This is Advice Form Unk—Gen Z’s guide to being better than the generations that failed them. Part one of my series on Hope touches on the equation: Hope + Faith + Discipline + Action = Results.

Hope is usually sold to us as a good thing.

"A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen." Sounds hot.

But what happens when hope becomes the only thing you're holding on to?

What happens when you're told to just “wait on [God],” “trust the process,” or “stay patient” — but you’re still stuck?

Be real: hope without action becomes oppression.

We’ve all heard it:

• “Live with little expectation.”

• “Whatever happens, happens.”

• “Just pray and let go.”

But here’s facts: if you’re always waiting for something to happen to you, you’ll miss the power of what you can do through you.

The Weight of Expectations

Expectations come with two outcomes:

1. You get what you want. → You feel proud, empowered, and ready for more.

2. You don’t. → You feel resentment, frustration, guilt, and disappointment.

That second feeling is what keeps people stuck. And if you were raised to believe that hope alone will change things, you might think your failure is your fault — when in reality, it’s a lack of support, strategy, and action.

Hope is only [w]hol[l]y when it’s paired with movement.

Hope Didn’t Get Her Here. Faith + Action Did.

My mom grew up in Haiti. One day, sitting with her friends, she told them her dream:

"Mwen ta renmen deplase poum al viv Ozetazini yon jou, gen yon bèl kay, yon bèl machin, ak yon gwo fanmi."

(I want to move to the U.S. one day, have a beautiful house, a nice car, and a big family.)

Everyone laughed.

They didn’t believe she could escape the limits of where they were born. They stayed.

She didn’t.

She crossed borders, countries, and every expectation anyone had for her — and made that dream real.

That wasn’t just hope.
That was faith, vision, discipline, and work.

She didn’t just wish. She knew.
And that knowing turned into action.

Faith That Moves

A lot of us were raised religious. We were taught to pray. To believe.
But we weren’t always taught to move with belief.

Prayer is powerful. But Faith is fuel for fire.
Without direction, without discipline, without steps — faith is noise.

Think of it like this:

Faith is the vision. Discipline is the engine. Action is the road.

You need all three if you’re trying to get somewhere.

Hope Isn’t the Opposite of Fear — It’s Just One Side of It

Here’s something wild:
Fear is a form of hope.
It’s just hope for a bad outcome.

So if you spend all your time hoping things don’t go wrong…
Why not flip that energy and hope they do go right — and then get to work making sure they do?

So What Now?

Hope is good. But don’t stop there.

Hope + Faith + Discipline + Action = Results.
That’s my formula.

Your ancestors didn’t survive on hope alone.
They had plans, rituals, strength, and strategy.
They built lives with bare hands and bold belief. You’re built from that.

So yes — pray. Hope. Believe.
But when you’re done… move.

Your dreams need more than a wish.
They need a witness. And that’s you.

This is Advice From Unk. Today's column is longer than usual. It's also the most personal thing I've written for this publication. If you've been reading The Human Player for the past month, you know I don't do fluff. This is the piece that started it all — the essay that made me realize I needed a place to write without guardrails. Pour something. Sit down.

There's no magical man coming down from the sky to save you.

-William Torain

I'm not trying to disrespect anyone's religious beliefs. I just believe that Christianity has been the longest and most detrimental form of oppression for Black people.

From August 20th, 2001 through 2011, I used to think Jesus Christ was coming to save me. But at some point, after learning about the possibility of the misrepresentation of who Jesus might've been, I woke up from the dream of being saved by someone else's hands.

My faith wavered as I wondered how I could happily exist in heaven while my friends and family from Earth, who hadn't been devoted, were nowhere in sight. Wouldn't I mourn for them? Should I abandon them and only befriend Christians? I felt anxious thinking about praising God for all eternity. Heaven sounded like a lonely prison.

Although the end result of these thoughts led to me leaving Christianity, while I was a Christian, my life felt fulfilled. I learned about love and humility in those ten-plus years. Praying, attending church, and building a relationship with faith brought me closer to embracing the metaphysical — what exists beyond our reality and the five senses. I'm grateful because without Christianity as a foundation for seeing beyond myself, I would probably still be suffering from depression, nihilism, and misanthropy.

