[1:31]: “I used to have this really nice pair of rollerblades. I was afraid if I wore them, I'd wreck them. So I kept them in a box. Do you know what happened? I outgrew them.”
- Home Alone
Where’s the juice? I feel low on motivation lately. What looked for many years like a deep well of ambition and productivity feels suddenly shallower than I expected. I realized it’s hard to tell the depth of the well, because it’s been full of dirty fuel.
Doing what has worked
In many ways, I’m grateful for the places dirty fuel has taken me. Insecurity, anger, bitterness, envy, are all-consuming emotions. They cause you to act out irrationally. And to an extent, this irrationality helps you work harder than you should, sacrifice more than you should, and obsess over things that grant temporary relief but ultimately reinforce an accelerating cycle.
If you aced school by chugging caffeine, if you got fit by telling yourself you’re fat and lazy, if you get promoted by working 100 hours a week, it becomes the self-motivation mechanism you know and a recipe for superficial success. Because it works, you tap back into the well.
Until it stops working
If things are going well, I think most people run into the following transition from (i) "max"-oriented (or maximizer) to » (ii) "enough"-oriented (or satisficer). Another flavor of this is (i) risk appetite to » (ii) risk management.
As you reach closer to your fulcrum point between (i) and (ii), you are probably happier than you were with the way things are. How do you motivate yourself now?
Aside: There are exceptional people (seems to skew entrepreneurial) who don’t transition from (i) to (ii), and just go all-in every time. I’d like to learn how to be like this, and why certain people are but most people aren’t / can’t be.
When I had nothing to lose, and was incredibly dissatisfied with my status quo, the tradeoff of status quo vs. something else was so transparent that irrational obsession with being “less bad” in every way was a no-brainer tradeoff.
It's an incredible privilege to say, but I am (as of recently, a little more) content with the life I've built.
As I discussed a little bit in [2. how to negotiate], I also conceptually know that most of the things that surprised to the upside in my life were due to proactive risk-taking with more near-term pain and downside. But now I feel unable to take risks. I have more to lose and shouldn't go for broke (lest I actually go broke and become the Pigeon Lady in [this clip]; we can debate the rationality of that fear but I do have it).
This means I'm running low on the dirty fuel that served me well. I’m also noticing the residue that the dirty fuel left behind, and it’s hard to clean up. And it doesn't feel like the engine takes clean fuel.
What is it all for?
[1:31]: “I used to have this really nice pair of rollerblades. I was afraid if I wore them, I'd wreck them. So I kept them in a box. Do you know what happened? I outgrew them.”
- Home Alone
I’ve recently “accomplished” a lot of the things I dreamed about having, that if only all of these things happened, I could finally take a deep breath and allow myself to feel good for a second before whipping myself back onto the next thing.
So now I ask: “Well, what are all these things I worked so hard for, for?” Because my pre-post behavior hasn’t changed at all. Now that I have some savings, I don’t feel better about having created margin of safety, I feel worse that I am not creating more even faster. Now that I have some work-life balance, I don’t feel better that I’m taking better care of myself and less stressed, I feel guilty I am not pushing myself harder and running myself to exhaustion like I have until this point.
Do I deserve to rest? Do I deserve to be happy? In fact, how dare I take this momentum and squander it because I’m a bit tired?
To paraphrase, I feel a distinct shift from forward-looking aspirational motivation (albeit on dirty fuel), to backward-looking “what if I lose what I have” fear and anxiety. In other words, the dirty fuel that is left is even dirtier.
Rebuilding the engine
I’ve made some baby steps toward perceiving my life not as a vertical hike, but as a lateral exploration. Very small steps, so small that I don’t really even believe it as I’m writing it.
“Growth doesn’t necessarily come from having to achieve more.” Thank you, [Kevin]. A related take, this time mine: “More isn’t the measure of growth—depth is.”
Re-framing the things I choose to do, not as good or bad, better or worse, but as just simple interest-driven changes in direction is important. Even my [Substack], as unnoticeable a mark on the universe as it is [for now, haha], is me giving myself permission to do something purely interesting. I have no idea what it is for, beyond that, right now. I'm just going to do that more with less analysis, and learn.
[Minh’s recent take on this topic] is well-written. In her words, “If you don’t like a changeable thing in your life, change it.”
One closing thought, the idea of permissionless potential fascinates me. We live in this simulated fear of having to ask permission for everything, when in reality, you can do a lot of things without having to ask.
I have very few smart things to say on crypto, but here’s one related tangent: permissionless blockchain is more than just technology—it’s a shift in power dynamic. When you remove gatekeepers, you don’t just enable inclusion; you redefine who gets to build, own, and participate. Value, identity, and opportunity are no longer dictated by institutions, but individuals who exercise agency and opt in.
A little truth in there somewhere. Thank you for reading.