How did it go?

Looking back on the Self-Education Year I feel proud. I’ve made significant progress on “finding the job you love” problem, which was the purpose of it all! I also gained confidence that I can independently start and finish hard projects that go against general consensus.

David Deutsch Worksheets

Doing David Deutsch worksheets was certainly the hardest thing over the year, but also the most rewarding one. The expected 2 week in-and-out thing became a 5 month (borderline identity defining) adventure. I think this Rick and Morty clip illustrates my experience the best.

Even when the worksheets were finished I’ve spend a lot of time postponing publishing because I was so frightened to get feedback on something I was doing for so long. What happened was that I recorded the podcast with Elias and decided to focus on programming for a while, publishing worksheets once I get better at coding. Then, a few days later I check the podcast and there’s a comment saying “Congrats on being mentioned by David Deutsch himself.”. Confused by what the guy means, I go to check David’s twitter and lo and behold somehow he got across the podcast without us doing any “distribution” and reposted it!

The happiness and joy I had is hard to describe — I was ecstatic. Imagine explaining to your family why taking a year off and learning about some obscure physicist is a better option than having a well-paying job with high potential (before you have even finished university!). Yeah. And then explaining to half of your friends who the fuck David smth is. And then imagine working on that “great” idea the hardest you’ve ever worked for 5 months. Marc Andreessen saying that founders feel only two emotions: bliss or terror, DEEPLY resonated.

In the next few days I got my shit together, quickly finalized the worksheets and published it. Besides the recognition of David I also got connected with a few people in the Critical Rationalism circle and that was the second most valuable thing (besides the knowledge) that I got.

What is surprising is the variety of people I received messages from (you won’t believe if I told you!). Doing something interesting and hard, and then sharing it online, however fringe the topic, will yield amazing connections! It’s like sending the signal to the world and seeing with whom it resonates, thanks to the internet there’s always someone.

Web-Development

Once I got over the euphoria and “quickie” 5 month project ended I had to get to the actual main goal of the year: learning coding.

I must have started somewhere around June 8, but my documenting of the process wasn’t so great so it’s hard to tell.

I started with basics like CS50x. I didn’t slack and went deep into the topics, my benchmark was to understand stuff to the level that I can explain it to a 12 year old. I really took time to understand how computers work and I think it’s one of the most powerful mental models I have. Neither computers, nor internet any longer seems to be some magical technology, understanding both is deeply rewarding.

The best path forward seemed to be Web-Development. By then I’ve already designed my website and I enjoyed it greatly. Moreover, all YC startups need web-developers and many of the great people I look up to (like Patrick Collison or Mark Zuckerberg) basically started as web-developers, so at the time I was very confident in that choice.

I proceeded to do CS50Web and I also really enjoyed it. (All CS50 courses were amazing and I can’t recommend them highly enough as a starting point.) It gave a perfect overview of backend and frontend. I decided to pursue Full-Stack Web-Development as it leveraged my taste and need for long-focused hours to work on hard technical problems.

After these two courses I kind of understood what web-development is about, but my knowledge was primitive. One of the insights I got was that online courses from top universities are a perfect start, but to learn actual skills you use on the job you need go to Udemy. And so I did! (I tried doing FreeCodeCamp but it wasn’t that good.)

Jonas Schmedtmann is one of the leading tutors on Web-Development and I had a great experience with his courses. At times I felt weird for paying only 20$ for something that was bringing me so much value. I did two courses: one on HTML/ CSS, and the other one on JavaScript. JS course was finished around the end of January which is basically the end of a Self-Education Year.

When I look back on the second part of the year it sounds like I haven’t done much. Finishing 4 courses in around 6 months doesn’t sound a lot But I guess this is about how you put it. If you say I did 4 courses in 6 months, it’s kind of meh. Yet if you say I went from not really knowing what an array is to knowing how most websites work and partially being able to recreate them then it’s quite impressive (especially when you compare to traditional education).

Future Plans

The next step on the Web-Development track was learning React, building a few (or many) applications and thinking of how can I get O1 to get to Silicon Valley. (Around June I realized that moving to Silicon Valley is a crucial puzzle piece for living the life I want the most. Frankly, I should’ve figured it out way earlier given that I binge-watched everything about startups since 15.)

Yet, just as I was about to start making real websites and having proper fun with doing personal projects I had a realization that ruled out the Web-Dev path completely! The realization was that I gained clarity on the problem I want to work. That problem is longevity and making death optional.

There are a few things that particularly attract me about it. First, I think people have irrational attitude towards aging and death, basically everyone has a massive Stockholm syndrome and I like the philosophical insight that death is nothing good and we should fight it. Second, I think this is a remarkable way to progress humanity as by adding even one year to healthy life expectancy economists expect a 4-5% yearly GDP benefit (see “The economic value of targeting aging” paper). Third, I like how big and clear the mission is: make death optional or die trying, deadline indeed becomes a dead line. Forth, I think the aging field has the right level of neglectedness so I can drive a lot of marginal impact. Fifth, I don’t want to die! I don’t think coercive deaths make sense and I want to have a choice to live for as long as I want. Though the main reason is that I haven’t found a strong counter-argument of why not to work on it! There is just no other problem that marks all my desired criteria so well!