But I woke up. I realized that if there wasn't an omniscient being coming to save me tomorrow, then there wasn't a physical being coming to save me today. I had to start saving myself and work with other people to start saving each other.

Say it LOUD! I'M BLACK AND OPPRESSED!

Christianity was indoctrinated into the global Black experience by way of colonization. From there, the cultures of African countries began to lose significance. As Africans became enslaved and were shipped to various countries throughout the Americas, Jesus — an apparent white man born in the Middle East — became their lord and savior and the constant social reminder that white is right, even if you're in shackles.

The oppressive Black experience in the U.S. has been consistent. It's gotten relatively better overall as values, ideologies, and representation have changed, but at the core of the American experience, Black people are collectively viewed and treated as third-class citizens.

Every few decades, a cultural experience shifts the Black American dynamic — notably the Civil War, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). All were dealing with the oppression of existence. And as Black art, expression, and access were gradually allowed post-CRM, movements like the Harlem Renaissance and Hip-Hop emerged.

The Harlem Renaissance was freedom and Black-owned. It might represent the height of creative freedom in Blackness because it was Black-owned and community-driven. Hip-Hop is now the dominant music genre, and it started as a culture. However, its direction eventually became controlled by systems, corporations, and non-Black faces.

Although there is a new class of Black people, their goal was the dream of what Blackness needed in the past: equality. But Blackness doesn't need equality as long as the entirety of oppressive history is still taught as footnotes.

New Black

Currently, the Black people and couples who feel equal are there because whiteness allows. Jay-Z and Obama can lose it all at the snap of a finger or a disrespectful gesture to the wrong person in power. Although they are in relative positions of influence, if everything falls apart, who’s sticking their neck out?

Medgar. Malcolm. Martin. Black men kept trying and kept dying. Now that pattern transitions into Hip-Hop. And within Hip-Hop, it’s a reminder that this is the height of what your generation currently offers society.

At first, it was the superstars of the present being murdered to curb egos. Then it became men of the past like Jam Master Jay being murdered, to remind artists that their pasts can sneak up on them. Then it was the youth like XXXTentacion, as a reminder that there is no youthful innocence. Then it was Nipsey Hussle — a reminder that you’re not allowed to elevate your hood.

Hip-Hop has been the most longstanding form of social elevation Black America has been allowed to have. And like all things Black, it feels inevitable that Hip-Hop will lose its roots.

Once whiteness opened new doors in entertainment by way of music and television, it felt like Black people collectively left behind jazz and the blues. With Black people gradually being integrated more into society, what reason was there to sing the blues? So the culture shifted, and those genres were absorbed. R&B was prominent through the ‘90s, but Hip-Hop reintroduced oppression until it was taken over and focused on materialism. And then the access opened wider, and now the question is whether Hip-Hop will last another fifteen years in its current form?

Losing culture is definitive of the Black experience. Without culture, what elders can Black people look to in guiding the present and future generation? My grandparents’ experiences are removed from an entire generation. They can only guide me if they have the luxury of time to stay current with how society is changing. If I only have one parent, I’m losing an opportunity to understand and accept change through conflicting perspectives.

I think about the significance of Beyoncé wearing a 128.54-carat yellow Tiffany diamond — unearthed in South Africa in 1877.

Beyoncé is the fourth woman and first Black woman to wear the famous [128.54-carat yellow Tiffany diamond] — unearthed by De Beers in South Africa in 1877.

-NY Post

Doesn't Beyoncé have enough recognition, power, and influence to create a brand that can eventually become comparable to Tiffany's? Why does powerful and successful Blackness still aligning with social limits?

What Do You Want?

For centuries, Blackness believed in external salvation. Obama became a household name and he became the hope and future that was just as great as any savior. Except he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. A president’s a president for the country, and most importantly, for the structure that maintains it.

