The Cost of Commitment

At some point, you have to trade optionality for commitment, because choosing one future necessarily means giving up all the others.

I have struggled to find the right direction and commit to it.

I think one of the reasons is optionality.

When you commit to one future, you are also committing to cutting off all the other futures. And that’s scary.

There are so many things that I want to do. There are so many lives that I can imagine living. And when I choose one of them, I’m essentially saying no to all of the others.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I should do with my life. What should I commit to? What is the thing that I want to spend my time doing?

Money isn’t enough

And one of the obvious answers has always been money.

I want to make a lot of money. I want financial freedom. I want to have the ability to do what I want with my time, help my family, travel, and pursue the things that I’m interested in.

But I’ve realized that money itself isn’t enough.

If I could make a million dollars a year as a plumber, I wouldn’t become a plumber. There’s nothing wrong with being a plumber. It’s just not what I want to do with my life.

So clearly, there is something else that matters to me.

Something that is mine

I’ve realized that doing something original and putting something into the world that impacts other people is incredibly important to me.

I want to create something.

I want to have ideas that are mine. I want to develop those ideas, put them into the world, and have them affect other people.

When I think about the people that I admire, a lot of them have done that.

They’ve created something that is distinctly theirs.

That could be a book. It could be a movie. It could be a company. It could be a speech. It could be an idea.

But there is something about taking something that exists inside of you and putting it into the world that is incredibly meaningful to me.

And I think I have something unique to offer.

I’ve lived a weird life in some ways. I’ve gone from working as a janitor and a server and doing door-to-door sales to becoming a software engineer at Google. I’ve lived in different places. I’ve changed a lot as a person. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ambition, fear, courage, commitment, what makes a good life, and what it means to actually use the time that you have.

And I want to explore those things.

I want to understand them better myself, but I also want to put those ideas into the world.

I want to impact people at scale.

I don’t want to just have these thoughts in my head. I want to develop them. I want to challenge them. I want to write them down. I want to communicate them.

The direction

So my primary direction is going to be developing original ideas, writing them, and expressing them through video.

That doesn’t mean I can’t do other things.

I still have my job. I still have my watch channel. I still have other interests. Those things can support what I’m doing.

But I need a primary direction.

The cost of commitment

And choosing that direction means giving up other versions of myself, at least for now.

It means giving up the idea that I’m going to suddenly become a startup founder.

It means giving up the idea that I’m going to become a game developer.

It means giving up the idea that I’m going to go all-in on becoming a watch entrepreneur.

Maybe someday I do one of those things.

But right now, they can’t all be the main thing.

That’s the cost of commitment.

You don’t really commit to something if you’re constantly keeping every other possible future alive.

And I think I’ve spent too much time trying to preserve all of those futures.

I’ve been afraid that if I choose one thing, I’ll realize later that I chose wrong.

But there is also a cost to never choosing.

You can spend years thinking about all the different people you could become without ever becoming any of them.

At some point, you have to actually live one of the lives.

The next three months

So for at least the next year, this is the direction.

And for the next three months specifically, I’m not going to let myself veer off because I get excited about another idea.

I’m going to write.

I’m going to aim for one essay a week.

I’m going to make at least one video a week.

I’m going to read more.

I’m going to keep developing my ideas and putting them into the world.

Because I don’t think my problem has been that I don’t have enough options.

I’ve had plenty of options.

My problem has been choosing one.

I need to commit to creating and spreading my original ideas.