Optimism makes you less likely to walk away while not actually increasing your chances of success. That means that being overly optimistic will make you stick to things longer that aren’t worthwhile. Better to be well calibrated. Life’s too short to spend your time on opportunities that are no longer worthwhile.
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” — Søren Kierkegaard
The most important technologies that no one is working on are optimism and beautiful visions of the future. A belief in technological progress must include giving people places and futures worth believing in. It doesn't come for free.
in times of intense stress or adversity, future-oriented thinking such as hope may be more effective than mindfulness in sustaining positive mindsets and action-oriented outcomes such as engagement.
So many people say "I don't want to have kids because I don't want them to experience all the issues in the world today". What are they smoking?
We literally live in the best era we've ever seen in human civilization.