten times I open it, it’s to add something, not pick something.

That’s how a Not-A-Bucket-List helps you find peace of mind. Because the little things are accounted for. Even if all they do is catch dust.

The Question That’s Left

Becoming aware of our desires is a gift. The first time it happens, we dare to dream big. Too big, often. Soon, we realize we’ve awoken to a new, just a different struggle: balancing our lofty aspirations with our modest goals.

And while the emotional turmoil of forsaking goals altogether might be the same, picking our battles and keeping score gives us the comforting feeling of having done the best we can do. That’s an effort worth making, but one that is easily negated when it’s met with constant doubts and countless, unnecessary changes of plans.

A Not-A-Bucket-List can help you acknowledge the fact that you, like all of us, have many dreams and plans, but not enough time to make them all come true. After making and throwing out many goal lists over the years, I find it one of the most useful tools to stay calm while trying to accomplish big things.

It’s almost as if the sole act of writing something on that list makes it less important. Maybe it does. But what’s most beautiful is that there’s ever room for more. Because the biggest question will always be left:

What are you willing to happily sacrifice all the little things for?

What If I Invest In All The Wrong Things?

July 25, 2018September 22, 2022 Nik

I’ve always been a planner. The Joker would call me a schemer:

“You know, I just do things. The mob has plans; the cops have plans. Gordon’s got plans. They’re schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds.”

“I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”

While giving that speech in The Dark Knight, the Joker is wearing a nurse outfit. He’s in a hospital, visiting someone he put there in the first place. It might be ironic, but it’s also easiest to doubt my plans on days when I’m sick.

What if they’re really just…pathetic?

Trains Leave Stations All The Time

When I first got into crypto in the summer of 2017, choosing what to invest in was easy. The space was growing, but the good, serious projects were far and few between. One year and thousands of new companies later, selecting among even the top 1% feels like an impossible task. There are 17 good solutions to every major problem and all sources of information have their own, hidden agenda.

Once again, infinite choice has caught up to us. The community even has a word for it: FOMO. The fear of missing out on the next, hot investment keeps individual players forever anxious, circling around a single question:

What if I invest in all the wrong things?

Stuck in bed with a cold recently, thinking about my portfolio and my many other plans, I realized this question is about more than allocating your money.

It’s the defining struggle of a generation.

The Essence of All Philosophy

One of the easiest ways to distract two millennials is to tell them to arrange a meeting. It sometimes takes me as many as five or six attempts to schedule a simple lunch. Don’t even get me started on Friday night. Now I’m not perfect, but more often than not it’s the other party who can’t make up their mind.

That’s why, usually, I feel pretty good about my ‘schemes’. Whenever I’m done setting them up, I’m rewarded with fewer decisions in the moment. Planning allows you to forget the big picture, forget yourself, even, and to focus on the task in front of you. But on days like the past few, days when I’m sick or not working as much, the Joker’s ideas start to visit on me.

What if this project is a complete waste of time? What should I do next? Who should I hang out with, when do I really need to focus on dating, and what if I invest my money into things that go to zero? Is it stupid to keep it all in cash?

What if, what if, what if.

Two little words that ruin a lot more than just Friday night. The bigger the decision to make, the worse it gets. It’s a phenomenon that’s especially pervasive in my generation, but it’s far from new. As the wealthy and famous 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard would remark:

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. […] Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”

You could call Kierkegaard the prototypical millennial of his time. Equipped with many more possibilities than his peers, he was still haunted by constant anxiety. “The dizziness of freedom,” as he would say. Given our modern-day choice cornucopia, it’s no wonder young peoples’ heads are always spinning.

But that’s not what we choose to see.

Three Rungs on Every Ladder

The most famous millennial meme is that we feel entitled. We’re eager to skip three rungs on every ladder and if we can’t, we don’t start climbing at all. That’s the story and it’s everyone’s go-to explanation for why we refuse to make many of life’s most important decisions.

We’re not marrying, we’re not having kids, we don’t even move out. We don’t make enough, save enough, invest enough. We’re not willing to get our hands dirty, we’re blinded by bean bags and ping pong tables, and we hope for the big payday that never comes.

And yet, having grown up in a world where school shootings are normal, where banks get bailed out for losing our money, a world full of fake news, corrupt systems, and crushing student debt, our expectations aren’t all that high. According to Stephanie Georgopulos, we’re well aware it’s up to us to do something about these things. But that doesn’t make committing any easier.

Maybe it’s not entitlement that’s at the heart of our procrastination at large. Maybe it’s the fact that, with 300 hours of video being uploaded to Youtube every minute, with thousands of potential Tinder matches, with over 200 types of bread in every Walmart and so much pressure to get it all right, it’s become really hard to choose.

