Confusing Contradictions

There are so many contradictions in the world.

The moment you stop trying is when everyone likes you.

Less is more.

Detachment is what allows you to get the result.

To gain true control over your life, you often have to stop trying to force outcomes.

There are probably a hundred more.

But how many of them actually have value? How many of them are actually applicable?

The reason I started thinking about contradictions is because I finally understood what “less is more” meant. I was looking at my website and realized that it was doing too much. There were too many different things happening on the screen, and for me, I got it. I liked it because I’m biased and didn’t think anything was wrong. But then I started getting other people’s opinions and realized I agreed with them.

There were too many tabs, too many random things to interact with, and it was chaotic. People would leave my website more confused than they were before. My site is supposed to be a representation of me, so why give people a whole library instead of letting them read and learn about the best parts of me?

Curated posts, the best projects, the books available to read, and some backstory.

I got rid of 80% of the material, and the site finally works, in my opinion.

The reason I understand “less is more” now is because when we were younger and had to write an essay to make a point, we focused on this rigid structure of evidence, reasoning, evidence, reasoning.

But you can make your point with one good fact or one anecdote.

Tangentially, this is also why reading and media can feel boring. A lot of the time, people do too much with setting the scene, trying to give context and backstory. That can work, but you don’t always need to deviate from the main point or the story.

Less is more genuinely makes sense when it comes to conveying a point. People like direct approaches, especially because they don’t have time. You don’t want to spend forever trying to convince someone of something by bombarding them with a billion facts.

Then there are other contradictions, like how you have to stop forcing things in order to obtain them.

The moment you stop trying is when you win.

This I get, but I also don’t.

I think the argument is about flow state. When people are in a flow state, they aren’t overthinking. They are simply writing, coding, kicking a ball, whatever it may be. Everything happens naturally.

You aren’t forcing. You are simply doing.

I get it. Everyone loves the detachment idea. The moment you stop thinking about climbing Mount Everest, winning a World Cup, or making a $100 million revenue startup is supposedly the moment you actually do it.

But even that itself is a contradiction because by not caring about the result and simply doing the work, you are still doing the work in the first place because you want some end goal.

That’s the issue with detachment for me. How can you stop caring about the result when that’s why you are coding in the first place? You are coding to make an ML project. You are coding to build a startup.

If that doesn’t make sense, too bad. I’ma still get my mango boba.

Besides that, what makes contradictions so strange is that to obtain something, you sometimes have to do the complete opposite.

Or do you?

Because maybe more means more.

If I left my website with a bunch of different tabs about 30 projects, dedicated pages for work experience, and a whole separate page for personal interests, some people might see value in that.

I think people love contradictions because they sound cool.

Saying something like “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” “the more you know, the less you understand,” or “you have to spend money to make money” makes me look like prime Marcus Aurelius.

But even if those contradictions make sense, it doesn’t mean they are always the best way forward.

You can make your relationships better by spending more time with people. You can become more knowledgeable by simply learning more about a field. You can make money by simply working a job.

I think this raises a unique point: there isn’t one best path forward. There isn’t some optimal solution.

Take “absence makes the heart grow fonder” as an example.

You can ghost people sometimes, try your best to be more mysterious, constantly travel, and say no even when you genuinely have nothing better to do. People can miss you, see you as more valuable, wonder why you aren’t available, and then suddenly develop stronger feelings.

You can also be more present, hang out more, go on dates, constantly check up on people, and they might recognize that effort and also develop a strong attachment.

But here’s what’s tricky: you can ghost people and those people can think you’re weird or a bad person for doing that. You can be more present and get labeled as needy.

The reason contradictions make sense is that the contradiction itself doesn’t have a solution.

While there might be a better way to do something, an approach that is more attractive, or a saying that seems more philosophical, contradictions work because there is no hard-coded solution. That makes life a little more complicated.

People can take a thousand courses and still lose to a seven-year-old prodigy from China. You can train on an F1 simulator from the moment you’re born until you’re 35 and still never beat Kimi Antonelli. I don’t know anything about F1.

Maybe 80% of people get into investment banking by doing the usual things, 10% are nepo babies, and the other 10% decide to take a completely different approach.

The point is that every path or step can make sense because you have that Kevin De Bruyne vision of seeing what each path could lead to.

Contradictions may start off sounding like a philosophical statement. Then you kind of understand why they make sense. Then you realize the opposite of the contradiction also makes sense. And then you realize you should probably just go do your laundry or something.