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Essential principles to work

Principles

  1. Outwork everyone else - in the long term. Don’t burn and churn fast. Play the long game and don’t burn through your fuel too fast.

  2. Each moment should be a flow state. Don’t overexert yourself, become too exhausted, lose discipline and fall into a vicious cycle.

  3. Only work a set 8-10 hours. Work brutally efficiently, execute. No excuses during these focused hours. Once you’re outside, don’t think about work. Focus on recovery - just like an athlete. Free time should be strategic. Yoga, sit down. Boredom - but NO PHONES

  4. You don’t need your phone. Turn your phone off at the end of the day, so there is no temptation. Live an analog evening life and routine.

Meditations

9:11 AM

The Japanese word furyu means to stop everything and appreciate nature. Even in the midst of battle, a Japanese general Shingen reluctantly stopped by his Zen abbot’s garden to appreciate the cherry blossoms. (Excerpt from Zen and Japanese Culture by Daisetz T Suzuki)

In our world, not getting consumed by work and non-negotiably stop to appreciate nature and the cosmos.

8:28 AM

Deploy into an undervalued industry. Mentally frame yourself as a consultant on a long-term assignment in an insurance co.

Distribution channels are the first step. Before anything, one must have the distribution channels.

Maybe I can check instagram 2 or 3 times a week. Not obsessively. Just to keep

Random Ideas:

[ ] Implement 5 minute limits x 3 times a day. Non-negotiable for Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn. Automatically closes and locks the app until next 24 hours.

This user engineering reduces the reliance, exposure and addictiveness of these apps.

Take frequent “boring breaks” where you stare out into the ether, and just be present in your body. Especially when your brain feels mentally overstimulated.

2:00 PM

#Career - there is very few product management positions for strictly robotics companies. Very hard to break into with a neuroscience degree/bioengineering. I need a springboard role:

However, something that isn’t too corporate or consulting-like. My strengths don’t shine there. Consumer facing products make a bit more sense. It can’t be business bullshit - there has to be some level of process engineering, industrial engineering involved.

I’m very much a strong patriot, believe in America needing to win the AI race vs China. However, I get burned out in highly intense, rigid, execution heavy jobs. There isn’t a level of flexibility that caters to my strengths. However, I’m also not a fan of the too comfortable lifestyle that people in SF and NYC live insulated, just consumer products, insulated from real geopolitical and supply chain uncertainty.

How do I find this balance in my work and in general my life? I have seemingly conflicting personal philosophies and congruence with majority of certain company cultures.

2:55 PM - Career Alignment

Bottom line is - I need to learn cloud technologies, familiar with edge technology and familiarity with embodied AI companies. While I’m working on cloud/AI computing - I need to be tapped into cool embodied AI companies. These are the most obvious distribution channels.

Viral marketing is incredibly important. Distribution channels sustain a business. I’ve learned the fundamentals of social media marketing + had content go viral on TikTok and IG. However, from the heart, I think social media algorithms are detrimental to people’s health and long term fabric of society. That’s why I’ve wanted to focus more on hardtech, agtech, sustainability - tangible engineering that solves “hard” problems.

However, my past 4 years have been spent developing soft, interpersonal skills, rather than a MechE, EE or systems engineer profile. I gravitate towards more “real” and “embodied” or environmental aspects.

I’m torn between the 2 worlds - consumer and deeptech. I have the work experience, vibes, startup experience, playbook etc… of a consumer startup founder. However, my long-term interests and deep desires inside are to become more technical, as a hybrid operator-engineer. I love solving problems, and my heart was in augmented reality, brain computer interfaces and sensors. In another life, I would have been an electrical engineer or studied that in school.

However, I don’t really know my next directions. My resume speaks consumer, marketing etc, social connectedness… but my heart and mind yearn for mathematics, systems and dynamics engineering.

I want to build wealth and freedom, but trying to do so in an aligned way is so hard to reconcile. Should I be focusing on recruiting? Building my cloud/AI skills up to join a more stable company? Or should I keep going with the startup experience I already have?

There is nobody I can really relate with or have the unique circumstances or problems.

Immediate Playbook:

Workspace

10:28 AM

I realized pursuing a PhD and looking to get hired as engineering talent at a cutting edge deeptech startup is not much different than trying to succeed as a professional athlete. Both require a highly specialized skillset, which cannot be developed through grit/hard work.

Its a narrow market that asymmetrically rewards those who are at the top. Its not worth my time trying to force the PhD route

However, developing more broadly applicable technical skills, sales which are in greater economic demand allows for hybrid skill-coupling.

Personal Budgeting:

Biweekly - $1200 $1000 - Debt Repayment $250 - Retirement $100 - Miscellaneous

$20 - Eat out each week
$20 - Weekend Budget

$20 - Eat out each week
$20 - Weekend Budget

$50 - Gas

Monthly Expenses: $5 - Obsidian $5 - SoundCloud $20 - OpenAI $10 -