Imagine a game where there are no rules and you can do anything. That would be such a boring game, isn’t it? Life is no different from MMORPGs. You can choose your missions. Or simply enjoy side-quests.
The core is your skill tree. You can unlock new skills and upgrade/master existing ones using your experiences. But experiences are limited as they cost time and energy. This is your real constraint which makes the skill tree unique to you.
Your experiences are what makes you unique.
— Swapnil Agarwal 🚀 (@SwapAgarwal) February 2, 2021
Experience is food for the brain. Your experiences and the consequences you’ve faced act as the foundation of your skill tree. All advice is out there. But it’s hard to internalize it until you have suffered. If you haven’t experienced it yourself, they are blanket words for you.
- I work 4 hours a day. Why? Because I have been burned out multiple times. You can read about work-life balance all you want, but it’s hard to convince yourself to work less until you have suffered in that area.
- It’s the same with charging on day 1 or charging more for your products. You need to go through this journey yourself to appreciate this advice. Only then it’ll be imprinted in your mind, making it easy to remember in hard times.
- You might already agree that writing is important, but have you faced a consequence because of your lack of writing skills? I have been denied a promotion once because of this.
- You can’t keep everyone happy. I have burned my hands once and went into a frenzy. Now I have made peace with the fact that it’s simply not feasible.
Without the relevant experience or suffering to back it up, you’re living in a house without a solid foundation. Answers from others are nothing more than stopgap measures; they’re of no value. When things get tough, and they eventually will, you’ll simply forget about that learning as you haven’t arrived at the answer by yourself. So don’t rush for answers. Take your time and arrive at them on your own.
What have you learnt the hard way? Let me know by replying to this email.
Until We Meet Again…
🖖 swap