How to Become a Visionary

Since I stared sharing my writing regularly to twitter last yr my bird account grew from nothing to over 100k followers in 6 mos.

So many people told me my articles changed how they look at the world forever & I get asked a lot how I came up w/ the sh*t I write abt.

Hint: Having visionary insights is not abt intelligence or experience. It’s a lifestyle that you can learn 👇

I’d be lying if I told you making innovative ideas is easy. Obv brain work is involved & an active brain needs more calories & nutrients than even hard physical labor. I wrote abt how I keep my brain healthy a while ago.

But being visionary is mostly not abt IQ. I know & work w/ many super smart people who have no perspective on big picture outside their narrow domain of expertise. When you’re wrong, having high IQ only makes you wrong more precisely.

Being an original is abt first recognizing the truth of who you are & then developing habits & skills that’ll help you express that truth freely.

Too abstract? Let’s break it down into 7 steps.

1. Decide you’re a visionary

In all traditional societies there’s an archetype of persons whose job is to see the tribe’s future & guide the tribe towards its destiny. They’re called different names—prophets, seers, shamans, sages, depending on the tradition.

In our modern society, these are called thought leaders, innovators, trailblazers.

Some have natural aptitude for this visionary archetype— they tend to see beyond the ordinary & notice certain truth that others miss. This aptitude is usually unwelcome by parents & teachers since early life for most people is all about fitting in.

If you’re a natural visionary, you may not realize it early on or even actively try to kill this “gift” so that you can blend in w/ the tribe.

Many stories of visionaries in history involve early life difficulties. Usually their lives don’t get better until they give up being “normal”, embrace their gift & actively use it for the good of the tribe. (’Tis also what happened to yours truly. But that’s for another day.)

Let me stress there’re many archetypes each w/ unique role in society. E.g. the “marketer” archetype— often a polar opposite to the “visionary”— requires a gift of understanding the nooks & crannies of human wants & how to cater to those wants.

One archetype isn’t better than another. But you need to know what you’re made of. If you’ve read this far, the visionary/innovator archetype prob somehow speaks to you. For what reason? Only you know.

It’s up to you to figure out if being a visionary is truly your thing & if you’re willing to do what it takes to live that truth. It may not be an easy path & there’re choices that’d be confusing to make w/o that clarity (more on that in a sec).

2. Get comfortable with being alone

If you want to see what others don’t, you cannot inhabit the same consciousness that others do. That means you’ll be alone, a lot, really & metaphorically. By definition the more you fit in, the less original you are.

If you fit in, you're replaceable.

— Tascha (@TaschaLabs) November 16, 2021

Prophets & seers in traditional tribes live separate lives away from the herd. Luke Skywalker found Yoda, the ultimate visionary archetype, in the backwaters of Dagobah living by himself for a reason.

I’m not suggesting you move to a mountain cave w/o electricity. What’s needed is a willingness to be separate from the tribe in your thoughts & actions, which is against human instinct since we’re social animals & w/o tribe we die.

If you have antisocial traits like Asperger’s, you have an advantage as your ability to care abt what others think is limited by your specific programming.

I don’t have that, so it’s a struggle as internal truth & social instinct collide. You resolve that conflict by, again, getting clear abt what kind of person you truly want to be. That may take time.

3. Study unrelated fields

Most “original ideas” in the world come from applying what worked in field A to field B, or connect dots btw fields A & B. That means you need to know abt both fields to create sth new.

The more unrelated fields you have knowledge in, the more innovative opportunities you have. In fact possibilities of innovation is a factorial function of the number of fields (n) you know of, O(n!). The more you know, the faster those possibilities grow.

But that’s not how most people live. Most want to get from here to there in a straight line fast— spend shortest time in school, pick most lucrative career, specialize & double down, get to next promotion quickly.

That’s the sensible strategy to earn a good living, but hardly how visionaries are made.

(BTW, like this so far? I write about ideas on investment, macro and human potential. Subscribe to my newsletter for updates.)

4. Leave some money on the table

To become the cross-disciplinary original you’re meant to be, you’d need motivations to learn abt many different fields. Becoming rich & famous prob isn’t one of them, as most of these investments don’t have immediate practical payoffs.

If all you’re asking is “what’s in it for me?”, or “how does it benefit my status & wallet?”, you’d never find a reason to wander or take detours.

If you want to allow yourself to learn stuff that doesn’t have application right away, pursue experiences that don’t seem to help you get ahead, what’s the motivation to do that?

5. Train your curiosity muscle

When you find something interesting, ’tis the best motivation.

Curiosity is a powerful natural instinct for learning & action since the nature of consciousness is to expand. Unfortunately most schools crush that instinct to learn & replace it w/ obligation to learn.

As a result most people’s curiosity muscles have atrophied by the time they hit 25. They no longer know the true meaning of something being “interesting”.

Luckily like any muscle, curiosity muscle can be trained. All it takes is you acting *deliberately* curious even if you don’t feel it. If you’re consistent the instinct’ll come back.

Your goal is to get to the state of a kid chasing butterflies in the garden all day w/o even once asking “what’s the point?”

6. Take it less seriously

If you believe something important is at stake, you become afraid even if you don’t realize it. Most people are afraid to be wrong, thus unwilling to overstep conventional assumptions and common sense.

What’s at stake if you’re wrong or fail? Reputation, self identity, money, status, love are the usual suspects.

All those things hold one back from being a trailblazer. There’s nothing wrong abt that. Most people aren’t innovators & don’t need to be.

Still, the less importance you give those things, the more freedom you have to be visionary. No need for value judgement here. It’s just there’s no free lunch. That’s why I said earlier to get clear abt who you really want to be, or choices could be confusing, remember?

At the end of day life is a metaverse & everything is a game. The more you realize that to be true, the less you’re afraid to lose.

7. Practice radical truth seeking

Humans are at a primitive evolutionary stage. We have limited foresight & processing power. Whatever opinion anybody has on xyz, no matter how much a genius they are, it’s prob not the ultimate truth.

Those’re my MO when approaching any subject. They give me 1) a humbleness to learn, 2) a healthy suspicion of any authority view, 3) a desire to always dig for deeper truth, cuz I know whatever I know now is not *it*.

If you make it a mission to always seek deeper truth, overtime you develop an intuitive taste for it. You can better tell if an idea is closer to truth or farther away from it even in fields you’re not familiar w/. This habit is a gift that keeps on giving.

TLDR: How to become a visionary w/o being smart or experienced—

1/ Decide you’re a visionary

2/ Get comfortable w/ being alone

3/ Study unrelated fields

4/ Leave some money on the table

5/ Train your curiosity muscle

6/ Take it less seriously

7/ Practice radical truth seeking

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