Advice
I’m only 24 years old, so I don’t know if I’m qualified to give advice yet. Nevertheless, I’ve put together a few ideas that I think could help anyone who reads them:
- I believe in what I call the “Mati's Theory of Maximizing Paths” (still working on the name). To explain it, you need to know a little about me: as a teenager, I wanted to be an Olympian, then a systems engineer, and eventually I founded OrderEAT. Even though I didn’t end up competing in the Olympics and dropped out of university just a few courses before graduating, I’m convinced that maximizing those experiences got me to where I am. I firmly believe you should go as deep as possible into whatever you’re doing, and extract as much value as you can from those experiences. If you do this consistently, things will eventually work out so you can achieve great things.
- Try to dream big. I was born in Uruguay, a small country, where everyone has a very limited sense of what’s possible. Most of the time, your environment, or even yourself, defines your own limits. Challenge them.
- Try to enjoy things as they happen (something I’ve always struggled with). Whether working or on vacation, I tend to worry about the future. I don’t recommend that.
- Try to know yourself really well. That doesn’t mean judging yourself, but realizing what your areas of opportunity are.
- Teach what you learn as soon as you learn it. Sharing knowledge (even before you know it really well) accelerates your own understanding and multiplies the impact of your experience. The act of explaining forces clarity, and it helps others skip mistakes you’ve already made.
- If you are young and just starting your career, please, please start a startup (if you dare), or at least go work for one. You might get paid less, and you will probably worry more, but you won’t be just a number. You’ll have real responsibilities, and the impact of your actions will truly matter. In my opinion, it’s the best environment to see many different areas up close and decide which ones interest you most.
- If you are really young, or have kids, make them commit to a sport thoroughly. Sports taught me that discipline and consistency beat talent in the long run. Also I was a big fan of competitions, and in all sports you lose more than you win, at least at the beginning, and the learning you get from those losses is extremly valuable.
- Avoid overthinking, especially with decisions. I attribute a big part of my “success” to my ability to decide quickly, balancing data and intuition. To make a decision, you only need those two things. If you’ve already gathered as much data as possible, make the call fast, overthinking won’t improve the outcome, it will stress you.
- If you enjoy working really hard, do it. Subject to that constraint, it’s not clear that the returns to effort ever diminish substantially. If you’re lucky enough to enjoy it a lot, be grateful and take full advantage. (I stole this one from Patrick Collison, huge fan of him. You can read his advice section here: patrickcollison.com/advice)