compounding doubt vs compounding clarity
Gen Mafia updates…
It's been a while since I don't share any Gen Mafia updates. Here they are:
New Gen Mafia Podcast Episode
This week Nicolas and I talked to Rafael Haber. Rafa went to Babson College and found in Data his area of interest and excellence. He worked at Wildlife Studios and currently works at Inventa.
It was thought-provoking to hear how he thinks from first principles and built a set of technical skills using mentors as leverage.
Thanks, Rafa!
Our first in-person meetup took place. The first of so many yet to come.
Amazing to have at the same table three former Wildlife employees, a former Softbank VC, a founder with an exit in the health sector and software engineer at YC startup, a VC at Santander Corporate Venture Capital, a software engineer from one of the most promising AI for education startups in LatAm, and a Tel Aviv University undergrad working in AI for cybersecurity.
“And fortunately ambition seems to be quite malleable; there's a lot you can do to increase it. Most people don't know how ambitious to be, especially when they're young.
They don't know what's hard, or what they're capable of. And this problem is exacerbated by having few peers. Ambitious people are rare, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers.
When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age.”
Paul Graham
Thanks Cleverson, Rafa, Enzo, Rafa, João, Dani, Lê! You guys are inspiring.
If you're interested in joining this world-class group apply on our website.
Compounding doubt vs compounding clarity
For the past two weeks, I've been in the “too busy to think” mode. I was so numb and busy that I couldn't zoom out and think critically about anything. I was thought sedentary. That's the reason I've been away from the substack.
I didn't see any progress in compounding clarity in this period. This scared me. It scared me because I've been measuring the quality of my weeks on how much clarity of vision I gained in the week. Questions I ask myself to judge the progress of mental clarity:
“Am I able to tell my story with more clarity this week than the week before?” (clarity of communication and self-vision)
“Did I improve my understanding of my ambitions and where they come from?” (clarity of self-vision)
“Am I more convicted of my bet for the next decade?” (clarity of convictions)
“Are my emotions clearer than the week before?” (clarity of emotions)
“Which new strength did I spot about myself? Or which known strength I used as leverage and why it worked?” (clarity of self-vision)
“Which new trait do I spot in someone this week?” (clarity of social awareness)
Gain of clarity has been my metric of success. The clearer things are, the closer to my definition of success I am.
“Crystal clear thinking is one of the things we look for.
Not a fancy slide pitch. But, crystal clear thinking and we pay careful attention to little words. Fred Leedy who had a company that was growing like a weed and all he told us was the mistakes he made. Those were the great pictures, those were people that were self-aware, they are crystal clear thinkers.”
I believe this obsession for clarity of thinking is important because when compounding clarity of vision absences, compounding confusion arises. It's like a plane on the ground, the problem is not only it's not flying, but mainly because it's deteriorating. When we are not gaining clarity, our minds are deteriorating by confusion.
When going from zero to one in anything in life, everyone goes through these “heads down building” moments in which your focus is executing ferociously rather than thinking critically and building conviction. It's a brutal force game. These moments are consuming. Very consuming. They're crucial. Very crucial. Yet, they're dangerous. Very dangerous if you do it for too long.
For the past two weeks, I have been shipping stuff in auto-pilot mode. Almost no free time. 12 to 14-hour journeys. No empty space to read, sharpen my judgment, and ask myself the questions that matter. I behave like a modern monkey.
Asking yourself the big questions of your life daily matters. It creates a habit and compounds clarity as a consequence since you're always intentionally chasing awareness.
When we're too busy to ask ourselves the big questions, confusion compounds. Your mind becomes foggy. We become low-conviction beings. We aren't sure about our feelings, we don't have bets for the next decades, we aren't sharp about our convictions.
“The mind is like water. When it’s turbulent, it’s difficult to see. When it’s calm, everything becomes clear.”
Prasad Mahes
It's easy to fool yourself into thinking you're accumulating an advantage since you're putting in 14-hour work journeys. But, is that the sweetest spot for uniqueness? Are we defining our uniqueness only by how many hours of work we put in? It sounds like a dumb idea.
Don't get me wrong, building ferociously and 14-hour work journeys are necessary. I don't regret doing it at all. My counterargument is to avoid it as the only frame of my life. Not distancing from the judgment and the conviction-oriented game. Keep chasing crystal-clear thinking.
It’s actually really important to have empty space. If you don’t have a day or two every week in your calendar where you’re not always in meetings, and you’re not always busy, then you’re not going to be able to think.
You’re not going to be able to have good ideas for your business. You’re not going to be able to make good judgments. I also encourage taking at least one day a week (preferably two, because if you budget two, you’ll end up with one) where you just have time to think.
It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. Make the time.
Naval
Final Thoughts
I understand if this is too abstract. We're talking about conviction, compounding clarity, compounding confusion. All abstract terms. At the same time, shipping things and 14-hour work journeys are easy to see, sound a lot like progress, and are tangible. Any thinking animal can see it.
My goal with this essay is not to underrate hard work. My goal is to make a reminder of how much the “too busy to think mode” can create a loop of compounding doubt that can destroy your thinking and your creations, no matter if it's a company, a network, personal branding, etc.
I believe investing time to ask yourself big questions and gain clarity of your feelings, convictions, and ambitions has unique long-time rewards.
Compounding clarity > compounding doubt.