I met a guy named Ryan at ‘Backyard Brew‘ in Palo Alto, and was super inspired by him — he taught me this concept of the ‘straight line’: directly do what you want to do, without getting distracted by money or other kinks in the link.

Direct line to happiness

Cindy project stanford art

For example, let us use the analogy of happiness.

Many of us trade our time, life, and human metabolism for money. Then we use that money to ‘buy’ our happiness.

But a more effective ‘straight line’ philosophy is:

Know what makes you happy, and go directly to it.

silhouette child playground

For example, let us say that you’re happiest when making photos. It doesn’t make sense for you to put in extra hours at work, to earn more money, to buy new camera gear, to buy new cameras. Your line is very long, like:

[A]—————————->[B]

More effective is to just use the camera you already own, and take photos with it, even though the image quality may not be great:

[A]—–>[B]

What do you really want to do with your life (not money-related)

So this is an interesting philosophy in life, because most of us never reflect and ask ourselves:

What do I really desire to achieve, create, or do in life?

We get suckered and distracted to thinking that the point of life is to accrue money, and THEN use that money to somehow empower us to be happy and do what we want to do.

Create your happiness today

The simple solution:

Identify what makes you happy, and do that directly– today.

For example, creating stuff is what makes me happiest. Thus, instead of me trying to earn more money to find more peace/zen/comfort in order to create, I just use my day (today) to create something. I often make excuses that I don’t have good enough technology, tools, or devices. But in reality, it is best to use your “shitty” devices/tools/cameras to create stuff, than to try to accrue money to buy better cameras/devices/tools to make stuff.