I don't think we're driven by outcomes. I think we're driven by uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a psychological combustion engine that creates a weird feedback loop of anxiety and hope that fuels all-nighters, obsessive tweaking, and irrational persistence. I don't rewrite the same line of code seventeen times because I'm confident. I rewrite it because of doubt.

If outcomes are guaranteed, the stakes vanish. Urgency dissolves. The internal fire that tells you "this might not work so you better give it everything" just goes out.

Raw unfiltered obsession moves the needle in a way that discipline just can't. The fear of failure breeds it into existence.

I always come back to Nietzche's amor fati: love of one's fate. I think there's a profound advantage in not just embracing the unknown, but falling in love with it. Momentum lives in a lonely crevice between confidence and uncertainty.

It's a strange paradox: we want the win, but need the risk. We crave the guarantee, but we're powered by doubt. I think it's really in that space—between fear and faith—that we learn to move forward not in spite of uncertainty, but because of it: amor fati

04/14/25