Build a self-reinforcing life

Make your time & energy work for you

When I tweeted this, people asked me how I got to this point— I attribute this largely to incorporating self-reinforcing systems in my life. I first encountered this idea from my college business strategy class, where we discussed Southwest’s strategic competitive advantage.

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The key is to ensure that the energy you expend in one area feeds another, and vice versa. This way you aren’t leaking energy all over the place or creating dead ends. 

Example 1: Work x Side Projects

I work as a designer for a no-code software platform. The main reason I took the job was because I wanted to use the platform myself.

Now, I’ve created multiple social apps, such as my dating app, creative social media platform, and job/offering board. My job encourages me to build apps, and my apps encourage me to improve the platform. 

If I were building on a platform unrelated to work, I would be *leaking energy* because all my side projects would not relate to work. If I were working on a product I had no interest in using, I would be *leaking energy* because my daytime energy expenditure would be irrelevant in my free time. 

Example 2: Climbing

I fell in love with climbing as a teen and discovered a wonderful, eccentric, and close-knit community. I thought it was normal for hobbies to be packaged with a community space, spirituality, travel, exercise, social engagement, nature, etc. After I got injured, I realized that climbing is quite unique in its self-reinforcing system. 

Climbing comes with a casual living-room-style gym, a focus on movement and flow, an eccentric crowd of regulars, getting out of the house, hanging out in serene remote landscapes, and convenient workout facilities. It also brings a sense of progression and confidence in your physical and mental/emotional strength. And most importantly, many of these facets feed into one another.

All of a sudden it is easier to make myself exercise because my workout leads me to meet new people, who then motivate me to climb/exercise. Making friends leads to planning outdoor trips, which exposes us to the elements and gets us in touch with the beauty of nature, which deepens our friendships... so on and so forth. If you can find a system like this, it can fulfill multiple needs at once and generate a flow of energy that sustains more than drains.

Example 3: Choose your context

The major structures in your life influence a lot of the detail in your daily experience. 

When I worked in consulting, I regularly overheard words like “utilization rate” “streamline” and “operating model.” Coworkers talked about travel points and football. There was bureaucracy and hierarchy and the heavy inscrutable mess of an intranet.

When I was solo traveling, all my belongings fit in my 70L backpack and my rent was $90 a month. The regular small talk was “where are you going today?” or “what climb did you get on?” This was a period of my life where my time was filled with drawing and stars and movement, rather than thoughts. 

When I went into product design I learned terminology like “series A” “double diamond” and “Bezier curves.” Creative proclivity is a baseline expectation. Visual inspiration, generative thinking, and design critiques are the norm. 

By choosing my context I choose how the environment shapes me. I choose the pool of people I hang out with, what kinds of conversations I have, the pace of everyday activities, the amount of daily mental stimulation, what type of “cool” I am pressured to subscribe to, the ease with which I can leave my room and go outdoors… 

The context you choose matters. Pick a nice home for yourself— to the best of your ability, given your unique constraints. I found that I like being creative, so I chose a creative role. I discovered I needed a lot of people in my life, so I chose to live in the neighborhood with the most access to the most friends. My environment sustains and nurtures me, instead of fighting against my natural inclinations. This removes hundreds of tiny battles from my every day and adds hundreds of moments of encouragement. 

Here are some more tweets I’ve made in this vein: 

I also talk about this idea on my vlog:

That’s all for this post— let me know what you think!