The Tradeoff

One of the hardest things for me to fully internalize is that becoming genuinely good at anything requires such an astronomical amount of time and focus that, the moment you commit to one thing, other areas of your life or interests will inevitably become more mediocre. You kind of have to accept that tradeoff.

I was never really fond of social gatherings, and work gives me a plausible reason to skip most of them. I much prefer hanging out with a small number of friends, which even my grug brain eventually figured out materially improves my quality of life.

I genuinely wanna do math. I wanna read philosophy and have the freedom to take some time off to read about some obscure topic in social justice, or even just watch a really good TV show. And at the same time, I genuinely wanna become a really good engineer and at least a decent entrepreneur. Of all these things, becoming a really good engineer and at least a decent entrepreneur are what currently feel most central to my life.

And then again, as humans, we’re intrinsically conditioned to be drawn to what we don’t have.

Over the years, you start to realise that even the idealised version of yourself that you romanticised before and eventually became isn’t as glamorous as you imagined. Or it just becomes normal, and suddenly it feels like another day.

Don’t get me wrong, I still do try to do math and read books I like, but it’s always a tug of war between me doing that, working on my startup, and work too.

And sometimes I feel like it takes me so long to finish a book. But if I focus on that, my startup takes a hit.

God, what do I even want?

I think no matter how hard you try, you are kinda perpetually confused and unsure in your 20s.

I’m not even sure about that…

And then again I ask myself, do I need to be good at math? Is there a need? Isn’t it enough that I just enjoy doing it?

And for God’s sake, why do I feel hopeless when I open a philosophy, academic psychology book, or anything for that matter, and can’t even comprehend the words written on the pages?

Am I illiterate?

Yep, to some extent.

And then I don’t wanna be, but I can no longer spend all day reading. God, I can’t believe I’m lamenting my early years at university.

And even if I could, I can’t really read everything ever written, which for some weird reason is a desire of mine that I think will solve this yearning I have for “wanting to know all.”

I really do suck at making money from my projects though. I’m a bad entrepreneur, and realistically, I should put all my energy towards fixing that, which, believe me, I am doing kinda…

But then it feels like I’m giving up on the other aspects of my life, and that I’ll never be good at them.

Then this is the tradeoff, at least for me, what I’m talking about, and it’s hard. Really hard to accept.

Even if you think you’ve finally accepted it, it pulls you back.

The reality is, I should focus on making my startup work.

I will leave you with some wise words from the one and only Napoleon Bonaparte:

“Winning literally solves everything!”

And that is why you have to win, no matter what.