notes
April 17th, 2025
"Choose work you have a natural aptitude for and a deep interest in. Develop a habit of working on your own projects; it doesn't matter what they are so long as you find them excitingly ambitious. Work as hard as you can without burning out, and this will eventually bring you to one of the frontiers of knowledge. These look smooth from a distance, but up close they're full of gaps. Notice and explore such gaps, and if you're lucky one will expand into a whole new field. Take as much risk as you can afford; if you're not failing occasionally you're probably being too conservative. Seek out the best colleagues. Develop good taste and learn from the best examples. Be honest, especially with yourself. Exercise and eat and sleep well and avoid the more dangerous drugs. When in doubt, follow your curiosity. It never lies, and it knows more than you do about what's worth paying attention to."
The seed that led to Paul writing
how to do great work. I actually like this small snippet so much more because there's something so simple about it. When the path to greatness is laid out in front of you, the only sticking point remaining is how hard you're willing to work for it. And seeing your reaction to how hard you'll have to work is a pretty good indicator of whether you're going to make it.
March 18th, 2025
"Imagine how depressing the world would be if it were all like school and big companies, where you either have to spend a lot of time on bullshit things or lose to people who do."
AHAHAHAHAHAHA
January 8th, 2025
"The other easily takes on that marvellous and inaccessible character because he alone experiences for himself the void in his heart."
— Simone de Beauvoir, Pg 64 of her book "What is Existentialism?"
Shows you why comparison is futile. Subjective experience is subjective for a reason - you, and you alone experience life from your perspective. No matter how alive others look, to you, they are simply objects amongst other objects. You're trying to compare apples and A-10 warthogs. The only true value is that which is recognised and propagated by the self.
January 8th, 2025
"A man alone in the world would be paralyzed by the manifest vision of the vanity of all his goals. He would undoubtedly not be able to stand living. But man is not alone in the world."
— Simone de Beauvoir, Pg 63 of her book "What is Existentialism?"
The section preceding this quote talks about man transcending himself through a project, and the inevitable realisation that the project too, is not a satisfactory end in and of itself, because it can be transcended again. On the realisation of the futility of all things, how is man to continue striving? Perhaps it is worthy to consider that there exists life apart from projects. There exists meaning in people. And that's beautiful.
January 2nd, 2025
"While a picture is worth a thousand words, to me, worldbuilding paints a thousand pictures."
I've always ping-ponged between wanting to measure everything by its absolute, utilitarian value and wanting to quantify experiences in terms of personal fulfillment. This quote really just hit me in the very spot I needed to think about this, and it's just a beautiful quote in and of itself. Measurement is humanity's excuse for comparison.
December 25th, 2024
"Work has a sort of activation energy, both per day and per project."
This explanation makes a lot of sense to me. It puts to words a phenomenon that has been pestering me to an insane extent recently - that of procrastination when the work itself is easy. Now I know why. Because starting the work is harder than actually doing it.
December 17th, 2024
"What a beautiful creature a human is, both very valuable and equally worthless."
— mr.heyovskidarwin2563, on a random YouTube short
Beautiful.
August 6th, 2024
"I think his (Camus's) problem with Don Quixote is that he is a dupe of his own invention. He is not aware that the quest he gave himself is of his own making."
Purpose has always played a very important part in my life. The question of whether it is discovered or invented is a fundamental one, but I don't have an answer to it yet. All I know is that there is no meaning of life - there is only meaning in life. Still, I think it's important to remember that purpose, like everything else, is a construct of the human mind. Taking yourself too seriously is never too good for your own health.
July 22nd, 2023
"When it comes to research, an unjustified optimism is often more productive than a seemingly better justified pessimism, for an optimist has the courage to set out and try new things. That's the path to discovery, even if what is discovered is perhaps not what was originally hoped. A pessimist may be more "correct" in some narrow sense, but will discover less than the optimist."
I've always been somewhat skewed towards optimism as a whole, but understood practical pessimism. The optimist is relentless due to the presence of hope - I love that. But keep in mind that sometimes learning when to give up is a skill, and being eternally optimistic is self-defeating.