Recently, a strong desire has arisen to know who I am, what I want to do, and where I want to go. This thought has become overwhelming recently. I always struggle with which thing I should focus on. My interest quickly wanes once I become adept at the thing I am working on. But things are starting to change. I realize that if I find it difficult to settle among all my ideas, many others probably do too.
I have heard a lot of people say, “Ideas are cheap.” But a thought keeps lurking in my mind: not every mountain has minerals, and not everyone has golden ideas. I believe some people truly value their ideas. Empirically, people rich in good ideas tend to be reluctant to do hard work. “Hard-working” might not be accurate here. A better description might be “being cautious of labor.”
Therefore, I want to create an AI-assisted platform, OnlyIdeas.art, The Art of Only Ideas, to help people protect and profit from their ideas. In addition to this, the platform can help them develop their ideas to an MVP level with AI tools like the WordCards, WordOrigins, VideoCaptioner, MultilingualTranscriber, and AutoPublication systems I created. With all these AI tools as the backend, people can easily express their ideas and present them as products or services in research, reading, language, music, writing, and movie making. This is a direct implementation of Steve Jobs’s idea-based working environment. This platform can help people like me, abundant with ideas, have an easier way to live the life we expect and fulfill our potential.
As I gradually find myself in my 30s, or still not clearly and totally, I was thinking about why I don’t use AI tools like ChatGPT’s 4o tasks to help me discover myself. So I set a task to ask me a question for self-discovery daily, along with a daily warning based on Charlie Munger’s inverted mindset. I found these questions so useful that they make me feel satisfied and complete. They help me crystallize my thoughts. Moreover, they diminish the anxiety of a misaligned mind and help align me with my passion and desire.
I listed these questions below, and I’ll keep updating them. I will try to answer each one with my first thought.
Table of Contents
What is something you enjoyed doing as a child that still excites you today?
I read a piece of philosophy at the age of 10 or 11. It was Mao’s On Contradiction and On Practice. It is interesting that I randomly chose those two articles from a large tome. Forget about the ideology and the person: the articles still overwhelmed me with their way of thinking, as it was the first time I had encountered this kind of thought. I think this could be the initial catalyst that activated my mind to think.
The thinking journey continued. In high school, I daydreamed about helping African people develop and prosper after reading Rain, Please Go to Africa by Kim Hye-ja. The fact that I am still struggling with my own life makes this even funnier.
What kind of moments make you feel the most alive?
When I verify my ideas, I feel the most alive.
What kind of work or activity makes you forget about time?
When I learn new knowledge, design and develop a product, and validate a thought in my mind, I forget about time.
When I develop the WordCards or AutoPublication system, I can work without feeling time pass.