So let’s come back to the Web-Dev path. An important part of the job I love is that I actually drive real impact to solving the problem. And pretty much regardless of how good I become at Web-Development I doubt I can make a website that will make death optional ;)

At first I was really frustrated and didn’t want to see it. I’ve spend 6 months and I am nearly at the fucking finish line where I can do most of the cool projects I want!!! But no, just at that time we have to gain clarity on that one rare problem where Web-Development absolutely doesn’t help!…

But after a few days I came to see it in a positive light, yes my Web-Dev personality had to die (and you certainly attach yourself when that’s all you do for 6 months), but it is indeed for the best. It’s much better to realize now that this path won’t fulfil me than spend another 5 years doing B2B SaaS and find out it’s not rewarding.

So what now? What craft should I pursue then? Well, that is exactly the question I’m asking myself as that seems to be the final big missing puzzle piece in finding the job I love. I know my problem and I know where I want to live, now I need to figure out how I contribute to it! That is a problem for another project ;)

What are the learnings?

General Learnings

The easiest way to increase your impact by a magnitude is to just to think more ambitiously, and many times the amount of work increases only marginally. You have to be considered delusional at least by some people, otherwise you aim too low. It also seems to be harder to teach than I’d expect.

Doing something ambitious and then sharing it with others is one of the most powerful ways to work. That is so for 3 reasons: challenge and improve yourself, help others and gain connections. There’s a subtle difference I realized only when going through the Self-Education Year. This is not the best way to learn about something when you know nothing of it. This is the best way to gain credibility when you already got to the forefront of knowledge. So you learn coding by just sitting on your own and working through problems, but once you know the leading tech stack (say react), then the best way forward is by doing ambitious projects and sharing it with others.

Work only on projects that address some bottlenecks/ risks, ignore all the rest. Especially be watchful of things that are interesting but not bottlenecks! Like researching great people, history of progress, or any personal productivity porn.

Pursue smaller upwind projects rather than grand 1 year plans. The problem with grand plans is that they get life of their own and don’t account for new reality. Have clarity and stubborness in where do you want to get, and flexibility in how you get there.

Radically simplify work about work. Have one main project you’re working on, like: “Working in a top longevity company in Silicon Valley, doing the craft you enjoy”. Understand its top risks/ bottlenecks and work only on those. If you can, set yearly and quarter goals, if situation is too volatile focus on weekly and daily goals. Do monthly open-source life reviews.

Reviewing Calendar

I reviewed my past 52 weeks looking at how actually have I spend my time.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a mismatch between the perceived productivity and focus vs reality. I thought that my second part of the year was better than first, yet now I’m not sure. There were many weeks where I wasn’t as focused as I’d like to be. Here are the biggest repeating mistakes I found:

First, I have spend a lot of time on “productivity porn” projects that don’t matter much. Examples include the big picture life chores, like writing my life philosophy, researching how to be a better operator or researching great people — these are certainly fun, but they are just not that important as other things I could be doing. All projects around network fall under the same umbrella. I believe network and distribution are important, but they’re rarely the bottleneck so they should be ignored. Response? I’ll simplify my “work about work” and keep it to minimum. I’ll be much more ruthless about the rule that I work ONLY on projects that address bottlenecks.

Second, I have spend a lot of time with people that don’t align with me and we won’t interact in the long-run. It seems the main reason is that I didn’t have the courage to be alone more times when you apply a higher bar. And that lack of courage could be from low confidence in what I stand for. So when you’re unsure, going with the tide is a safe bet. Yet nowadays I’m clear in what I want from life. In many ways it goes against the conventional tide and I should be braver in staying true to what I want.

Third, I have spend a lot of time watching movies! I think big part of that, maybe 60-80% was a coping mechanism, rather than me embracing life and actively deciding to do that. I love movies, many stories directors tell resonate and leave me thinking about it months afterwards, like “Perfect Days” or documentary about Richard Branson. Others allow me to access my emotions like “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” and make me cry like no therapy session could. But these are probably only 10-20% of what I’ve actually watched. Thus, I’ll be much stricter and put higher bar for what to watch. I’ll be especially watchful to avoid movies or series as a numbing of life or coping mechanism.

Forth, I would do a lot of binge watching of youtube or something else before going to sleep which obviously fucks up its quality. Once again this is a coping mechanism, and a way to escape, numb the life away. I think with clarifying my life goals and my life philosophy I just realized that this is something that I don’t want to have in my life, and it just stopped being attractive. Of course the habit is strong and there are no past alcoholics, but recently it became an obvious thing I don’t want in my life.

Lastly, I would spend a lot of time on dinners, sometimes between 2-3 hours, usually because I’d listen or watch something. Yet this is the same numbing, escaping life away as with other binge watching. I don’t want to escape life, I want to embrace it. Eating as a coping mechanism is probably even stronger than binge watching, so that is another well-known pathway in my brain that I’ll be addressing.

Here are some of the rules I’ll follow to keep my calendar tidy so future schedule reviews are useful:

1. First 17 weeks of the Self-Education Year got lost, so pay more attention for saving the records long-term.

2. Update the schedule based on what you have actually done.

3. Put the task name on the time-block.

4. Put ✅ or ❌ for completing or failing the task.