A heuristic for picking a path

Paths that feel exciting usually mean there’s an opportunity to advance something important.

Paths that feel scary usually mean that doing something you haven’t done before is called for which, while intimidating, offers the opportunity to stumble, learn, and ultimately grow.

If the goal is to advance important work and to increase your capacity to contribute, then consider this heuristic: if the path excites you and scares you, it’s probably worth taking.
Abraham Kim
I think that the younger you are the more you should index on fear and excitement. As you get older and have more mouths to feed and heads to roof the fear and excitement can actually be quite the liability. 

This is I think our social group + generation's great privilege. That we've extended the time where its normal not to have to feed and house others at such a young age.
2021-02-04 21:07:22
William Liao
True. Risk and responsibility only increase with time, now is pretty much the best time to try scary things. 
2021-02-04 21:12:52
Jason Leow
Like to add... if it scares me because of potential total ruin (eg blowing all your savings on stock mkt, or racing recklessly along a mountain road) but excites me due to outsized returns, then it's probably not worth taking. But I'm probably stating the obvious here :)
2021-02-06 06:29:13
Abraham Kim
lol per example of  the stock market and outsized returns.

Nassim Taleb the king of writing about Outsized returns (author of The Black Swan)

you know what. What do you think about him? I was about to summarize his work but I just realized that you might already be in the know. 
2021-02-06 13:11:59
Jason Leow
abrahamKim
 love his books. Big fan of Antifragile. Been trying to apply his meta principles to life and work, and yes, would love to read your notes!
2021-02-08 08:25:22
Abraham Kim
Oh glad you are in the know already then. The main thing your comment made me think of was how he advises people to set themselves up to be able to:

1. take as much swings at bat that provide a shot at outsized returns
2. never take a swing that could provide absolute ruin.

he also is not a fan of the stock market.
2021-02-08 14:25:46
Jason Leow
Yes, his concepts of optionality and the bar-bell approach were fascinating
2021-02-09 08:04:05
William Liao
abrahamKim
 the reading list is growing exponentially. i need a machine to throw a random title at me to make progress on every day otherwise I'll never get to covering anything. Paralysis by too many choices. 
2021-02-11 18:57:59