During the 2020 election season, Black America was back at the feet of a candidate who offered to provide but wouldn’t meet before the election to discuss policy. People were angry with Ice Cube for having a dialogue with the other side — the side that actually welcomed dialogue and offered a plan. It was insulting in many ways, but the point stands: without dialogue, how does anyone in power know what Black America needs?

How can you expect someone to help your cause if you refuse to have a conversation with them? If no one’s allowed to have dialogue, then how do you expect to progress? Instead of judging, why didn’t Black Americans rally behind the effort to say, “Hey, let’s see your plan. Did you consider X? How about Y?” You need influential people to get into the ear of people in power to honor your needs. They should be used as a bridge.

Regardless of what you identify, people have sacrificed to allow people who look and think like you to be where you are today. Can’t you sacrifice your ego to have a dialogue?

Black sacrifice creates Black innovation, businesses, jobs, financial stability, inspiration, hope, families, communities, and wealth. It’s all for you. Directly and indirectly.

As Above, Not Below

So when do you wake up? When do you realize that no one above you cares about you? The few people that do care, you attack for the sake of clout and likes.

Living in Brooklyn, we were always wondering what the people upstairs were doing. Water would leak from the ceiling of the building lobby. Water would leak from the ceiling into the apartment. There’d be fighting and wrestling at 3 AM. Sometimes we thought they were bowling. A chair was always being dragged around, and we joked that they only had one chair that they all shared. Or it was a ghost. All up in their business, worrying about what they were doing because we knew they existed and that they were affecting us, but we didn’t have access to know what was going on upstairs.

Politicians might see you in a crowd or shake your hand on the campaign trail, but you’re in the apartment below. Irrelevant to them. The only things that matter are the people on their floor and the people above them. They don’t care because the people below them don’t force them to care. Regardless of race, income level, or gender — what are oppressed people collectively allowing?

What actionables have the growing poor class collectively agreed on this year? Are they boycotting until policies change? Are they disrupting businesses?

The robots aren’t here yet, so you’re still needed. And if you don’t act now, there’ll be nothing to fight for because you won’t be needed in a few years. The economic changes we’re seeing guarantee that automation is coming sooner rather than later. The people at the top are preparing for the future because they see the big picture.

The Overview Effect denotes that the higher you climb the ladder, the more aware you become of possibilities and limitations. Which possibilities do you see? What are you preparing for?

Domestication

I work from home, and I see my cat’s daily habits. He roams the apartment, sleeps wherever he wants, eats and drinks when he wants. Like all domesticated pets, he’s a byproduct of conditioning.

His life purpose is being independently dependent on us. But he isn’t consciously aware of that. His brain hasn’t evolved into understanding his natural limitations. It can’t, unless we consistently create new experiences for him. And even then, at some point, his knowledge will hit a wall.

The cat is a cat forever. He’ll never break free. He can’t. He may jump out into the hallway to snoop around, but eventually he comes back to the door because he knows this is where it’s safe and this is all he knows. He lives in fear.

In some way, you live in fear too. And although you have a higher consciousness and the ability to break free from domestication, you’re conditioned to believe that exploration is dangerous.

As an individual, you don’t have real power or knowledge unless you actively look for yourself and within trusted people and communities. Media is scripted content to tell a story that inspires you to be a specific type of person. That’s why good always wins — to give you hope that if you keep pushing through, you’ll stop evil. But evil seems to be winning in real life, all the time.

Good wins once you accept that sometimes you have to relinquish something for the sake of other people. And you should be the one deciding what you’re willing to sacrifice

Who Cares?

No one cares about you outside of the people who care about you. I care that you exist, but I can’t care about you the individual unless I know you. And I expect the same.

Outside of the trending chaos, what are you doing daily to promote love, unity, awareness, and — most importantly — change and progress? What’s your life philosophy besides “X person or group is bad”? What beliefs do you have that aren’t rooted in hate, anger, or emotion?

If you say you’re woke, what did you wake up from? How comfortable was that bed? And was it a twin or king?

I think about Inception and the layers to awareness. Even if you wake up from the third tier of sleep, there are still two more levels to get through.

