How To Know If You Are On The Right Path

Nugget by Jerry Seinfeld and Jensen Huang

👋 Hey friend

Today I bring you a great nugget from the popular comedian Jerry Seinfeld, and also from Nvidia’s founder Jensen Huang.

It’s about how to know whether you are on the right path in your life, and how to actually get in the right path (if you aren’t there already).

👤 Doers

💡Nugget

🟠 Jerry Seinfeld:

If you have been at this amazing place [Duke University] for four years and still have no idea what you like, what you’re interested in, or what you want to do in life, you are the luckiest ones here!

Those of you that think you know what you want to do are very likely wrong, and perhaps even overestimating your ability to do it. You have convinced yourself that you know who you are and what’s going on in the world. You don’t know either.

The less secure and confident you feel in the direction, the more surprises and excitement you will have in store. That’s good!

So the better the job you’ve done in finding a path for yourself, the more boring and predictable your life is going to be.

(Personal Note)

As the great Persian poet and philosopher Rumi famously said:

"As you start to walk on the way, the way appears."

Brian Armstrong (founder of Coinbase) also captured this in three words:

"Action produces information."

Therefore, is the doing itself that shapes one's path of maximum potential, rather than a rigid plan based on untested hypotheses...

This is one of the reasons why The Little Almanack is devoted to the study of Influential Doers, rather than pure Academics or Teachers.

If you’re sitting here today completely confused, feeling lost, adrift, and totally abandoned, you might even be a G! I say congratulations! You win the Duke Commencement Ceremonies of 2024. You are about to go on a hell of a ride!

About work, you know how they always say:

“Nobody ever looks back on their life and wishes they spent more time at the office?”

Well, why?

Why don’t they?

Guess what?

Depends on the job!

If you took a stupid job that you find out you hate and you don’t leave, that’s your fault.

Don’t blame work.

Work is wonderful.

I definitely will not be looking back on my life wishing I worked less.

If that’s not how you feel at work… Quit! On your lunch break… Disappear! Make people go “What happened to that guy?,” “I don’t know, he said he was getting something to eat. Never came back.”

👉 Video Source

Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia, likely has a similar take on work...

🟠 Jensen Huang:

I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed.

And I work seven days a week.

When I’m not working, I’m thinking about working.

And when I’m working, I’m working.

I sit through movies, but I don’t remember them because I’m thinking about work.

But my work is not as, you know... It’s not “working” as in... there’s this problem, and you’re trying to solve this problem. You’re thinking about What the company can be and Are there things that we could do even better. Or sometimes, it’s just trying to solve a problem. But sometimes you’re imagining the future and boy, if we did this and that… And it’s working. You’re fantasizing, you’re dreaming.

I mean, that’s incredible!

👉 Video Source

"My idea of Flaneur is very simple: I'd much rather have series of options (like have a long Highway with a lot of exits) than being locked in into a top-down plan (like a highway with no exits — assume you want to change your mind.. you're in trouble)."

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Video Source)

All of the insights in this letter are saved and classified in a searchable Database, which (as of April 18th 2025) contains over 2,600 insights.

I call it the “Doers Notebook”

🤔 Why did I build this?

Well, as the Latin motto goes, “A chief part of learning is simply knowing where you can find a thing.”

And since it’s all 🔎 searchable, I only have to type a keyword, and I instantly get a filtered list of insights related to it!

For instance, if I’m unsure about how to get more sales in my business, I can simply type the word “sales” and immediately get 105 search results! In this case from Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, among many other remarkable doers…

It’s like having a 🧠 second brain from which I can pull wisdom and judgment on demand.

And this is valuable because it helps to decrease the error rate in my judgment.

“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”

- Naval Ravikant

So, if you wanna watch how I personally use this database and how you can get immediate access to it, just click on the 🍿 YouTube video below!

I had a great time on the Spread Great Ideas Podcast with my friend Brian David Crane!

💥 Stuff I Loved

Hope you enjoyed today’s letter!

Talk you soon,

Julio :)