Note: Iāve decided to take a day off from work. After some dawdling in the morning, I managed to sit myself down at the Sackler library to do some āfunā writing. This is free-flow writing with no coherent structure whatsoever. Iām literally pouring all my garden-variety worries into the page as they crop up in my mind. Iāve been in *this* kind of mood lately, so I expect this post to be one of many upcoming braindumps. TLDR; proceed with caution - strangely personal braindump ahead. Probably more to come.
TLDR (for the braindump); I am stressed and confused. I should also stop outsourcing my ālife plansā.
Iāve come to the realization today that I no longer know how to relax. Every morning after I roll out of bed, one of the first things I do is put on my headphones and pull up an informational podcast. My headphones stay on as I brush my teeth and make breakfast [1]. Sometimes I pull them off when I have breakfast, sometimes I donāt. The times I do entail a change of medium but not of content. The headphones come on again when I make lunch or take bathroom breaks.
Information consumption has become my default state. My Pomodoro breaks consist of skimming through blog posts or substack articles. So does my evening downtime, procrastination repertoire and prolonged lunch breaks. I never feel particularly invigorated or inspired during these digital excursions (barring the occasional lucky find); in fact, every new link I click compounds the ever-growing, ever-persistent headache that I have. Yet my instinct is always to consume, even if it isnāt especially good for my wellbeing. Itās a miracle that Iām not addicted to Twitter.
I know for a fact from past experience that I derive much more pleasure from reading books, especially fiction. However, unlike blog articles, they canāt be quickly and effectively digested in short bursts throughout the day [2]. Reading books requires carving a chunk of time out, which I am always reluctant to do because it eats into time ābetter spentā on coursework [3]. Whenever I do find time to read, I am plagued with guilt. Some might call this āproductivity madnessā. I call it poor taste.
However, I believe that my actions are symptomatic of a deeper underlying problem: an absence of direction. Purposeful relaxation is a daunting task as it involves making conscious decisions on what to do and what not to do. This means understanding what your body, mind and spirit needs in the moment, whether that is a hot bath, an hour in the ice rink or some Tolstoy. For those like me who are constantly on auto-pilot, it is very tempting to write off introspection as a waste of time and to seek refuge in the noise offered by the digital world. Relaxation also comes much more easily when you know that you are on the right track and that it is therefore okay to step back and take a little breather.
Free time is simultaneously my greatest desire and fear. Whenever Iām buried under mountains of coursework, I glorify it as a panacea. Whenever itās in my grasp, I treat it like a hot potato and do my best to rid myself of it. The period between the end of my undergraduate exams to the start of my Masters course was the longest block of free time Iāve had since the start of my schooling. Even to me now, it sounds like absolute bliss. Half a year to do whatever the heck I want? Hell yeah! I envisioned hours spent reading and writing, and re-picking up half-learnt languages. What I got instead was complete paralysis and an incommensurably miserable couple of months. I was desperately looking for projects left and right, rather than trying to figure out a plan of my own. I ended up doing a research project at a longermist think tank based in China, which was useful in helping me learn more about the intersection of China and AI Diplomacy. I can still recall the relief I felt after taking on the project, having had the burden of choice finally lifted off me.
A few days ago, my boyfriend jokingly told me that Iāve come āawfully farā in my life without ever having thought through any decisions Iāve made. He attributes this to a mix of surprisingly good intuition and sheer luck [4]. It was an offhand comment made during our usual banter, but it rang true.
Until now, the conventional path would always supply me with a clear default goal to optimise for. Do well in high school to get into a good college. Do well in college to get a prestigious job in consulting/finance/law/tech. With these holy dictates set down, all I had to do was find a way to apply the minimal effort required to achieve the highest grade on paper. In my first year at university, consulting looked like an attractive option because it offered optionality [5]. Not only could you remain a generalist at McKinsey, you also had a plethora of exit roles that you could pick and choose from post-consulting. In other words, I could delay introspection and life decisions until then (or indefinitely, were I to remain in consulting). The prestige is a huge bonus. Unfortunately for me, Iāve made the fatal mistake of asking questions ā and alas, the seams of the narrative have now come apart. Enter 80K Hours and Effective Altruism. I encountered the movementās key ideas in my first year at university, but didnāt get that involved with the community until my second year. 80K offers a very useful framework for making career decisions, placing emphasis on how to leverage your potential to have the largest impact possible (please check it out if you havenāt before!). Through EA, I was introduced to ideas like longtermism, existential risk and the alignment problem, all of which have greatly shaped my worldview today. However, over the last couple of months, Iāve realised that Iāve been using EA/80K as a convenient substitute for the conventional route, having internalised the paths set out by EA/80K as my new default set of options. The emperor has allegedly changed his clothes, but heās actually still butt naked. There is nothing wrong with following the advice laid out by 80K/EA, but Iāve been using it as an excuse to avoid confronting important questions about values and vision.