Being awake requires action. When you wake up in the morning, you don’t lay in bed all day and go back to sleep once the sun sets. Instead, you live through this life experience and enjoy it as much as you can.

Do you think you’re at the top tier of awareness? Is your knowledge and wokeness at this level all there is? Do you have the capital, resources, and information to do everything and anything you want? Or does this life experience have more layers that you need to discover?

If growth were easy, we’d all do it. We’d all be willing to step outside the apartment, open the hallway door, and walk up or down the stairs to see what else is there to explore, without the fear of missing or losing what we once had.

You can’t just be woke. You have to keep waking up and unraveling the layers. You have to step outside of the social limitations placed on you because of what you were born as. You have to understand that the best people to support you are the people on the same level as you and the ones who bang on your door and tell you to stop dragging the damn furniture on their heads. Bottom-up change until the top-down people meet in the middle. Because although you may be awake, they might be sleeping on how their choices are affecting you.

They’re not going to save you. So while you work on saving yourself, get together with the people you love and make enough noise above the heads of the people who you need support from. Let them know that if they don’t offer a hand in the change and growth society needs, they’ll need saving sometime soon.

But it has to start from you.

✌🏿.

This is the longest Advice From Unk column I've written, and it probably won't be the last one like it. If you read all 2,300+ words, you're my people. Subscribe to The Human Player for weekly essays on bodies, screens, and systems. Share this with someone who needs to wake up.

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This is Advice From Unk — the section of The Human Player where I tell you what nobody else will. Today: what you wore to your kid's graduation told them more than you think.

I took a bus down to Virginia for my niece’s graduation in mid-June. My sister was on her way home from work to pick me up. I had just finished ironing my suit and dress shirt — it was an elementary school graduation, but I still felt inclined to style on em.

My sister walked in and saw my suit hanging to the side.

“You’re wearing a suit?” she asked.

“Yeah. What’s the problem?”

“Nothing. It’s not going to be that type of event. Most people don’t dress up, so I don’t want you to get there and say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me I didn’t have to dress up?’ I’m dressing up though!” She laughed and walked off.

Then she walked back in. “We’re Haitian. We dress up for everything.”

I laughed because it was true.

I put my suit on. Navy slim fit, white shirt, no tie, and boat shoes to keep a more casual feel.

Upon Arrival

We parked the car and walked inside. I eagerly scanned the room to see how other men were dressed: polo shirts, cargo shorts, t-shirts, sneakers, baseball caps, Jordans.

My brain kept processing what I was seeing. Time passed and I spotted two other men in full suits. I wanted to yell out and acknowledge them.

The ceremony started. The fifth graders walked in — a lot of them dressed up. Girls in dresses and boys in dress shirts and slacks. I even saw a kid in a full suit.

My eyes got watery as my niece’s name was called onto the stage. Graduating symbolizes growth. It was important and humbling to see her succeed.

The graduation ended. We took photos, hugged, said our goodbyes. I looked around some more and seeing what family members wore weighed on me.

I admit I’m conservative and old-fashioned about a lot of things. I don’t judge people’s choices. But I do think about what those choices signal to the people who are always watching — the kids.

A Simple Connection

The next morning I was getting ready for a jog and Lupe Fiasco’s “Lupe The Killer” shuffled into my ears. The line “and you ain’t dressed for this affair” hit and everything connected.

Children are impressionable. They spend day after day with us, absorbing how we move through the world. They watch us dress in different clothes for different occasions. They’re building a mental map of what matters based on what we do, not what we say.

On this one day that is specifically about them — a day that acknowledges their work and their accomplishment — family members show up wearing the same things they wear to Walmart.

That just seems wrong.

People get new outfits for New Year’s Eve. They dress up for parties, for dates, for brunches, for concerts. But their children’s graduation doesn’t clear that bar?

It’s About Them

Adults forget the day is for the younger generation. When you put on something special, you’re not performing — you’re reinforcing an idea. You’re telling a child that graduation, education, and achievement are different from a regular Tuesday. That this moment matters. That they matter enough for you to be uncomfortable for a few hours.

