Edit wiki/obsidian/compiled-advice.md — Work Reflections

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# compiled advice to my past self

this started as a note to younger me. it grew into a general document of things i've learned that i keep coming back to. not all of this is original — some came from [[mentors|pattern-recognition]], some from experience, some from friends.

## general

- lots of life is about optimization: have a goal and achieve it, have a metric and maximize it
- always variance. just keep working / trying / whatever
- no idea what you can achieve — that's the exciting part
- first draft is always bad. iteration is the game
- first step is removing distractions; second step is being intentional with time
- there's infinite stuff and finite time — the constraint is always time, never options
- be crazy. the people i admire most were all a little unhinged in their ambition

## social

- unless you really know a person, they are probably less cool and less smart than you think
- you are cooler and smarter in comparison than you think
- super famous/successful people are often very privileged/lucky. they aren't automatically cool people
- to make friends: literally just talk (and be cool)
- balance between breadth and depth — gotta know people well AND know lots of people
- just reach out. lots of people are very cool. ignore the not cool ones

## school

- definitely talk to upperclassmen. super cool, more mature, have all the wisdom
- definitely get to know teachers. even cooler than upperclassmen
- go to social events: networking, direct happiness, people to talk to about hard stuff
- spend time at school socializing, spend time at home working (unless hyper locked in)
- dating: it's chill to not date. don't feel behind
- don't need to always fill time during summers and breaks

## technical

- low level CS stuff not that important. syntax super easy. what's important is algorithmic thinking and experience
- for math: not at all important to get super ahead. if you really like it, you can spend 1 month and catch up. most important: get a very solid base
- math competitions are fun and only a bit useful

## the meta-advice

most advice is about what to do. the real skill is knowing whose advice to take. my [[filter coefficient|disagreeing-productively]] evolved from "accept everything from smart people" to "weight advice by how well the person knows my specific situation."

and the most useful advice i ever got wasn't advice at all — it was a question: "what do you want?" asked repeatedly until i had a real answer.

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*see also: [[the stocks metaphor|the-stocks-metaphor]], [[social wins|social-wins]], [[social strategy|social-strategy]]*