The best search strategies for complex problems like life generally don’t seek out particular homogeneous objectives, but interesting novelty.
- No location available
- novelty, serendipity, achievement, problem solving,

But you cannot pursue interesting novelty—things that no one else is doing or which you have never seen before, or the little threads of nagging curiosity or doubt—by chasing along known direct value gradients.
- No location available
-

Keeping up with the Joneses, chasing the validating promotion, and slaving away at a job for material trinkets that ultimately mean nothing are not vices limited to the middle class. Or really, they are limited to the middle class, but the middle class includes most of our supposed rich—“upper-middle class,” indeed. The American dream will not free you from this cursed dharma.
- No location available
-

Are you plugged into someone else’s assumptions about value, and deferring to the existing structure, or are you maintaining and defining your own understanding of what must be done that other people can plug into?
- No location available
- career, impact, purpose, value, meaning, favorite,

You get good ideas from years of hard leisure.
- No location available
-

The other reason is that to actually accomplish at your full potential, you have to start doubling down on particular bets long before you know that you can follow through.
- No location available
-

You already have the “fuck you” money and the privilege to build a better future.
- No location available
-

Adaptive systems only grow by the application of intense will against intense but surmountable resistance.
- No location available
-