Motivation

It's impossible to do great things without some fundamental clarity about why we're doing them. We can never have total clarity though -- the world is too messy for that. The best strategy I've seen is to repeat this cycle every few years:

• Reflect on fundamental values
• Come to conclusions & derive goals
• Relentlessly pursue those goals

The best personal trainers won't start by telling their clients how to exercise. Instead, they always want to know "Why are you here? What are your goals?" This pattern exists across every discipline. A crisp motivation is a beacon of light to pierce through the noise -- we can't navigate the world without it.

If you're just starting your career, you might not have a set of profound values. This is much better than cargo-culting other people's values. You should still read a lot of biographies, but you can also just conclude something like:

• I don't know what I'll eventually do, but I need to get ready.
• The best way to get ready is to learn as much as I can, build valuable skills, and form strong relationships.
• The best strategy for this is to work
  • With the best people I can find
  • On the most interesting problem available.

You'll get access to better people & more ~interesting~ important problems as you repeat this cycle & level up your career. As you build wealth, your definition of "available" will expand to include riskier opportunities. This is healthy, because you'll learn more before taking massive risks... but you don't have to build a personal war-chest before working on important problems.

Once your basic needs are met, don't budget your time too strictly based on immediate financial value. Many of my longest-running projects, with no initially apparent ROI, have started to intersect & compound in surprising ways. Money is an incredible man-made tool for aligning incentives, but a terrible approximation of "value" at the interpersonal level.

To illustrate this, here is how I'd frame my career so far:

• I built a lot of great software (usually made $$)
• I became really obsessed with health (no $$)
• I was fascinated by programmable money, and helped Coinbase build a lot of regulated financial products

All of this, combined, led to my current role as the CTO of Truemed. It's a new type of payments company steering medical $$ to root-cause, preventative health.

Is this my big thing? Was being the Manager of Assets & Balances at Coinbase my big thing? Is being a father of 3 kids my big thing? Do I need a big thing?

In the absence of higher clarity, a good strategy is always to pursue excellence in your current task. Over time, you'll develop strong opinions about how the world should be. Imposing those opinions on the world is an act of love, and we should love with all our hearts.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters... It is the Lord Christ you are serving.