Why

Default Perspective

I’ve been realizing that my default perspective is to think in terms of what and how long before I think carefully enough about why. This is especially true for technical folks. I get excited about all the ways something could be built. What I don’t always do quickly enough is step back and ask what all of that is actually in service of.

At work, I’ve been helping build an MCP server that lets employees interact with the services my team maintains through a chat interface. Think of MCP as a USB-C connector to an LLM like ChatGPT/Claude to allow it to understand domain specific services.

This week I was exploring newer capabilities from MCP, especially server-side Agent Skills, and Code Mode. I was drawn to them because they seemed to offer a cleaner way to structure how the model uses tools, and because they pointed toward where this space seems to be heading.

But when I brought them up to my manager, he asked a much simpler question than any of the technical ones I had been thinking about: why?

I realized that I could explain what these features did, and how they worked (at a high level, not the nitty gritty of course). But I hadn’t yet sharpened the deeper reason for why they mattered for our use case specifically. My curiosity had moved faster than my clarity. Without enough clarity, it’s easy to mistake what looks valuable for what is actually worth pursuing.

I’ve also noticed that I often ramble when explaining technical concepts and this stems from my own thinking being too loose. I’ve been trying to be improve by showing more and diving deep. With AI tooling like Claude Code and Windsurf, I’m able to get changes deployed into our dev environment, test, and then explain the design decisions from actual examples. I’m trying to become less task-minded and more problem minded.

Insecurity

Lately I’ve been thinking about the kinds of things people often say you should do in your twenties:

• Travel
• Internship in another country
• Going on exchange
• Be in a relationship
• Any other side quest

I understand the what and how behind this advice.

• What: put yourself in new environments
• How: say yes more often

What I get less clear on is the why. Why does a specific experience become evidence of a fuller life rather than just one possible path through it?

Part of what makes this hard is that time is finite and the list of things to do is infinite. Without a deeper filter, visible experiences start to feel important. Visibility becomes exponential because of the network effects of social media. What is rare starts to feel expected (managing expectations!). It becomes very easy to mistake visibility for meaning.

I wrote before about quiet hierarchies and how subconscious they are. I think social media gives those hierarchies constant reinforcement. Certain experiences start to look like proof: proof that someone is more adventurous, more interesting, more alive, or simply doing life better. The question quietly shifts from do I want this? to what does it mean that I didn’t do this?

Some insecure thoughts I do have from time to time:

That person did it. Why didn’t I? They experienced something I didn’t. What does that say about me? What might they think?

I’m aware these thoughts are self-created. But private narratives still shape how we feel, what we envy, and what we think a meaningful life is supposed to look like.

I’ve been trying to remind myself that not having the same experiences does not mean I have lived less. It may just mean my life has been shaping me through different circumstances. You are not behind because your life does not contain the same visible experiences as someone else’s. A meaningful life is not built by completing a universal checklist.

Some people will get those lessons through exchange, travel, or working abroad. Someone else might get them through family responsibility, work, loss, friendship, creative effort, or simply living in the present and doing what they enjoy.

Recognizing this insecurity in myself has pushed me to be more mindful. I know how implied judgment can feel on the receiving end, even when no one explicitly says anything harsh. I’d rather approach those differences with more empathy than turn my own values into standards for someone else.

I don’t think the answer is to stop exploring, whether that means new technologies at work or new possibilities in life. The challenge is to define the why with more seriousness. At work, that means not letting technical curiosity outrun the problem I’m actually trying to solve. In life, it means not letting surface-level signals outrun the values I’ve already said matter to me: time with family, health, reading, managing my expectations, and becoming more comfortable with uncertainty.

I don’t think this is an insecurity that is fully solvable for me. I think the discipline I’m trying to build is to ask why more often.

Interesting Ideas

• Inside MUJI How the “No-Brand” Brand Built an Empire on $3 Pens: I’ve really enjoyed Taylor Bell’s deep dives into how a business is able to scale. Very cool to gain some more lore about Muji’s brand philosophy: Restraint, humility, the idea that this will do is not a compromise but clarity
• Why You Only Hear About AI Doom: The economic machine of online media is an idea that we all know: negative content is what gets more clicks and shares. However, our opinions are heavily influenced from doomed headlines and we don’t dive deep. A mental model of knowing how two things can be true is critical to staying optimistic — something I’m trying to do better at.
• How China blew up its own future: I didn’t know that as countries become richer, birth rates decline. I wish the video delved into this pattern, but it did explain the second order consequences of China’s one child policy and how this will lead to disastrous population dynamics within the country by 2100 (unbalanced amount of elderly to youth). Who knows if humanoid robotics will help to offset this problem. Another interesting problem that no country has solved: creating the right incentives to have children.