Letters to a Young Maker

Are your desires your own? Or are they what society taught you to want?We are slaves to our desires.Naval calls desires "a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you reach the thing you want."Perhaps it's not unhappiness, but a lingering sense of unfulfillment.Either way, something foundational seems worth asking:What do you really want?If you're not clear on what you want, you cannot achieve it.Going down the path of finding deeper answers to what you want is the starting point for living an intentional life.I have found myself going down this line of contemplation many times in my life.And it sometimes left me feeling disoriented, unsure, and chaotic.But despite the ambiguous nature of this pursuit, it serves as the foundation to give birth to a dancing star.Nietzsche wrote: "One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."The chaos of questioning. The star of authentic desire.Or more simply put, the life you actually want.Because the alternative of unintentionally going after things is not the answer.Time is too short. Every day is too valuable.I find it hard to answer whether a desire is genuinely rooted in my unique self or something I have mimicked from the rest of society.And I don't think you are able to answer this question in your head.Rather, you answer it through action.A better, more approachable question is:Does something give you energy or take energy from you?Your body knows.Pay attention to expansion or contraction in your chest. To the subtle signals of your nervous system.Does this path make you feel larger or smaller?This ties back to your intuition and your subconscious, which are the sources of better answers to this question.Through that iterative process of doing something, assessing what it does to your energy, and then readjusting your life choices, you get closer to where your highest potential and most fulfilled life exists.The pursuit is messy. Then clear. Then messy again.Each cycle brings you closer to an answer that's truly yours.Question your desires.But do so through action, not thinking.Yes, there's a paradox here. Even the desire to "find your authentic self" might be socially programmed.But I'll make this assertion anyway, grounded in a maxim I have confidence in:Becoming more fully yourself is always worth the pursuit.Even if the idea itself came from someone else.

You should get dopamine from creation.But today, that’s harder than ever. We live inside a culture of constant interruption - a world shaped by phones, by noise, by an endless stream of micro-stimuli we never truly asked for.Always loud. Always distracting. Always pulling us out of the pure state of simply being.For makers, this is deadly. It destroys the conditions under which great creative work is born.Great creative work happens in silence, stillness, and solitude - in the quiet moments where the mind can descend into depth.So you have to design your life around those conditions. If you don’t, you’ll never reach the level of immersion required to make work that matters.It’s the two sacred hours a day you devote to making something - without checking your phone, without talking to anyone, without escape. Just you and the work.And you must be willing to sit with it.Sit with the blank page. Sit with the boredom of not knowing what to do. Sit with the uncertainty of not knowing the right direction.If you can endure these inevitable forces of resistance, you will progress. You will go deeper. You will get better. You will make something real.This is where slow dopamine emerges - the kind that feels meaningful, earned, and expansive. The opposite of the instant hit you get from social media.The moment you begin to feel dopamine from the work itself, something in you shifts. You’ve tasted the real reward.You’ve probably felt this before - fleeting moments that revealed the creative life you crave.Now your task is simple, but not easy: Say no to everything that pulls you away from those few daily hours of creation.As you protect this space and build your life around it, the slow dopamine moments multiply.This is the modern challenge of being a maker: To fight back against the distractions society has engineered - and to win, consistently - for the sake of your craft, your clarity, and your life.

time is like sand.if you're not careful, it can slip through your hands leaving you wondering where it went.and years if not decades can fly by without you having made meaningful progress on anything.it's so easy to look back at a day, wondering what you have actually finished that was meaningful.this is because distractions are all around us.emails.friends.co-workers.work that seems important but isn't. which, ironically is likely 90% of work for most people. your average day is a good predictor of the quality of the work you do and the outcomes you achieve.it's not enough to have an outstanding day once very few weeks. just like james clear advocates:we fall to the level of our system, not rise to the level of our ambition.so if you're serious about your work and making real progress, you need to fix your time first.there's no one-size-fits-all solution to this. but a few tactics that may help you.starting your day with a morning ritual and spending a few minutes planning out your day consciously. using a calendar to time box the 2-3 most important things which are non negotiable for that day.not using your phone or any other social distraction for the first 2 hours of your day to do the most important thing first.no matter what works for you, you need to figure out a solution to this problem.because if you don't, you will never do anything great in your life.essentially, there's 2 things you need to become good at.1) identifying what is truly important.2) arranging your day so the important thing gets done no matter what.and don't make the mistake of confusing efficiency with effectiveness. it's not about getting more things done.it's about getting the right things done.and to do this on >90% of your days.you need to be in control of your time to become great at what you do.

