Ignore the Noise, but Find the Truth of Yourself

If I had to compress everything so far into one line, it would be this: ultra unrealistic is the most realistic way to find the truth.

Over the last few years I've been lucky enough to hang out with some of the most talented engineers and startup founders across Taipei, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. Some of my friends work at the most advanced frontier AI labs. Some of my young founder friends got acquisition offers from Cognition and other major tech companies in the States. Some already retired in their early 30s and can basically fly private anywhere, any day. Some are on the corporate side, some are on the influencer side. And I've learned a lot from my super talented colleagues, and so on and so forth.

Here's everything I learned from them.

17 things I learned

1. Be better in a certain field — or at least let someone see you growing over time.
2. Be super kind. Be super humane, treat everyone like your best friend. Don't be a jerk. Nobody likes jerks.
3. Develop your own terms of judgment. Your judgment could be wrong, but it doesn't matter — most scientific hypotheses were wrong.
4. To build a habit, find someone who's already been doing it for a while, and do it together.
5. Review the path later on. Retrospective reflection might not matter to some people, but to me it's the most important thing for getting better.
6. Find the source of truth. Otherwise you don't have a path to follow.
7. Treat yourself as a scientist. Document everything in your life, well.
8. Wealth is not the same as a great life. Some of the wealthiest people I know are also pretty miserable.
9. Don't find something you love — find something you'd do no matter how rich or how poor you are. The world is just a game. Having fun matters more than net worth.
10. Your network is your net worth.
11. Ignore the noise. It's useless. Focus on your own growth — a well-trained racehorse only focuses on its own track.
12. Figure out a way to your goal.
13. Hang out with people you'd like to become.
14. Find your own pace. Everybody is a different soul with a different path and a different pace — but you have to actually try to find yours.
15. Be aggressive. Otherwise, what's the difference between you and mediocrity?
16. Knowledge is hiding everywhere — implementing is the best way to learn.
17. Find the problem, solve the problem. That's what it means to have done a job.

What I did this year

I also want to do a little bit of documenting — see point 7.

1. Founded a company with a friend. Our startup got accepted into the NVIDIA Inception Program and Founders, Inc.
2. Went through a co-founder split. I learned you really can't rush into any decision.
3. Went to meet my founder friends in San Francisco. A truly amazing experience. You see how completely they dedicate themselves to the problem they want to solve, and how smart they are.
4. Got a job at GoFreight, co-working with what I'd call the best talent here in Asia.
5. Traveled to Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, San Francisco, and Taichung just for coffee chats. I know, kind of crazy. But sometimes it's really worth it.
6. Finally committed to bulking. Trusting my PT.
7. Reconnected with my therapist, redirecting my life toward a more peaceful state.

The plan for next year

Read more books. Listen to more podcasts. Hang out with people I like, or people I truly have to. Get more experience in how to actually get shit done.

And find the problem I truly want to work on — one that helps make the future of humanity a reality.

I love tech because tech is the best way to go from zero to one. And the most fascinating part of tech, to me, is how it can enhance humanity.

Looking back, most of this year was unrealistic. Starting a company, splitting with a co-founder, flying across the world for coffee. But every one of those taught me something true about myself. That's what I meant at the start: ultra unrealistic is the most realistic way to find the truth.

Here's to 22.