On minimalism and intention

I've always been a science-y kid growing up, so I dropped subjects like art, music and theatre somewhat relatively early. But I've always been rather intrigued by design. Physically: everything from hardware curves, sound designs, colour choices, typographies. Think the iPhone, think Lego manuals, think the New York City subway.

Philosophically: minimalism and intention. Fundamentally, what I've grown to realise is that design extends far beyond what you physically interact with, and into how you fit with the world. One of my favourite quotes now, "Live by design, not by default", postulates the shift to live intentionally and consciously, rather than live by the lives of others. Now, growing older, minimalism has taken over that design. I'm starting to strip away at noise to reveal the underlying.

Live by design, not by default

As a young student, my life was on the most default setting possible. Activities I did weren't ones I chose, they were somewhat forced upon me. I didn't have enough agency myself to recognise what I wanted, and so I was confined to stuff like school sports and that was it. Only under my parents' expectations did I do something new, like join debating, but that didn't even last long.

When you're young, you're forgiven for this. Junior/middle school kids just don't have the exposure (parents aren't willing to expose them) to agency that allows them to discover for themselves. Often sunk cost fallacies hold (e.g. when you enjoyed playing music when young, hate it now, but still have to keep playing it), or the breadth of activities/things you have heard of are limited to your school (in which case you're somewhat restricted by what school you're at). In the end, when you're young, you're doing things your parents/school have introduced to you, and you stick with them.

But when you're older, you have more exposure now, you have more control to choose, yet most people don't as they just don't realise that the controls have been handed over now.

For me, the goal was always to be the top of my class. Now back then, I could not have told you anything about why that was the goal. It was very superficial: I'm the best, now what, who cares? This was my life by default. And since it translated over all those years, by year 9/10, I was in a limbo. I had no idea what my life was, I was still just studying and trying to get good grades because I could only see 2 months ahead and that's what I had been trained to do for the past 10 years.

My revelation

Year 11, I did have some eye-opening moments (as I hope reading this would be to you), that if you're lead down a path others have instilled into you over many years, you might what to re-evaluate if you're the driver or passenger in you're own life.

Stepping back, I had some thoughts noted down to myself:

• To be the driver in my own life
• To encourage others to not do what I did for the last 12 years
• To be valuable to the world

I gave new answers to old questions. I'm the best, now what, who cares? I care, if I want to be the driver in my own life, I want to perform to my best in everything possible. If that does/doesn't mean I'm the best overall, it doesn't matter, it just gives me a benchmark to improve on every time.

Back then, I felt like I had an insane streak of good fortune, doing well in school; getting into the school first team for sport; getting invited to the national chemistry camp. To any outsider, it was like I hit a flow state suddenly. But reflecting back, it was the result of living with intention. Each achievement wasn't carried under the duress of parents, the school or my friends. They were part of a series of designed and targeted outcomes I had directed myself to achieve.

I did well in school because it allows me to build credibility to top universities, unlocking access to an abundance of new resources. I got into the school first team to practice having discipline in a more leisure activity, learning to switch between fun and seriousness when playing at home vs for school. I got into the chemistry camp, because it could be one of the first steps to becoming valuable to my country and the world. Each one of these outcomes were designed to align with the direction I wanted my life to head towards.

Your revelation

With life, it's extremely easy to fall into the trap of living by default instead of design. With all the noise in the environment surrounding you, cutting a clear picture of what you can do and in which direction you should go can be extremely difficult. Take a step back, reflect on whether or not you are in that driver's seat or not. If you are, steer yourself away from the highway everyone is on, and head towards somewhere only you can take yourself to. If you're not, well it's time to stop the car, take control and then steer yourself away.

A minimal way

Taking the driving metaphor further, you'd rather be driving just by yourself, than with a backseat driver who thinks of himself better than you. Driving by yourself refers to a life designed minimally, the second, a life designed still engulfed by the noise around you.

Most prominently, I despise the bullshit that is comparing yourself with others (enough that I even made a video on it), and places like Reddit and LinkedIn don't help either. I used to never believe that social media could be that detrimental to your health, but now I do see that come through with some friends around me. Fundamentally, their goals are designed to despise other's success, ignore hardship and fake taking action. This is about as equally bad (if not worse) as living by default. And on the other hand, people posting on LinkedIn and stuff are in a cesspool of self-delusion bullshit, that they don't realise they're desaturating potentially cool things they've done and turning it into noise.

Optimally, you, yourself is the first thing that you should concentrate on improving. In no way does e.g. trying to bring other people down work at all. Simple maths, it's easier to put in work raising yourself up than putting in work to push 1000 people down. With your life, the only vehicle you're driving is your own. Trying to drive someone else's life is like jumping out your window in the middle of the highway. Stupid.

But keep yourself clean as well. Clean as in not boasting to others, not faking a crash out because you lost one mark, not causing a scene. The cleaner you are, the stronger the magnifying effect you have when you do something considerable, and the faster you move.

The most successful people don't design their life to be cluttered, they design it to be minimal. Look ahead, lead yourself and go. Nothing else needed.