to do great work, you need to do bad work first.a lot of it.there are no hac ks, shortcuts, or tricks.there is just applying yourself to your work.this is true for products, writing, arts, engineering even.you can think of your ability to do great work as a muscle you are training.you will start out embarrassed. the first sessions will be hard. and you will want to quit. out of shame, fear, resistance or all of the above.but this is the part you cannot skip.all the great creatives went through this.not just for a few days, but for years.what amateurs get wrong is they don’t complete the full creative circle.they create something, but never finish the loop by shipping it to the real world.you don’t improve by keeping your work to yourself.you improve by going through the uncomfortable feeling of sharing imperfect work.this is how you gather real data. and how you make a real vote for the type of person you want to become.great work requires you to take the identity of someone who does great work.and this means showing up like a professional, not an amateur.so, everything you need to know is this:do work every day.ship it to the world.and don’t quit for many years.your work and the world will show you the direction.

clear thinking creates good outcomes.the lack of it, leads to chaos and failure.the result of good thinking is intentionality.instead of just acting, and hoping for an outcome, you move with clarity on why you are doing the thing you are doing.and intentionality is the precondition to success, defined as getting what you want.good thinking is not just that you are clear in your mind.but your ability to communicate your thinking in a way others understand.so the test for the quality of thinking is how quickly and clearly it is transferrable to someone else.because thinking in isolation has limited reach. you see this in how you lead a team.if you think clearly, you allow your team to understand why something matters, what is in scope, and the path forward. the lack of which leads to lacking focus.the same is true when communicating with llms. the more clearly you express what you want, the better your results will be.so how do you think clearly?i believe in thinking by writing.writing, fundamentally, is an act of thinking.the people who think only in their heads tend to be poor thinkers.the ones who think by writing tend to be good thinkers.the way you think by writing is writing your thoughts out loud. not the perfect words, but putting your thoughts raw, unfiltered on paper.this then allows you to refine your thinking. iterate it. simplify it. improve it. poor thinking leads to poor outcomes.so practicing thinking as a skill is a worthwhile pursuit.

You should do work in order.If you want to move fast, there is the temptation to multi-task.Solving a problem only to 80% and then continuing with the next 3 things that are on your mind.The problem with not doing work in order is that you will pay interest on the shortcuts you take down the line.So the idea of moving fast by cutting corners and not doing things right, and in order, from the start doesn’t exist.It’s an illusion of progress.And paradoxically, it will make you slower.Right now, I am working with a talented engineer who moves extremely fast.We scoped out a project, and they started building quickly.The first few days looked impressive, moving extremely fast on all of the things that were in scope.But then after a few days, the visible progress slowed.Why?Because they cut corners on the fundamental building blocks which had to be done right.And now, the whole implementation grew into unneeded complexity, making every other change more costly in terms of time and thinking power.Especially in software, not doing things in order hurts progress the most because of the interdependencies that exist in software.This temptation of not doing work in order grows even larger with AI.When you’re using Cursor to write code, you get into this illusion of speed where you can build 80% of things in a few hours.But this comes at the cost of keeping control over the fundamental building blocks which are the foundation.And if the foundation is screwed, you will spend too much time on tricks and band-aids that attempt to fix a foundational flaw, which makes the whole project significantly slower.Instead, you should go through the hard, painful thing and fix the foundation first.Doing the work in order.You can think of this like building a house.If the foundation of the house is screwed, everything else becomes harder, more costly, slower, and eventually leads you to needing to demolish everything and start over.Another version of this problem is that builders are now tempted to add many things because it will just take a few prompts.The side effect of this is that you will add things which shouldn’t exist.And structure them in a way that grows in complexity. Because AI is not good at making good fundamental decisions if you are not careful and explicit in the way you instruct it, which is a direct product of the depth and clarity in your thinking.To reference Dieter Rams: make less but better things.A product is not getting better by adding more, but by getting the foundation even better. Focusing your energy on the things that truly matter.I’ve made this mistake many times across many projects.So the insight is this:There is an optimal sequence of steps, an order, you should follow to create the best result in the fastest time.The moment you cut corners, don’t think deeply about the core issues, AI will make this problem even worse.Move step by step, getting each critical step required for your product’s success right. And this requires deep thinking and care, not outsourcing your thinking to an LLM.There is a likelihood of things changing in the future as models become more powerful.But for the time being, the heuristic is simple:Do work in order. Don’t cut corners. Go through the hard problems first, and do it right from the start.