Everything you do is being processed in their brain, consciously and subconsciously. That’s not a theory. That’s how human development works. Children don’t listen to your words about the importance of education — they watch your behavior and draw their own conclusions.

What’s more telling are the parents who make their kids dress up but come completely dressed down. The message, whether intended or not: “This day is important for you, but not for me.”

That doesn’t seem right.

I hate suits. I feel good in them, but I’d much rather be dressed like I’m getting ready for a jog — I’m usually always itching to run. But for family and for kids, I’ll sit uncomfortably for hours in something I’d never choose for myself, just to let them know that this day and every day like it that follows is extremely important.

We should all want to hammer in that message.

Your kids aren’t going to remember your speech about working hard in school. They’re going to remember how you showed up when mattered.

Always show up like it matters.

✌🏿.

This is Advice From Unk, a section of The Human Player. Blunt, caring, no filter. If this hit home, share it with a parent who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more.

Posts drop every Tuesday. Start the week with yourself, and then let other ideas influence you.

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This is Advice From Unk — the section of The Human Player where I tell you what nobody else will. Today: Anthropic just gave you a free employee. If you don’t use it, someone your age will — and they’ll outpace you by the end of the summer.

May 13, 2026, Anthropic launched Claude for Small Business. It’s not a new app. It’s not a new subscription tier. If you already have a Claude Pro account at $20/month, you already have it. You just haven’t turned it on yet.

Here’s what it does: it plugs Claude directly into the tools you’re probably already using — QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Canva, DocuSign, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 — and gives it 15 pre-built workflows and 15 reusable skills to handle the work that piles up when you’re running a one-person operation at 11 PM.

Planning payroll. Closing the books. Chasing invoices. Running a campaign. Reconciling your financials against your bank statements. Generating content. Triaging leads. Analyzing margins.

You toggle it on inside Claude Cowork, connect your tools, pick the job, and Claude does the work. You approve before anything sends, posts, or pays.

That last part matters. You stay in control. Claude proposes. You decide. It’s an assistant, not a replacement.

Why Gen Z Should Care More Than Anyone

Small businesses make up 44% of U.S. GDP and employ nearly half the private workforce. But AI adoption among small businesses has lagged behind larger companies because the tools and training have never been built for how small businesses actually operate.

That just changed.

You’re the most digitally fluent generation alive. You grew up building brands on Instagram before you had a driver’s license. You understand content, algorithms, and platform dynamics better than most Fortune 500 marketing departments. And you know they change in an instant. What you don’t have is a CFO, an operations manager, a bookkeeper, and an HR department.

Claude for Small Business gives you all four for $20/month.

If you’re sitting on a business idea, a side hustle, a freelance operation, or a creative brand and the thing holding you back is “I don’t know how to handle the business side” — that excuse just expired. The business side now has a workflow that does most of the tedious work for you.

What It Actually Does

Here’s the breakdown of how Claude for Small Business supports each function of a small operation:

That’s not a chat window answering questions. That’s an operating system for your business.

Build Your Brand Like You Mean It

Here’s the Unk truth: most of you are treating your “brand” like a hobby with a logo. You post when you feel like it. You have no content calendar. You don’t know your margins. You don’t track leads. You don’t send invoices on time. You don’t close your books at the end of the month because you don’t know what that means.

That’s not a business. That’s a social media account with a Venmo or Cashapp link.

Claude for Small Business doesn’t fix your ambition. It fixes the infrastructure gap between your ambition and an actual operation. You still have to show up, make decisions, and do the creative work that no AI can replicate. But the late-night spreadsheet torture, the invoice chasing, the “wait, where did that payment go” panic — that’s handled.

Anthropic also launched a free course called AI Fluency for Small Business, built with PayPal, taught by real small business owners who’ve integrated AI into their operations. Not a pitch deck. Not a webinar funnel. An actual course. Take it.

And if you’re in Chicago, Tulsa, Dallas, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Salt Lake City, Baltimore, San Jose, or Indianapolis — Anthropic is running a free half-day Claude for Small Business workshop tour. You show up, you learn hands-on, and you walk out with a free one-month Claude Max subscription. There’s no reason not to go.

