There are five wolves inside of you
“There's a point, around age twenty,” Bedap said, “when you have to choose whether to live like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make virtue of your peculiarities.”
The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin
A person told me a few days ago that I was not ambitious enough in my goals. Usually when people think this they mean I should be pursuing something more legible. Focus more on the research grind, or marketing, or citations. This friend was unique in taking the polar opposite view. My goals, he argued, were too legible. I had highly demanded technical skills, the respect of my friends, a very safe path to a lucrative career, and occasionally big dreams (or as most people called them, delusions of grandeur). I could do what I wanted.
This conversation happened, of course, at 1:30AM when working towards an 8AM deadline. It took me a while to understand what we was meant. I didn't care that much about twitter followers, or citation counts, or fast turnaround times for papers. I paid attention to them, and tried to do the requisite minimum to give myself the opportunities I wanted. I mean, I was didn't publish my first first author paper until my third year of grad school! I didn't cultivate an active twitter presence, focused on quality over quantity, and had active hobbies and a social life outside of grad school. What in particular was he commenting about?
It took me a while to understand that his point was about my long term goals.
FFF
In the past, I categorized my desires into three selves, which reared up at different times and had very different needs. Focused solved the problem in front of him. Fabulous wanted nothing more or less than to be the life of the party every weekend. Fried was tired. Fried relaxed. Focused and Fabulous would come back later.
This conception of self was much more fruitful than thinking of myself as a singular set of wants. My desires weren't static, but a rolling average of an ever moving distribution. Happiness was expressing all the aspects of my personality. Having meaningful work, cherished friends, and a vibrant social life, while having times to relax in between.
As a mental model, it was very useful. I truly think I need little more to be happy than these things, my basic needs, and the freedom to be whichever of these three I want to be whenever I want to be.
This conversation made me reflect on that trinity. It was enough for me to be happy, and that is enough. But none of these selves care a whit about writing. In Priorities and Tragedy and art, I wrote about the relationship between obsession and good work. The need for hunger to drive your hunt, if you want to catch your quarry. Focused cares about doing good work. He's focused on it, a little obsessed with it at times. Fabulous cares about enjoying herself to the fullest, of being the kind of person who those hungry for a good time gravitate towards. A little obsessed with outfits, whether people are dancing with enough energy, and earning complements. Fried is fried. Focused Fabulous and Fried. Enough to describe a full complete life. Enough to describe the desires that you need to fulfill. But not the complete picture, for all models are wrong even if some are useful.
What do you reach for?
In Happiness and Ambition, I wrote about what was after contentment. One thing conspicuously missing from that article is what I am ambitious to do more than a year out. Long term goals. A large part of the reason I haven’t focused on those is that I've been focused on medium term projects: working on research I think is important and developing a portfolio of it, maintaining my friend groups, that sort of thing. But all my medium and longer term ambitions are means to an end. That is not the sum total of what some of my selves aspire to do. Its what focus is focused on, sure. It will solidify my long term stability, sure. But there is more.
FFFFF
Enter two more selves. Selves who don't need to be happy, but who my executive function believes should have a seat at the table. Fit wants to be fit. To have good cardio and better muscles. To live a long life. Fortune favors the bold. Favors attempting ambitious projects that result in the change you want to see in the world. Favors practicing writing. Believes I need to write more, especially technical content and zeitgeist content I find important(AI policy etc.). Believes that I'm not playing my research career to win, but to not lose, and loathes playing to not lose.
What my friend was saying: I need to work towards my long term goals seriously. Fit exists when I don't have deadlines, and benefits from Fabulous' desire for a beautiful body. Fortune sometimes comes out, but usually only when writing, late in the night, or when discussing the future / having an existential crisis. Fortune isn't a person who comes regularly the way Focused/Fabulous/Fried do.
What my friend was saying: Focus less on the easily measurable goals. Focus is happy with any problem to chew on. Fabulous wants new friends outside of your current bubbles and comfort zones, and will appreciate the risk. Fried will hate it, but Fried hates most things worth doing in the moment that aren’t books or video games.
What my friend was saying: you are focused on quality research papers quite a lot at the moment, for a very sensible reason: that will get you some street cred with academic audiences and long term stability. But you don't just want to do science; you want to communicate science, want to actively push the needle in the right direction. You have ideas, and you want to try them. Whats stopping me is the same thing I was discussing in Happiness and Ambition: its hard and I'm happy.
But what my friend was saying is fair. There is no good time to take risk. Its easier when you are unhappy, but then you tend to take the wrong risks. It's time to to have goals and to play to win.
A year ago, I consciously decided that writing was a higher priority for me than dance, but both were clearly below research. Now number one priority is research writing outside of papers, so that more people can understand the overhyped technology that will be the most important one of the 21st century. Stay tuned :)