courage and speed

beyond smarts and hard work

// Veo 3

i did a very unusual thing on monday when i was walking back from a volleyball game. walking, still in my sweat-drenched knee pads and gym shark long sleeve top that stuck to me, i saw two boys up ahead rolling a soccer ball down mission street.

usually, near 16th station, i’m locked in just focused on getting through some of the shadiest parts of San Francisco to get to my apartment. i am definitely not trying to start up random conversations with strangers.

but in that moment, i was thinking exactly about the idea that would become this blog post — being smart and hardworking seem undeniably insufficient for making the most meaning out of life. this realization has been refined from a mix of cultural differences between Nigeria and America, my angst about AI, and the growing pains of adulthood.

courage and speed were the best labels i came up with. clear enough to identify that situation and what to do about it — ask them to pass the ball. initially, i had actually walked past them spending my time ‘thinking’, ‘reflecting’, instead of taking action.

i looked up and i could see the white man across the street turn into a red palm with a countdown. it was immediately clear that if i crossed and left the boys behind me i would lose the time advantage because i wasn’t biased enough to action.

i decided right then to turn around. (and wait. it would be sus to aggressively run up to them asking them to pass.) i noticed they spoke Spanish to each other pretty much the entire time, but they understood me when i asked them to pass. and pass they did.

i ended up juggling some 10 or so reps (you know it would have been much more if i had my cleats on of course.) I heard multiple ‘oooh’s from the boys amidst some chuckles. they were barely in their teens yet, so i guess thats not terribly surprising.

what was indeed surprising was the high i got from surprising those boys and challenging myself in a small way. i read somewhere that the stories you hear at people’s funerals are always about all the ways, small and big, that they went against the grain and left their unique mark on the world.

that small high I felt on the street corner was proof enough for me. It crystalized three threads that have been weaving through my mind lately, convincing me to double down on these traits I've never valued highly enough

Nigeria vs America

maybe i didnt value these traits because of how strongly i identified as an introvert (still do.) maybe i looked at political, religious, economic leaders in the country and noticed that the ones i respected were smart/cunny, hard working, espoused community values, and so on.

however, what i know i have felt since i began living in America is a higher value on the now. the new. the grand. the brazenly different. the audacious. there is even a bald and golden eagle act just to protect an endangered bird that symbolizes freedom to the country.

i know this isn’t a perfect comparison, but when i think about how living in these places have changed me, i feel i learned to apply my brains and work hard in Lagos, whereas SF has taught me to be more audacious in asking for what i want. now.

AI anxiety

AI may take our job….AGI….Superintelligence, and so on. you know the drill at this point. these models are getting more intelligent (smarts) and can work much faster and longer than humans can (hard work.) so what skills or traits will become more important for humans to learn?

how do we come out the other side of this technological revolution in a way that rides the wave to take us closer to our dreams?

the answer is to develop the traits of the person you think of, when answering this high agency identifying question

"If you were stuck in a third world prison and had to call one person to try and bust you out of there - who would you call?"

i read a few posts about this and as i thought deeper about the question, i began to see the personal roadblocks i would be likely to face — more courage and speed.

1) i defer to authority a bit too much. while i definitely have the ability to creatively question limitations and roadblocks to get around them, it is an entirely different thing to make the habit of doing so.

2) my activation energy to start projects or tasks can be really high and ive gotten really good at convincing myself i need more information before taking action.

PS: notice how frontier research labs had to have the courage to train their models on questionable copyrighted material as well as the speed to do it before many platforms (Reddit, X) began cracking down on AI chatbot crawlers.

adulthood

finally, i have raised the question of ‘how do you want to spend your days?’ before.

on the other end of the spectrum, post-grad life creates an environment without milestones where you can just cruise in your existence without any activation energy to have an impact or significantly improve your conditions. potential unknown and likely wasted

in that piece i described acquiring information and a bias for action as tools to discover and choose the goals that matter to you.

however i am now convinced that everyone’s vision should include some notion of having the courage to act quickly on things that interest you. simply because it is an end itself that makes life richer and spices up the routine.

take that longer way home. dont hold back that compliment. attempt to make that difficult dish and order in when it goes horribly. if your favorite song comes on, sing it out loud on your way home. start that manuscript. learn that instrument and suck at it.

or just ask them to pass the ball.