This is beyond existentialist philosophy. Something’s happening in our brains.

The Joker of the Millennial Generation

One reason we stay on the edge of our seats when the dismal clown torments Gotham is that the choices he offers always seem so simple. Pay half your fortune or watch the Batman take the mob apart; save the lawyer or save the girl; sacrifice the convicts or the regular citizens — which one is it going to be?

As we listen to the Joker present our options, an answer forms in our gut right away. And yet, because they’re so full of moral dilemma, they quietly drive us insane. Like Kierkegaard, we know we’d regret the decision either way. This is where science kicks in. In The Paradox of Choice, researcher Barry Schwartz explains why the explosion of individual freedom in the past century continues to make us miserable today. He talks about five things:

Postdecision regret. It’s now easier to imagine we could have done better in hindsight, even if a more suitable alternative doesn’t exist.
Anticipated regret. The thought of making a choice only to find out you could have made a better one two days later is a paralyzing threat in itself.
Opportunity costs. The more things you can select among, the easier it is to factor in all the attractive features you’re missing.
Escalation of expectations. With such a big selection, it feels natural that perfect should be possible. But it never is and that’s depressing.
Self-blame. Finally, it’s clear who’s at fault for all this disappointment: we are. It was healthy to blame a lack of choice, but that excuse has gone.

These are all bad, especially in conjunction, but it is number two that is the bane of our existence.

“How will it feel to buy this sweater only to find a nicer, cheaper one in the next store? How will it feel if I take this job only to have a better opportunity appear next week?”

The questions millennials ask themselves on a daily basis are all variants of the same theme: What if I invest in all the wrong things?

Anticipated regret is the Joker of the millennial generation.

The sheer number of options we have makes every decision feel like a moral dilemma. So we stand there, frozen, dizzy from all this freedom. Paralyzed by choice, regretting what we have not yet screwed up. That’s why we keep watching superhero movies, rather than living them.

But, as in any good superhero movie, there is a silver lining.

The Purpose of Supporting Actors

For as much as he claims to be an “agent of chaos, a dog chasing cars,” the Joker then turns right around scheming. It’s only on the surface that he’s aimless. From Kevin Lincoln’s piece about the 10-year anniversary of the film:

“The Joker’s plan is to appear as if he has no plan, and by hiding the plan — and, most importantly, disguising the inevitably tedious moment in which the villain reveals his plan, as the Joker does in [the hospital] — [the creators] reinforce the Joker’s purpose.”

There’s a lot to be said for plans if even the self-proclaimed antithesis of schemers has one. I don’t have a perfect list of arguments, but here are three I can take comfort in when doubting myself:

It’s okay to take your time with life’s big decisions. Our grandparents probably wouldn’t have an easier time than we do if they had to make the same, big choices today. It’s easy to belittle the situation from the outside, but in the end, it’s your life, not theirs.
What you choose will probably be good enough. As a corollary, for everything that isn’t all-important, which is most things, you might as well “introduce a little anarchy,” as the Joker would say. Where to get lunch? Which bar to hit on Friday night? Flip a coin, these things don’t matter, and you won’t remember them two weeks from today. Anything will do.
Last, and most importantly: At the very least, I am investing. There is boldness in the act of commitment itself. And no matter how hard any particular decision may squeeze your brain, it is far better to sacrifice your time, your money, your energy, for a cause you think is worthy than to stand on the sidelines waiting.

The Joker’s role in The Dark Knight is so powerful, so all-consuming that it’s hard to focus on any other character. My generation might often feel like supporting actors in their own lives, but, ultimately, it’s always the sidekicks that get the hero to carry on. Like commissioner Gordon, when he gives advice to a newbie, which feels a little like a tip for growing up:

“You’re a detective now, son. You’re not allowed to believe in coincidence anymore.”

Use This Analogy to Cultivate Peace of Mind

July 19, 2018May 13, 2022 Nik

China’s first north-to-south express highway is the G4. It is over 2,200 km long and you can use it to drive from Beijing all the way to Hong Kong or Macau. On a busy day, it looks like this:

Your mind has more than a mere 50 lanes, but on a busy day, the level of traffic is just the same. Each car in each lane represents a different version of you. A version that would make an alternative choice, behave differently, or think another way. But there’s a catch:

Only one lane is called ‘the present’ and only one version of you can drive on it at any given time.

