the world is courage-gated

Many think the world is gated by intelligence. It isn't. You have a PhD in your pocket.

Many also think the world is gated by knowledge. It isn't. Almost everything humans have figured out is one ChatGPT search away.

Today, everyone has the same genius + same library. Yet, why are rewards disproportionately allocated?

Because the world is courage-gated.

You need courage to do things, because everything can be done.

Try this: Think of one thing you've been scared of doing. Do you know what the first step is?

You do.

You've known it, all this while. You just haven’t done it.

Advice is a short-term loan on courage

When you ask for advice, you're not actually short on information unless it’s something super, super specific.

You're short on courage. So you borrow courage by asking for advice. And it feels great. For an hour, you're brave on someone else's conviction.

Then they leave, and the loan comes due, with interest. And every time you borrow, you trust yourself a little less. Which is why if you’re a perpetual advice-asker, chances are you lack as much courage.

Before you next ask someone for advice, ask yourself: Do you genuinely need advice or do you need the permission to act?

I'm not above this either. I’ve fooled myself into asking for advice (often generic) when all I needed was courage.

When I asked someone how to build a “content flywheel” (fancy phrase), he said: You don't get to ask how until you've tried doing it a 100 times.

When intelligence is free, four skills matter.

High agency. Read highagency.com.
Clear delegation. AI does what you said, not what you meant. So you need to delegate clearly.
Ruthless prioritization. When you can do anything, the danger is doing everything. So do what matters most.
Clear thinking. AI will give you a thousand confident answers. You need to have clear, critical thinking to decide what will move the needle.

Now look at those four again. Each one is courage in a different form.

Agency takes courage to act before anyone asks.
Delegation takes courage to say exactly what you want.
Prioritizing takes courage to disappoint people.
Clear thinking takes courage to disagree with the crowd, and with the machine.

The receipts

In 2019 I started making videos. To date, I’ve made 188 of them. While they grew steadily (I have ~3K subscribers on YT and my most-watched video has 60K+ views), it’s not grand by any measure. But by being consistent, serendipity had its way. One day, a viewer emailed me and that email became a one-hour call, where I told him creating content was the best thing he could do. He ran with it and built something far bigger than I did. This week, I called him to learn from him.

In 2020, I started writing my annual letters to shareholders. Many found it funny that I would choose to share my entire year with folks on the internet, but writing these letters has been the single-best investment I’ve made in myself. They did require courage, though. In fact, one of them got me a seat at a five-person dinner with two Nobel laureates.

In 2025, I gave a talk at Stanford on the courage to look dumb. I said that if we don’t risk looking dumb, if we don’t have the courage to look dumb, we won’t do anything smart. And reflecting on my journey, having the courage to look dumb has been the main reason why things have worked out so far.

For courage rarely pays you back in the currency you expected. But it pays.

Now I'm building in health, where the same “courage gate” shows up everywhere. The longevity industry sells complicated answers to simple problems. Most people already know what to do; yet they don’t do it. So we bet on the boring stuff: simple habits, 28 days, a small group holding you to it. About 600 people have done it so far. And we’re growing.

The only question left

You have the genius. You have the library.

Nobody is coming to give you permission. Nobody ever had it to give to you.

So do one thing today that you'd normally ask someone about first.

Then, if you still want my advice, write back and tell me what happened.

The world is courage-gated.

The gate opens from your side.