2 quick thoughts:
a) Mind your inputs
Specifically, surround yourself with the best people you can both in terms of character/courage and ability). Your environment will shape you (tyrannically so — its incentives, values, and culture will be absorbed) so make sure you are deliberate in choosing one.
b) Get to having real responsibility as fast as possible
Responsibility = risk and risk accelerates learning. A little more responsibility than you think is appropriate will stretch you — if you want to rise to that you likely will. If you don’t feel stretched, even if you’re making good money, the human capital part of your ledger is being docked. Rest-and-vest attitudes are deceptively expensive in the long run — don’t ever adopt one in your 20s and 30s (and probably not after that either).
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I agree with that, obviously. What you said reminds me of a quote I heard from Elizabeth Stone. It’s the following: ‘Making the decision to have a child–it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.‘ I thought that captured the kind of anxiety you’re talking about there.
[Kris — choosing responsibility is a form of chosen suffering. But it’s so obviously a privilege. I am tediously dramatic about this — the kids and I were bringing in the garbage bins to the tune of their whining and I banged them over the head with “you should be happy you get to do this…would you rather not have legs and not be able to be helpful?” I wish I uttered a more sensitive example on the spot but that’s what happened.]
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