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22 Things Learned in 2022
4 min readJan 10, 2023
- Most of life is figuring out what, who, and where needs us the most.
- Have been living a life of addition for too long. Am now wanting to live a life of subtraction. 2022 taught the merits of…less. This meant less travel, less oversocializing, less spending, less scattered investments, less alcohol, less time spent eating, and less sets at the gym. We grow through concentration.
- Tension is who we think we should be. Relaxation is who we are. “Should” is just guilt from social programming.
- The enemy of peace is expectations drilled into us by others and society.
- Short term pain, long term gain. Short term comfort, long term discomfort.
- By setting a goal, we can almost be sure not to reach it. Our society thinks too much in goals and too little in the systems we work in. Systems and conducive environments lead to growth, not necessarily making unattainable goals we often don’t reach. Fuel doesn’t work as well as removing friction. So it’s likely better to make anti-goals: planning to avoid things we don’t like.
- Consensus mechanisms, or “clearing” documents in bureaucratic lingo, removes creativity. It triggers a default to the most conservative, and least-consequential line of action. So many inventions wouldn’t have happened if they had to go through a bureaucratic committee that forces a consensus mechanism on an idea. We should rather think of stepping stones–systems and innovations that move us toward progress.
