Asymmetry

Dec 11, 2024

Thoughts:

Asymmetry is a powerful notion—that the potential upside given absolute self-belief is both magically risk-adjusted and self-fulfilling—that you’ll never make it back to zero so you can stop thinking about it
Most of the performance gap is mental—50% of graham’s improvement throughout the year during his time in college crew was just becoming more comfortable with being uncomfortable
- Some relationship here between how I feel when I spend time in cozy and meaningful relationships, vs when I spend time really challenging myself—both feel true and right
  - Some unnameable relationship between the light and dark sides of myself, which I find myself oscillating between—the transition from light into dark is what this Youtube video makes me feel—this bubbling, deep, raw feeling that suffering is the price for a life of substance
Fear will be the biggest obstacle of your entire life. And when it appears it tries to disguise itself as practical—”not me, not now”
Permission—to give yourself permission to lead that life—are you going to give yourself permission

Some other ideas to look into:

Drawing out my desires as a skill tree with first, second, third order skills/vision of who I want to be and what I want to achieve
- Start with the outer perimeter, the most exciting visions, and forget about the how for a moment
Even if I think a little bit about the potential external implications/motivations of other people seeing my sincere work— e.g. people will like me or I can make a good post for others to see —drastically distorts my work and makes it impossible to keep my work sincere. The feeling is similar to being in flow with sports; you have to forget the world
The biggest tool I’ve seemed to harness these last few years is one of diet; by shifting my intellectual intake I’ve been able to save myself so many times out o fa rut and course correct off of a random curius post or starting with nix blog or fridman podcast or stanford grad school guest lecture

Blake’s Substack