You won’t get it right on the first shot.Moving from an idea to something you can share with the world requires implementation.And through implementation, you figure out what you should’ve been building.Your sense of perfectionism doesn’t help.It’s an illusion that keeps you from completing the full creative cycle.At one of the companies I’m building, we went through this just a few days ago.We worked for weeks on a version of our product, taking it from the initial idea to the first prototype.We gave it to the first 100 people……and painfully saw all the things we got wrong.But we wouldn’t know what to build if we hadn’t built a first version.Through the act of making, we figured out what we should’ve been making.The same is true for engineering.When you build a complex feature, you might spend hours writing code and end up with a subpar result—overly complex, messy, not what it should be.If you then start again from scratch, you can likely build the same feature in minutes—and do it right on the “first” shot.By implementing and doing the work, you discover how you should’ve been building that feature.And this principle expands across domains:Content creation. Music. Writing. Art.It’s the idea of iteration.Iteration is an inevitable part of doing great work.And the biggest mistake you can make is not making the thing to begin with.So don’t blame yourself for getting it wrong on the first few tries.See it for what it is: progress.To figure out what you should’ve been making, you need to make it first.

Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet has had a profound impact on me and my creative work.My university professor, William Hernandez, gave me the book a few years ago.It’s a series of letters between Rilke and Franz Xaver Kappus, a young aspiring poet who wrote to him seeking guidance.I return to it occasionally — usually when I’m looking for answers about my own creative path.And every time, I find something new.One lesson changed my life:you should only do the work that truly pulls you toward it.The work that keeps you up at night.The kind of work you cannot not do.That pull — that unmistakable gravitational force — is how the work itself shows you the direction you’re meant to follow.For me, that pull has always been writing.Ever since I was seventeen, I’ve written — sometimes inconsistently, sometimes every day for a year.It’s never really stopped calling. I’ve always felt the urge to translate the ideas and experiences I encounter in my work and life — not because I believe they’re unique, but because writing helps me process them and chase something deeper: wisdom.Wisdom, simply put, is the desire to find answers to the questions that move you.And I have many questions.What’s the point of life?How can life be meaningful?How can I do great work?How can I turn the dreams that whisper to me into something real?Over the years, I’ve created many things — software, companies, essays, music, videos.And through all of it, I’ve learned to follow the work that keeps pulling me forward.That work is writing about the ideas and discoveries that shape me.Five days ago, I turned twenty-six.And I don’t want to wait any longer to put my writings and ideas out there fully.Why?Because this is the work I cannot not do.Because I want to sharpen my writing and thinking.Because doing creative work means finishing it — releasing it into the world.So this is what Letters to a Young Maker is.A collection of letters to myself.A record of what I’m learning as I go.I’m not writing this for an audience. I’m writing it for me.As Rick Rubin says, “The audience comes last.”If it resonates with others — great.If it doesn’t — great.I’m here to do the work.To create something personal.Something that feels true.Something that is me.Let me finish this first letter with a quote from Rilke's first letter to Kappus:You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me that. You have asked others, before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you worry when certain editors turn your efforts down. Now (since you have allowed me to offer you advice) let me ask you to give up all that. You are looking to the outside, and that above all you should not be doing now. Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself. Examine the reason that bids you to write; check whether it reaches its roots into the deepest region of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write. This above all: ask yourself in your night’s quietest hour: must I write? Dig down into yourself for a deep answer. And if it should be affirmative, if it is given to you to respond to this serious question with a loud and simple ‘I must’, then construct your life according to this necessity; your life right into its most inconsequential and slightest hour must become a sign and witness of this urge.