Environment Always Wins. But Thats a Good Thing
You cant stop the environment from shaping you. But you can notice it happening, slow it down, and be intentional about the room youre in.
Jeff Bezos, in his final shareholder letter as Amazon CEO, quoted a biology book. The passage said that if living things didn't work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings and cease to exist as autonomous beings. He said it wasn't intended as a metaphor — but it's a fantastic one, and relevant to all companies, all institutions, and to each of our individual lives.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
You can never fully isolate yourself from your environment or stop its effects on you. You can only be aware of it. Understand whether it's working for you or against you at a given moment. Slow it down. But over the longest time — it will get to you. Entropy is the default. The question is just how long you can fight it, and how intentionally.
When I moved to San Francisco, my priorities were pretty clear: be in great shape, grow my following on social media, make money, and — somewhere in the background — figure out this tech thing. That was the order.
A year and a month later, I barely recognize the hierarchy. I code almost every day. I'm always on my laptop. The gym has slipped. Being jacked doesn't feel like the win it once did. Back in Champaign I hosted events constantly — everyone knew me for it, and I genuinely thought that was one of the most valuable things about me. Now that part feels distant. I post on LinkedIn and Twitter instead of Instagram. I just kind of became a different person, slowly, without really deciding to.
And honestly — it's not bad. SF didn't corrupt me. It recalibrated me.
But here's what's worth paying attention to: the things that survived the transition — the drive, the work ethic, the ability to walk into a room and connect with people — those didn't survive because they're hardwired. They survived because my environment still demands them. I'm still talking to people every day. In a world where I'm not, those skills go too. There is no core self that's fully immune. There are just things you've kept watering, and things you've let dry out — on purpose or by accident.
The thing I feel like I lost was community. Not just having people around, but the specific texture of it — being able to say "pull up to this location" and having people show up. Walking through campus and knowing everyone. There was a clarity to that identity. I knew exactly who I was and where I fit.
SF is bigger, more diffuse. Harder to win in an obvious way. The feedback loops are longer and less visible. And the strange thing is — even when I go back to Champaign now, I don't necessarily want to see that many people. So maybe I didn't lose the community itself. Maybe I just lost the simplicity of knowing my place in it.
I keep coming back to December 2023. I took a GAP semester and spent a month or two working out of a co-working space, mostly alone — floating, experimenting, not going too deep on anything. I landed a contract during that time, which eventually led to my YC position. So something came out of it. But looking back, it happened almost despite the environment, not because of it. I got lucky. The isolation didn't produce anything — it just gave me enough space to stumble into the next thing.
That's a dangerous place to be. And right now, if I'm honest, I'm kind of in it again.
What I know I actually need is friction and community. A house full of other founders working every day. Or going somewhere like London for a few months — somewhere people are dialed in on something and the energy is contagious. The ideas I keep coming back to aren't lifestyle preferences. They're me trying to engineer the right kind of pressure around myself, because I know what happens when I don't.
So I've given myself a date: June 1st.
I had a conversation with my girlfriend about it — what do I want to be able to point to by then that sets me up well for whatever comes next. The list is straightforward: exercise five times a week, stay healthy, stack runway, build the brand back up on LinkedIn, start thinking seriously about where I want to be. Simple, but intentional.
That list isn't just goals. It's a set of inputs I'm trying to control before the environment controls them for me. Ways of actively resisting equilibrium. Because a directionless environment will fill the void — and you usually don't notice what it filled it with until months later.
I'm writing this to myself more than anyone else. A lot of it is me trying to make sense of how I've changed, and figure out what to do with that going forward.
You can't stop the environment from getting to you. But you can notice it happening. You can slow it down. You can be intentional about the room you're in, the people around you, the pressure you're operating under. And you can give yourself a date.
The world will always try to bring you into equilibrium. That's not a motivational line. It's biology.
The work is just resisting equilibrium for as long as you can.