Be Eco-Conscious With Your AI Usage

Here’s one of the most important things to remember: AI has an environmental cost. Every prompt you send consumes compute power. Compute power requires energy. Energy has a carbon footprint. The more wasteful you are with your AI usage, the bigger that footprint.

Being a conscious entrepreneur means thinking about this. Not to the point of paralysis — but enough to be intentional. Here’s how to minimize your token usage and reduce your AI footprint while getting more done:

1. Edit your prompt, don’t add follow-ups.

Every follow-up message accumulates history and costs more tokens. When Claude misses the mark, click the edit icon on your original message, fix it, and regenerate. One good prompt is cheaper than five clarifying ones.

2. Start a new conversation every 20 messages.

Claude rereads the entire history on each turn. By message 30, a simple question can consume 50,000 tokens. Ask for a summary, copy it, open a new chat, paste it in. Long conversations are expensive — for your wallet and for the grid.

3. Group questions into one message.

Instead of three separate messages, combine them. A single turn costs much less than three. The responses are better too because Claude has the full picture.

4. Use Projects for recurring files.

If you upload the same PDF across multiple chats, Claude processes it fresh each time. Projects caches your files — upload once and they don’t cost tokens in future conversations.

5. Set up memory and custom instructions.

Without prior context, you waste 3–5 messages just re-explaining who you are. Go to Settings → Memory and Preferences, save your role, tone, and preferences once. Claude applies them to every chat automatically.

6. Choose the right model for the task.

• Haiku handles quick responses, formatting, and brainstorming.

• Sonnet handles writing, analysis, and code.

• Opus handles deep research and complex documents.

Don’t use Opus for a task Haiku can do in half the tokens.

7. Disable functions you don’t use.

Web search, research mode, and connectors add tokens to every response, even when they’re not needed. If you’re writing your own content, turn them off.

This isn’t just about saving money. It’s about being the kind of business owner who thinks about impact at every level — including the resources your AI consumes. Eco-consciousness isn’t a marketing angle for you. It’s a practice.

Don’t Get Left Behind

Unk has to keep it real, because no one else will.

AI fluency is no longer optional for professional growth. It’s not a nice-to-have on your resume. It’s not something you’ll “get around to” when you have time. It’s not something you should ignore because you want to be righteous. It is the single most important skill gap between the Gen Z entrepreneurs who build sustainable businesses in the next five years and the ones who are still posting “DM me for rates” with no backend infrastructure in 2031.

The global economy only cares about scaling. The tools are here. They’re accessible. Many of them are free or included in subscriptions you already pay for. The learning resources are free. The workshops are free. The excuses are the only thing that costs you.

Every month you wait is a month someone else is automating their invoicing, analyzing their margins, triaging their leads, and generating their content while you’re doing it manually — or not doing it at all.

The people who learn to use AI responsibly, ethically, and efficiently right now are the ones who will be consulting, hiring, and leading in five years. The ones who dismiss it as “not for me” or “too complicated” will be applying to work for them.

I’m not trying to scare you. I’m trying to save you time. Learn the tool. Build the business that changes how the world works. Use AI as the infrastructure you can’t afford to hire. And do it with intention — know what you’re asking, why you’re asking it, and what you’re going to do with the answer.

That’s the difference between using AI and being used by the hype around it.

FAQ

Do I need a special account for Claude for Small Business? No. If you have a Claude Pro account ($20/month), you already have access. Open Claude Cowork and toggle Small Business on.

Is my business data safe? Claude doesn’t train on your data by default on Team and Enterprise plans. Your existing permissions hold — if an employee can’t see something in QuickBooks today, they can’t see it through Claude. You approve every action before it executes.

Can I use this as a solopreneur or freelancer? Yes. This was built specifically for operations that don’t have dedicated departments. One person connecting their PayPal, QuickBooks, and Canva gets the functionality of three hires.