As a result, there’s a constant, massive traffic jam from all these alter egos fighting over who gets to lead the convoy. Each one is trying to squeeze into the present lane, shove itself ahead and cut off everyone else. When 50 cars clash, who ends up in front is anyone’s guess. It’s impossible to hand any one version the reigns with all these options, desires, and arguments pulling you in opposite directions. But that’s not the worst part.

Imagine how present-you feels with this huge, pent up mob in its back. Everyone trailing slightly behind is honking, shouting, tailgating, just waiting for their chance to overtake. How could present-you possibly focus on driving, let alone drive calmly or look ahead?

Too Much of a Good Thing

Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish 19th century philosopher and one of the founders of existentialism, developed a rather dark view of the world at a young age. Born into a wealthy family, he lived in constant fear of death and regret, both of which he saw waiting around every corner.

Eventually, he decided that humor was the only adequate response to life’s madness. He claimed that once he saw reality, he started laughing and hadn’t stopped since. In one of his most famous works, he also gave us a new word to capture the struggle with our own insignificance, a word that’s survived verbatim in both English and German to this day: angst.

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” he would remark. It perfectly fits the image of the mental traffic jam we’re faced with in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Not just because the car is the pinnacle of personal freedom, but because the sheer availability of all these lanes to drive on can literally make us dizzy. All these choices about who to be and what to do, we’re actually free to make them, unlike Kierkegaard and his contemporaries, who were much more limited, yet plagued by the same issue still. It seems it’s gotten worse.

So how can we stop being dizzy?

The Road Ahead

When I was younger, I would race my Dad on the 15-minute drive from the city to our home in the suburbs. Eventually, we realized that even if you go 50% over the speed limit on the highway stretch, you only save one minute. Imagine how much you save going through the toll booth two cars ahead in line.

Most choices in life are like that. You raise all kinds of hell to go 50% faster, only to end up one day earlier at the same finish line. Often, switching lanes feels much more efficient in the moment, but, ultimately, doesn’t make a big difference. Gauging the impact of your decisions beforehand like that is one way to dissolve the mind’s massive traffic jam. Another is realizing that part of each alternative version lives on in you, even if that car gets left behind.

But the best one, by far, is having faith in present-you. Don’t look left and right so much. Life is full of chances to look back and say: “Oh, I should’ve taken that exit.” But if you take them all, you can never focus on the road ahead.

In rallying, one of, if not the biggest determinator of success is how much the driver can trust the co-driver. The person in the passenger seat announces directions and the driver acts. That’s why, when talking about their greatest wins, rally legends like Walter Röhrl don’t mention times, but the state of flow, of effortless performance, they were in. Because if you trust present-you completely, the road ahead always looks like this:

You might take a few detours, but eventually, that trooper will always take you home. For most of us, life is a long drive on a free highway. The anxiety is something we, like Kierkegaard, create in our heads. There’s no real need to rush. Cultivating this view takes time. But it helps to practice. Maybe that’s why later in his life, the angsty philosopher changed his mind:

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
— Søren Kierkegaard

The Highest Form of Self-Control

July 2, 2018April 14, 2023 Nik

In 2014, a few other interns and me had the honor of helping out at The M Festival. It’s an annual event BMW M holds at the 24 Hours Nürburgring race for VIP customers.

We chauffeured around the big bosses in M cars, attended new car presentations, and even got to watch the race. To remember what a privilege it was, how much fun I had, and because I’d like to own an M car one day, I decided to keep wearing the bracelet all participants got.

That was four years ago.

At first I thought I’d wear the bracelet for another year tops. But there was no reason to take it off, so I never did. Until yesterday. My friends invited me to beach volleyball, but you can’t play with that plastic on your wrist. So I snapped it in half.

For a second, I thought it was a big deal. Four years are 1,460 days. That’s a long time, throughout which the bracelet has been a useful reminder, again and again.

Then I realized this should have nothing to do with whatever my purpose is right now. My mission has changed a lot in those four years. And yesterday, it was playing volleyball with my friends. The wristband was in the way, so it had to go.

The highest form of self-control is not hesitating for even a second when you realize it’s time to change.

Tradition is wonderful, but when you cling to it just to feel in control, it’s usually a sign you don’t have much discipline after all. It’s no coincidence that when humans are born, the only way to move on is to cut the cord.

This Is Why Most People Will Never Be Rich

June 21, 2018September 17, 2023 Nik

If you even remotely entertain the idea that one day, you might be rich, I want you to answer this question right now:

Which decade of your life are you going to sacrifice?

If you don’t have a clear answer sitting in your gut or can’t even look at the question with a straight face, I’m telling you right now: Find that spark deep down and extinguish it, because you’re lying to yourself.

Category: Time