Over the past couple of years, Iāve tried multiple times, pen in hand, to disentangle the excitement from the expectation. I would go through curated value lists to see which ones resonated with me and jot them down. I would note down activities that I liked doing, the kind of legacy that Iād like to leave behind, the ideal lifestyle that Iād like to lead, but to no avail. Part of the problem stems from my childhood. My parents are amazing and I am very grateful for all they have done for me, but coming from a traditional Chinese family, as a young girl, I was always expected to be obedient - and I was very good at that. My decisions, big and small, were all outsourced to my mum. The first big decision that I officially made āon my ownā was choosing universities to apply to. By then, the conventional narrative coupled with a bucketful of Girardian mimetic rivalry had completely hijacked my sense of ambition [6], so I naturally gravitated towards picking the universities at the top of the league tables. Iām now stuck in a state of limbo where I can see all the different narratives coming apart, but donāt have the courage to soldier on and forge my own path.
I was going to write that I am no longer able to tell between what I want to do and what I should be doing, but thatās a half-lie. The truth is that I am scared. I am scared of digging deep into myself and not liking what I find. In fact, my active avoidance of confronting my inner self is probably because I subconsciously know that my values and desires donāt fully align with any of the sets of expectations Iāve internalised in my life.
You like writing? āWatch out for GPT-3ā. Reading? āOkay, but how does that fit into your 10-year career plan? Youāre not an aristocratā. Learning languages? āWeāve got Transformers for thatā. Figure skating? āHoney, youāre a bit too old for that nowā. _ Making heartwarming Chinese and Japanese food?ā_ So you want to be a housewife? Nani?ā
People close to me are often (rightfully) confused by my recent decision to veer into the more technical realm. Yes, Iāve always been curious about questions that span across many different disciplines (just look at my eclectic group of subject choices for IB and uni) and yes, people can and should consistently renegotiate their identity [7], but the primary driver of my decision was not curiosity or experimentation ā it was the desire to ascend multiple status hierarchies [8], including EA (+ rationality), the wider Tech/SF space and the conventional pathā¢, plus the fear of potentially being automated out of existence within the next decade. My assessment of the high level of prestige associated with those coming from ātechnical backgroundsā refer more to the first two hierarchies rather than the third [9], though this is rapidly changing in our digital age, as seen by the huge push by governments and various other institutions for STEM education and research. A simple heuristic showing this is how it is much easier to switch into a non-technical role when you have a technical background than vice versa. Note that ascending status hierarchies is not necessarily a bad thing and I donāt want to make it out as such; indeed, there are many other important factors at play, such as financial stability and college debt. It is just that in my case, it has been the root cause behind my various attempts to straitjacket myself into this āidealā, āhigh prestigeā, competent-sounding person that is so against my nature, desires and strengths.
There is no doubt that my obsession with cultivating and maintaining this āprestigiousā/competent-sounding image is stunting my development. It has greatly constrained the paths and activities that I allow myself to pursue in fear of being shunned by so-called āeliteā society. Keep on the well-trodden path, it tells me, itāll keep you safe and loved. However, as Taleb highlights, the āsafeā option protects you from experiencing a large downside, but also enforces a cap on your upside. In contrast, a riskier option yields much more variable returns as both the bottom and top are uncapped. This makes me think of figure skating. You can stick to clinging on to the side rails (see: mediocrity) or you can give yourself room to fall but grow in the process. Salchow, double salchow, triple, quad [10] ā every jump progression comes with a harder and more painful fall (and very many at that), but also the opportunity to soar higher. This brings to mind a Tumblr-style quote that I saw on Gracie Goldās Instagram when I was 15:
āAnd you ask āWhat if I fall?ā Oh but my darling, What if you fly?āā
Erin Hanson
My years spent writing essays in academia have taught me that Iām meant to end this piece with a conclusion, preferably with a ācall-to-actionā of some sort. To be frank, I have no coherent plan detailing my next steps. Iām also not expecting to be able to undo two decades worth of programming within the next month. However, what I do know is that I want to give myself room to be confused, to dive headfirst into wonder and to explore without judgement. In the words of Rilke:
āAllow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of oneās own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is bornā
Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
[1] Same breakfast every day: https://www.pickuplimes.com/recipe/classic-comforting-oatmeal-196 ā ft turmeric!
[2] Even though thatās what I used to do in school - Iād sneak in reading between breaks, on the bus, under the desk at times if need be. Thatās fun in its own right, but it comes nowhere near the experience of spending an entire afternoon poring over a book
[3] Though upon deeper reflection, doing so wouldāve been a more efficient use of my time as my digital excursions always lead to trips down various rabbit holes
[4] He attempted to remedy my thoughtlessness by taking me on a walk on Logic Lane for my 21st birthday - clearly didnāt work
[5] See Desaiās excellent piece
[6] Okay - maybe not completely - I secretly applied to Quest University because it looked super duper cool!
[7] A lovely essay on the subject by Ava
[8] Obviously mixed in with some degree of curiosity and a desire to have a wider range of possible careers before me - optionality abounds
[9] This holds slightly less to some extent as there are āprestigiousā roles like law that require less of a technical background. However, in general, doing a ātechnicalā subject is seen as more prestigious (from my experience at least).
[10] Obviously with loops, lutzes etc. peppered in between but Iām trying to make my point sound vaguely poetic so forgive me :)