What’s the Point of Being Way Ahead? It Buys You Time.
Time is the #1 killer of dreams and aspirations. When someone gives up on their dream, or gives up on figuring out what that dream is, it's typically a result of them losing the race against time. That is the point of compressing time, of removing skill bottlenecks early.
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For anyone interested in a STEM career, acquiring advanced technical skills early unlocks the most valuable thing in existence.
Something even money can’t buy.
TIME.
If you acquire demonstrable, alien-level technical skills, you can get doors opened earlier.
You don’t have to wait until college to do research projects under professors, or even paid internships.
If you’re intentional about acquiring skills and putting yourself out there, you can kick-start a serious career before most people your age are even taking serious classes.
And once you acquire early junior-level experience, that opens the door to early senior-level experience, and so on.
Compound this virtuous cycle over and over and you end up way ahead.
What’s the point of being way ahead?
IT BUYS YOU TIME.
Unfortunately, lots of people misunderstand the point of compressing time.
They think compressing time is about winning a rat race against your peers.
But that’s not really what it’s about.
There’s a race, but the thing you’re racing against is much scarier and much more powerful than any other human.
You’re racing against TIME ITSELF.
Time is the #1 killer of dreams and aspirations.
When someone gives up on their dream, or gives up on figuring out what that dream is, it’s typically a result of them losing the race against time.
Pink Floyd put it best:
- "You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun.
And you run, and you run, to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking."
Whether you realize it yet, achieving your dreams is a race against time.
Time forces convergence, and premature convergence is what kills dreams.
It’s hard to understand this when you’re young, before you have any sense of the wrath of time or the meaning of convergence.
But no matter how many times you claim you’ll never settle for something less than ikigai,
- it won't keep the sun from setting,
- it won't keep the time from passing,
- it won't keep you from increasingly desiring things that only a stable life can provide, and
- it won't keep you from gradually turning the dial from “explore” to “exploit.”
The further time gets ahead of you, the more likely you are to settle into a life that is “fine,” or even “good” – despite being unable to shake the feeling that you could have found something better if you had more time.
That is the point of compressing time.
That is the point of removing skill bottlenecks early.
It’s about unlocking doors early and running down avenues that you might be interested in exploring, so that:
- If you get the feeling the path you're going down has twisted and turned into something that's no longer a great fit for you, you can double back and explore other avenues before doors start locking behind you.
- You can spend time trying to break down a wall instead of running through an existing door if that’s something you want to do.
- Once you find your path into a land that makes you as happy as you can imagine, you can maximize your time in that land.
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