What if I don’t use QuickBooks or HubSpot? You can still use the workflows that connect to Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Canva, and DocuSign. The tool works with whatever subset of integrations you connect.

Is the AI Fluency course really free? Yes. It’s on-demand at anthropic.skilljar.com. Built with PayPal, taught by real small business owners.

What about the workshop tour? Free, half-day, hands-on. Spring stops include Chicago, Tulsa, Dallas, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Salt Lake City, Baltimore, San Jose, and Indianapolis. You get a free one-month Claude Max subscription for attending.

How do I minimize my AI costs and environmental impact? Edit prompts instead of sending follow-ups, start new conversations every 20 messages, group questions, use Projects for recurring files, set up memory, choose the right model for the task, and disable unused functions.

Can Claude replace my accountant? No. Claude can reconcile, flag errors, and generate reports — but you still want a human accountant reviewing your financials, especially for tax filing. Think of Claude as the prep cook, not the chef.

This is Advice From Unk, a section of The Human Player. If you’re Gen Z and you’re building something, this is the infrastructure post. Share it with someone who’s still doing everything manually. Subscribe for more.

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This is Advice From Unk — the section of The Human Player where I tell you what nobody else will. Today: why obsessing over the outcome is the fastest way to lose.

I was listening to Chamath Palihapitiya on Rogan this week and he said something that stuck: the people who last — Buffett, Munger, the ones still sharp in their eighties and nineties — aren’t committed to objectives. They’re committed to the process. Learning. Putting themselves at risk. Surrounding themselves with interesting people. The objectives were never the point. They were byproducts.

That landed because I’ve been watching people — myself included — make the same mistake for years. We set a target, we lock our eyes on it, and we lose sight of the only thing that actually gets us there: the work between here and the target.

You want the result so badly that you forget to become the person capable of producing it.

The Golfer’s Bag

Think about a golfer standing on the first tee. A beginner steps up with one thought: put the ball in the hole. That’s the objective. And everything they do gets filtered through that singular obsession. They grip too hard. They swing too fast. They watch where the ball goes instead of feeling how the club moves. Every bad shot becomes evidence of failure instead of information about their swing.

Now watch someone who’s been playing for twenty years. They read the wind. They study the slope. They choose a club based on the lie, the distance, the shape of the shot they need. They have a full bag — driver, irons, wedges, putter — and they know when to use each one. They’re not thinking about the scorecard on the first tee. They’re thinking about what this specific moment requires and which tool in their bag fits.

The score takes care of itself when the process is right.

That bag didn’t fill up overnight. Every club represents a skill they earned through repetition, failure, and adjustment. The 7-iron didn’t show up because they wished for it. It showed up because they spent months hitting 7-irons into an empty range until their hands understood the weight.

You Only Have One Club

Most people are walking through life with one club in their bag. One approach. One reaction. One mode.

A chef who only knows how to sauté is going to struggle the first time something needs to be braised. A boxer who only throws a right hook is dangerous until someone figures out the pattern — and they will. A photographer who only shoots in auto mode will take decent pictures in good light and garbage pictures in everything else. They never learned manual exposure because auto mode gave them enough likes to feel competent.

That’s the trap. The result came, so the process must be working. Except it wasn’t working. It was just good enough under easy conditions. The moment the conditions change — and they always change — one club isn’t enough.

A surgeon doesn’t walk into an operating room with one technique. They’ve spent years accumulating approaches for different situations. When they open you up and find something unexpected, they don’t panic because they have options. They’ve practiced the alternatives. Their hands know things their conscious mind doesn’t have to direct anymore.

That’s what mastery looks like. It’s not knowing one thing perfectly. It’s having a toolkit deep enough that you can adapt when the situation shifts.

The Social Media Lie

Here’s where this hits close to home for most of you.

You post something online. A photo, a thought, a video, a piece of your art. And then you wait. You watch the likes. You count the comments. You check back in twenty minutes, then ten, then five. The post becomes a slot machine and you’re feeding it your attention hoping for a dopamine payout.

That’s not creating. That’s performing for a scoreboard you don’t control.

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