Going long

With the end of the decade quickly approaching, I’ve spent some time reflecting on the last 10 years. It stunned me just how transformative and important it’s been on a personal level. It further cemented the idea that shortcuts don’t exist, at least not in the ways you expect them—by reducing the time it takes for something to happen, for example. Instead, I’ve found that shortcuts actually come from replacement of time.

As an example, the biggest shortcut for me was not being in school. I left a month into high school for what my parents later explained to me is called unschooling. In summary, it’s a chance for the student to learn what ever they want, at their own pace, and in an environment mostly constructed by themselves. This “shortcut” effectively carved out 5–10 years of fluff and gave me a head start to build up my execution chops, which in turn helped me move very rapidly in the field that I’d self studied, web development.

The learning to execute came in the form of having to repeatedly build and maintain my own structure, learning how I learn, prioritization, and the art of getting shit done. This isn’t to say there weren’t many false starts, abandoned projects, set backs and various struggles. There were definitely many points of “failure” along the way. All of which taught me something new and incredibly valuable. Looking back, this was probably the best decision my parents could’ve made for me at the time. It set me up to close out my chapter of adolescence and move into adulthood with a meaningful set of skills.

Here's to another decade of executing on meaningful ideas, and learning how to distribute them effectively.

Happy new years ☕️