My measure of happiness is how many happy people surround me, and my measure of success is how many successful people surround me. Once I understood that this is how I work, I started intentionally engineering my surroundings, and I have felt the effects ever since. If you want to be healthier, spend time with people who do not drink and who exercise. If you want to live more intensely, spend time with people who genuinely enjoy their work.
One reason my market value became high was that I had developed the ability to manage expensive, high-ego developers. But with the rise of LLMs, I sensed that this would no longer be necessary, and that it was time to learn something new through founding again. So while working as an EIR at Kakao Ventures, I shared those career-long skills freely, skills that are still useful now but will soon matter less.
And as expected, after spending time surrounded by founders and investors, various thoughts and stimuli settled into clarity and the ship left the harbor. Once a routine formed in which I live each day as the best version of myself, the pains I choose for myself come back as joy. Without noticing it, I connected the dots I had been leaving while simply living and playing, and a blueprint emerged. I want to spend the next ten years compounding that blueprint to increase both the happiness and success of myself and the people around me. I have already enjoyed the luxury of giving help in return for what I once received, and now I move forward by receiving help again.