Advice to Young People (Jason Liu)
Jason Liu's sprawling personal essay of 28+ aphorisms on career, confidence, money, and self-worth — written as advice to his younger sister and as "the lies I tell myself." Updated in 2026 after a hand injury forced him out of tech and back. The best parts are about confidence as earned memory, agency as giving before asking, and the math of good vs. bad decisions.
Key Quotes
"Confidence is the memory of success."
Liu's thesis in six words. He trained jiu-jitsu five days a week, swam an hour daily for months before a freediving trip, rehearsed his first talk 20 times standing up in the same jacket. When the moment came, he could perform because he'd already done it. This is not "believe in yourself" — it's "have evidence." The freediving detail is the killer: before his 30m record dive, heart rate 43 bpm, he fell asleep during the 10-minute rest.
"Practice more than you play."
The natural extension of confidence-as-memory. Most people invert this — they perform live and call it practice. Liu's ratio is lopsided: hours of rehearsal for minutes of stage time, months of pool laps for one dive, five days a week of jiu-jitsu so a new gym feels like home.
"Very few people get a job on merit alone."
Liu has never gotten a job by applying — always referrals or being reached out to. His advice is not "network more" but "be useful." Point out a typo, suggest a book, leave thoughtful comments. During consulting calls, his only goal was to offer advice regardless of whether they hired him. The plumber metaphor is perfect: a plumber doesn't thank you for the opportunity when your toilet is overflowing. They know they're solving your problem.
"If I hired you, don't insult me by having impostor syndrome."
Sharp and useful. To junior people: seek teams with high psychological safety. To everyone else: "If you don't believe in yourself, believe in me that believes in you."
"Your whole life is really built around a couple of good decisions and making as few bad decisions as possible."
From the 2026 update. Two good decisions got him to $3M net worth; one bad one brought him to $500K. Hard work is the entry ticket. After that, it's luck, leverage, and not ruining things.
"Just use your damn potions."
He grew up poor and beat Pokemon games without ever using a potion — saving them for later, then finishing without needing any. The metaphor applies to refusing to raise money, hire help, or use available tools. You're doing a self-imposed challenge; acknowledge it as such and either commit or drop the restriction.
"The greatest gift you can give yourself is the gift of being enough."
"You were just a child."
Someone told him this about all the stupid things he'd done, and it was liberating. Extends to everyone: "It's everyone's first time being a person, including your parents."
"You are not your work."
In art school, he noticed people felt defined by their work. If their work was bad, they saw it as a reflection of their skill rather than their taste exceeding their ability. "You are a vessel, a medium for the work, but you are not the work itself."
"All cruelty stems from weakness. Happiness is the quality of thought."
Key Themes
#agency — Be the Plumber, Not the Applicant
The job section is the most practically valuable part. Liu's framing inverts the power dynamic: hiring managers have problems, and your job is to solve them or find the problem to solve. The most effective way to get attention is to give — useful comments, book recommendations, typo fixes. Don't send anything longer than you'd send to a crush.
Connects to the high-agency pattern that appears across this wiki: Things You're Allowed to Do (most constraints are self-imposed), Radical Accountability (taste is all that's left), and AI Zealotry (senior engineers taking initiative).
#confidence — Memory of Success, Not Absence of Fear
Liu is explicit: he's "a deeply insecure person" with low self-esteem but confident nonetheless. The distinction matters. Confidence isn't feeling good — it's knowing you can do the thing because you've already done it in practice. Courage is action despite fear.
This connects to The Mundanity of Excellence: excellence looks magical from outside but is just small correct things done consistently. Liu's rehearsal regimen (20 full run-throughs, same jacket, standing up) is mundanity in action.
#career — Good Decisions > Hard Work
The 2026 money section is blunt and useful. Hard work is table stakes; after that it's decisions, luck, and not self-destructing. The ratio is asymmetric: one good decision + zero bad ones beats five good + three bad. His most painful regret isn't a failed investment — it's skipping a trip to Portugal with a friend over $10K when he was making $80K that month.
The "your future self is better than your current self" framing on money anxiety: between 17 and 24 he skipped trips to save $6,000 that never got invested in anything that grew. Past him "was just scared and didn't believe money could show up later."
#simplicity — Simple Systems Survive
"The best systems are the simplest ones." The same insecurity that makes young people over-intellectualize also makes them over-engineer. Liu quotes Feynman and Einstein: if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it. In the wiki: Simplicity in the Age of AI-Assisted, Elements of Code.
#mindset — Luck as Perceptual Breadth
The experiment: "lucky" people spot the giant headline saying "Stop counting, there are 43 photographs" while "unlucky" people are too focused on counting to notice. Luck isn't random — it's a wider field of perception. Liu's practice: "let's not forget to read the headlines."
#self — You Are a Mirror, The World Is a Mirror
His fear of being judged at the gym reflected his own judgment of others. Five years later, he sees everyone trying to improve their health and thinks "they are so much braver than me." The world is your perception projected outward. And you are a mirror to others — when someone is negative, it's usually about them, not you.
#attention — The Most Valuable Gift
"The most valuable thing you can give someone is your attention." Grief is unexpressed love; avoid it by loving abundantly. Write more so you can share links instead of repeating yourself. Spend your attention — and your arrogance — while you're still young.
Critical Analysis
The essay is strongest when Liu is specific and personal. The freediving heart-rate detail, the Pokemon potions metaphor, the Portugal regret, the rehearsal-in-the-jacket ritual. These are earned insights, not recycled wisdom. When he reaches for philosophy (existential despair, Buddhist monks and MRI studies) it's thinner — the references are name-drops rather than deep engagement.
The structure reflects its origin: this was speech-to-text in about an hour, and it reads like someone thinking out loud. The 2026 update disrupts the original arc but the new material (money, decisions, potions) is actually better than some of the original sections. The money transparency — "I came to the US with $157," "two good decisions got me to $3M, one bad brought me to $500K" — is rare and valuable. Most career advice is either too coy about numbers or too generic to act on.
The weakness is breadth over depth. At 28+ sections, some ideas get a paragraph that deserves an essay. "Isolation is the gift" is a provocative claim with one paragraph of support. "Pessimists are losers" is a tweet, not an argument. The piece works as a whole — the density creates its own momentum — but individual sections collapse under scrutiny.
The best single idea is confidence as memory of success. It's actionable, testable, and runs against the prevailing "fake it till you make it" advice. You can't fake your heart rate down to 43 bpm. You can only earn it.
The second-best is the decisions-over-hard-work math. "Your whole life is really built around a couple of good decisions and making as few bad decisions as possible" is one of those lines that's obvious once stated and invisible before.
Liu's voice is distinctive: self-deprecating, immigrant, former athlete, surprisingly tender ("you were just a child"). It's worth reading the full piece for the voice even if you bounce off the philosophy.
Sources: Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself Last updated: 2026-05-15