Measuring personal growth

The post asks how to measure personal growth without relying on net worth or follower count. It argues for three heuristics: becoming a new person every 3–6 years, solving major problems faster, and favoring choices that maximize future options.

Reading notes

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• The text compares personal growth with business growth, but rejects metrics such as net worth and number of followers.
• The author says life and measurement do not need to be opposites, and that measuring usually helps her live better.
• In “rate of change”, she suggests that life has a rhythm of 3 to 6 years in which a person changes identity, problems, lifestyle, and social circle.
• She relates this change to the rule of 72, treating herself as an investment and measuring how long it would take to become a new person.
• In “time to solve problems”, the author cites the idea that career, family, and finances each take about a decade to resolve.
• She proposes measuring growth by observing which big problems have stopped mattering and which ones she no longer wants to carry into the future.
• As examples, she mentions the anxiety of being in the U.S. on a visa, resolved with the green card, and the insecurity of feeling like an impostor in the Bay, which has now diminished.
• In “number of future options”, she disagrees with the idea that dreams die over time and states that, with age, she has gained more dreams, more resources, and more possibilities.
• She connects this to empowerment maximization, a principle that leads an agent to choose the action that opens the most future options.
• The text says she tends to choose jobs with more future doors open and tasks that develop transferable skills.
• In the conclusion, the author summarizes her criteria as becoming a new person every 3–6 years, solving big problems quickly, and acting to expand future options.
• She notes that these criteria reflect her preference for novelty and exploration, and that this may change in the future.