Why effort is NEVER wasted...

3 Thoughts

I.

Spend your youth “lore maxxing”.

Be the person with the best stories. The wildest experiences. The one who said yes when everyone else hesitated.

Move to a new city where nobody knows your name.
Start a business with no idea what you’re doing.
Stay out too late in a country where you barely speak the language.
Train until your body looks like it was sculpted.
Fall in love, even if it wrecks you.

Most people waste their youth playing it safe. Thinking they have time. But time moves fast. And one day, all you’ll have are the stories you did - or didn’t - create.

Make them worth telling.

II.

Nobody talks about the middle.

The part where excitement fades and progress stalls. Where the work feels endless, the wins feel small, and the finish line isn’t even in sight.

The middle part is where most people quit - not because they couldn’t do it, but because they thought it wasn’t supposed to feel this way.

But this is actually where the growth happens. They say that smooth seas never make skilled sailors. Well, if that’s true, then push through. Keep going.

One day, this chapter will be the part of the story you’re most proud of.

III.

The rest of your life has yet to be written.

If you want to quit your job and start a business, you can do it.
If you want to commit to going to the gym and change your body, you can do it.
If you want to move across the world, you can do it.

Don’t let fear hold you back from reinventing yourself.

You can just do things.

2 Quotes

I.

Cognitive psychologist Amos Tversky on the value of unstructured time:

“The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”

II.

Martial artist and philosopher Bruce Lee on creative self-expression:

"Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own."

1 Game-Changing Idea: The Man & The Rock

At the edge of a quiet village, a man knelt in prayer.

He had lost his job. His crops had failed. His confidence, once unshakable, was gone.

One night, he whispered, “God, give me purpose. I’m ready to do your work.”

And to his surprise, a voice answered.

“Rise. At the border of your land sits a great stone. I want you to push it.”

The man blinked. “That’s all?”

“That is all.”

So the next morning, he rose before dawn and pushed.

The boulder was enormous, unmoved by his efforts. But the man returned the next day. And the next. And the next.

He pushed in the rain. He pushed in the heat. He pushed when his neighbors mocked him.

He didn’t understand, but he believed.

Days became months. Months became years.

Each morning, he threw his shoulder into the rock. Each night, he collapsed in exhaustion.

And then, one day, he broke.

His knees buckled. His hands trembled. His voice cracked with desperation.

“God,” he cried, “I’ve done all you asked. I’ve pushed with everything in me. But the rock hasn’t moved.”

And again, the voice returned.

“I never asked you to move it,” God said. “Only to push.”

“Look at your arms. Your legs. Your back. You are not the same man who began this work.”

The man was silent.

“The work,” God said, “works on you more than you work on it.”

The man looked at the stone again.

It had not moved.

But somehow, everything had changed.

—

We spend so much time chasing results—money, metrics, milestones—that we forget what the real reward is.

It’s not the outcome. It’s the version of you that gets built in the process.

You might lose the job.
The business might fail.
The project might flop.

But the reps stay with you.

The discipline. The resilience. The skills. The self-belief.
You don’t go back to zero—you go back as someone who’s already been through fire.

That’s why the work matters.

Not because of what it gets you.
But because of what it makes you.

The work works on you more than you work on it.

Until next week,
Jay “Who > What” Yang

Ps. Dad Jokes

One thing I’ve noticed about nearly every high-performer I admire: they’re all readers.

Maybe that’s correlation, maybe it’s not.
But it’s hard to deny that reading gives you an edge.

If you want to read more—but don’t have time to sift through 300 pages every week—Alex makes it easy. His newsletter curates the best ideas from the best books, so you can learn faster and read smarter.

I’ve been following Alex since I was a freshman in high school. Still read his stuff to this day.

Highly recommend checking it out.

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