Be selectively decorrelated

+ Join inaugural cohorts + Raise your baseline

Contents:

1. Preamble

2. Be selectively decorrelated

3. Join inaugural cohorts

4. Raise your baseline

Preamble

Hey

!

I’m traveling today, so I’m just going to jot down a couple quick thoughts. For a post I put a lot more of myself into, go to yesterday’s. :)

Here are today’s thoughts:

Be selectively decorrelated

sleep at 2am! be a winter MATS fellow! but—be intentional about it

One great joy in life is doing things slightly off-cycle from everyone else.

I often sleep pretty late. Many night owls appreciate the peace & quiet darkness brings. It’s easier to work when your inbox isn’t filling with daytime demands. It can also be easier to access facilities—showers, printers, library space, etc..

Taking time off college is similarly fun. I’ve preferred the San Francisco Bay Area during fall / spring, when everyone’s dedicated to projects they care about year-round, vs. during summer intern season.

I had a lovely day one ESPR staying back in the common room while 95% of camp went out on a puzzle hunt.

However, when you get used to being off-cycle, you might overlook what you’re missing by doing it. Sometimes it really is worth getting up early to sing in harmony with everyone else.

Since I got a handle for ‘acting decorrelatedly’, I can just note when I’m leaning into it and check whether that’s the right call. Yesterday, I went to the beach on my own and realized it hadn’t been. Fortunately I saw the rest of the group and rejoined them :)

Join inaugural cohorts

Here are some inaugural cohorts I’ve really enjoyed participating in:

• Polaris Fellowship

  • Now Odyssey

• Rise

• CBAI SRF

• Inkhaven

What you’ll notice during an inaugural cohort is that the organizers are often really receptive to feedback. They also tend to be cool and entrepreneurial—they’re bootstrapping their vision; later, they’ll find someone to hand it off to. You’ll have a lot of fun hanging out with them.

You also get to play an active role in shaping the experience for later cohorts!

This is something I thought sounded like a ‘consolation prize’ when I went through the UWC selection process (UWC: 18 colleges with founding dates ranging from 1962 to 2019). I was pretty happy to get placed at LPCUWC (b. 1992), because I thought the experience would be a well-oiled machine, and I’d make lots of alumni friends. In practice, I haven’t spoken much to alumni, and based on my personality I probably would’ve had more fun at a brand-new college where staff and students are equally new to everything.

Besides, the inaugural cohort generally gets the best treatment:

There are exceptions; YMMV.

Raise your baseline

Set your ‘fallback’ pretty high

1. I wear boots every day. If I buy trainers / sandals and keep them by the door, I’m going to wear those more and more. So I don’t.

2. A few days ago, my fallback post was a meta ‘Living Better’ post. But I want my lazy posts to be paper summaries / ones through which I learn, not yapping. The day after, I made my fallback a quick overview of a paper and some of its implications, which felt better. Unless in exceptional circumstances (traveling), I’ll set my bar for lazy-posts higher.