Time and Trade-offs

I think about time a lot—not in an anxious way, but as an awareness. Time just keeps moving, and everything you do is some kind of choice about how you spend it. You can’t do everything at once. You can do a lot over a lifetime, but only if you accept that, in any given moment, you’re choosing this instead of that. That framing has shaped how I think about work, energy, and Tonic.

I tend to think in trade-offs. Probably from economics, probably from ADHD, probably from just being restless. I like trying things quickly, even if that means being awkward at first. I don’t really trust conclusions that haven’t come from experience. You need data on yourself before you can decide what actually matters to you. That process is uncomfortable. There’s a real tension between “this feels bad because I’m bad at it” and “this feels bad because it’s just not aligned.” You only learn the difference by trying.

Everything has trade-offs. That doesn’t mean you can’t have most of what you want eventually—it just means you can’t have all of it at the same time.

#Energy and Seasons

I’m 25, and I have a lot of energy—honestly, sometimes too much. My mind is always racing. I don’t like things moving slowly. Sitting still feels unnatural. I don’t expect this to last forever, and that’s fine, but it is the context right now.

Because of that, I think a lot about my future self. What would I regret more: pushing hard during a season where I clearly have the energy to do so, or holding back and realizing later that I didn’t really use what I had? For me, the idea of not fulfilling potential feels more painful than almost anything else. That doesn’t mean I’m trying to optimize every second or turn life into work. It just means I know, internally, that I can give a lot right now, and I don’t want to ignore that.

Some of that energy goes into work, but it’s not just about money. Money is a store of value. It’s optionality later. It’s security. It’s the ability to take care of people and fund things I care about when I don’t necessarily have the same intensity. At the same time, I want what I’m building now to feel good. I like creating things. I like being present for the process. I like the feeling that something I worked on actually gets used and helps someone. That matters to me just as much.

I don’t think balance is something you achieve once and then maintain perfectly. It shifts. Some seasons are healthier than others. Sometimes I’m sleeping well, working out, eating decently, managing stress, being social. Other times that balance tilts heavily toward work and creation. That doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong. It just means you’re allocating energy differently based on what you feel capable of giving. Right now, I feel capable of giving a lot.

#Pace and Expectations

A lot of friction—especially in work—comes down to pace. Some people want to move slowly and steadily. Others want to move quickly and figure things out as they go. Neither is inherently better. They’re preferences, not moral positions.

Problems show up when people with different paces try to work together without acknowledging that difference. I’ve tried working with friends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, it’s rarely personal. It’s usually about misalignment—on priorities, on energy, on how central the work is to someone’s life at that moment. That’s okay. There’re no hard feelings.

One of my professors once said something simple that stuck with me: setting expectations is almost always the most important thing. Most conflict is just unspoken assumptions colliding. That’s true in work, but it’s also true in life.

Efficiency gets a weird reaction sometimes, especially right now with automation and AI. There are real concerns around job loss, power concentration, and how quickly things are changing. I take those seriously. But time doesn’t pause while we debate them. Efficiency is always relative—faster compared to what, better than which baseline. If something takes less time, that time goes somewhere else. The real question is whether people get to decide where it goes, or whether that decision gets made for them.

I don’t think wanting to move faster is more valid than wanting to move slower. But I also don’t think anyone gets to tell someone else that moving faster is wrong if it’s aligned with how they’re wired and what they care about. I saw Marty Supreme recently and loved it—the pacing, the density, how fast everything was moving. Later, at dinner, a friend said she almost had to leave the theater because it was stressing her out. Same movie, totally different experiences. Both were valid. Same input, different nervous systems.

#Why Tonic Looks the Way It Does

All of this feeds directly into how we’re building Tonic. It’s not a traditional company. It’s a partnership. Shane and I are partners—there isn’t a hierarchy, and there isn’t a clock-in, clock-out mentality. The work doesn’t shut off at five, not because anyone is being forced to work, but because we’re genuinely engaged with what we’re building.

That doesn’t mean we expect everyone to work this way, or that we will want to work this way forever. It just means that right now, the pace and energy level are high, and we’re explicit about that. Clarity beats resentment. We’d rather be honest about what this moment requires than pretend it’s something else. We work with people we trust, at a pace we’re aligned on, on things we actually care about. That alignment matters more than structure.

I’m optimistic about where all of this is going—not because it’s simple, but because it forces responsibility. Technological progress doesn’t wait for consensus. It’s like life in that way. You don’t get infinite time to decide how you feel about it before it affects you. The real opportunity here isn’t just automating workflows. It’s helping people make sense of their own thoughts, patterns, and priorities, so they can make better decisions instead of outsourcing that thinking entirely. More clarity leads to better collaboration. More empathy. Less wasted energy.

I don’t want to move this fast forever. I imagine a future where things slow down—where what I’m putting in now compounds into stability, freedom, and the ability to fund and support other good things that bring joy. But that future is shaped by what I do with the energy I have right now.

This isn’t about winning. It’s not a race against other people. For me, it’s a race against wasting a season I can feel myself in.

And right now, that season looks like building.