In Praise of Uselessness

As well as avoiding bullshit, one should actively seek out things that matter. But different things matter to different people, and most have to learn what matters to them. A few are lucky and realize early on that they love math or taking care of animals or writing, and then figure out a way to spend a lot of time doing it. But most people start o... See more

I find it thrilling. The fact that I get to spend my life making objectively useless things means that I don’t live in a postapocalyptic dystopia. It means I am not exclusively chained to the grind of mere survival. It means we still have enough space left in our civilization for the luxuries of imagination and beauty and emotion—and even total fri

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Time for tinkering, following my curiosity, and reading about things that interest me can feel like “wasting” time but these periods tend to lead to interesting opportunities. This is because it's a way of getting in the flow with my nature and optimizing for energy first. This ends up being a great hack for avoiding starting things you’ll want to ... See more

One of the biggest challenges people have when embarking on an unconventional path is disconnecting from extrinsic markers of success and listening to internal motivational cues. On the default path, you can spend an entire career playing other people’s games. At first, people on a pathless path try to fill the lack of extrinsic goals with new ones... See more