Anaïs

Weekly essays on career paralysis and personal agency • Buffering

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

On Netflix: 5,000+ movies available.
Result: You scroll for 45 mins and end up watching an old episode of Friends.

In your career: "Versatile" degrees opening 100 doors.
Result: Everyone converges toward Consulting, Finance, or Big Tech.

Why abundance of options creates paralysis & patterns, not freedom.

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@kylascan Feels like we’re not being given much control so much as a nicer dashboard for not having any

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

This is very close to something I keep circling:
when too much of life feels chaotic, slightly rigged, and basically not up to us, we start clinging to smaller things we can track, tweak, and micromanage.

The body, the routine, the sleep score, the metrics, the increasingly ceremonial water bottle.

Not because they solve much, but because managing your own corner of life feels better than confronting how little of the larger system is actually steerable.

I keep wondering whether what gets sold now is agency, or just legibility.

[Kyla Scanlon @kylascan]

We've built an entire economy around selling people the feeling of control through bets, hacks, subscriptions, and optimization. But the model only works if people stay desperate. The worse things get, the better the pitch works.

New essay on control and agency, financial nihilism, belief markets, the manosphere, and spectacle during war.

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@rulxway @Tancrededib @grok is this true ?

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

Capital allocates power.
But attention allocates capital.

What we choose to amplify today shapes what feels important, and eventually what gets funded tomorrow.

“Who are we backing?” isn’t only a question for investors.

In an attention economy, ideas don’t just compete on merit but also on visibility, momentum, and hype.

When a new AI tool goes viral, thousands of posts appear testing it, celebrating it, sharing prompts.

Most of it is harmless curiosity but collectively it signals: this is exciting, this is where things are going.
Those signals compound. Talent moves there. Media covers it. Capital follows.

The future won’t just reflect what investors choose.
It will reflect what we collectively reward with attention.

So the question becomes: what are we choosing to make visible?

[Tancrede @Tancrededib]

Capital allocates power.
The world’s future lies in the hands of investors.

This past week has served as a bleak reminder of what our future might look like: a future crippled by war, and fear around the misuse of AI.

In a world where technology rules, capital decides which people shape our future.

Therefore “who are we backing?” is the most important question of all. A question we should always be able to answer: “people I would trust my children with.” As these very people will go on to shape the world our children will grow up in - the world we will live in.

I believe humanity is at a pivotal moment in its history. AI, humanity’s child, will carry our faults and our virtues - a clear reflection of human nature. As it will eventually gain the power for either mass destruction and control, or freedom and creation. The outcome will be decided by what we teach it to aim for.

The future won’t be decided by any single event, speech, promise, or person. There won’t be one culprit to blame. It will be decided by the common accord of thousands of men and women’s investments.

So to all investors:

Invest deliberately. Invest with judgment. Invest for humanity.

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@Philipmetax Hoping we all find those keys at some point

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

On Netflix: 5,000+ movies available.
Result: You scroll for 45 mins and end up watching an old episode of Friends.

In your career: "Versatile" degrees opening 100 doors.
Result: Everyone converges toward Consulting, Finance, or Big Tech.

Why abundance of options creates paralysis & patterns, not freedom.

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@Philipmetax Yes… noticing the loop usually happens around episode 7

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@Philipmetax Thanks Phil. Feels like a lot of people are stuck in that loop right now…

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@Philipmetax I wish what lights us up was always obvious at first

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

Career decision signals (ranked)

S tier:
- what you do even if no one pays you
- what energizes you after doing it

A tier:
- talking to people doing the job
- trying it for real (even small scale)

B tier:
- internships/jobs you kind of fell into

C tier:
- advice from people who didn’t really choose
- whatever LinkedIn is pushing this week

D tier:
- what sounds good when your mom asks “so what do you do?”
- salary charts at 22
- researching for months waiting for certainty

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@ThalesGray fair, I think the hard part is telling the difference in real time

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@tomas_yano Interesting way to frame it, Tomas. Easy to confuse that feeling with ambition.

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@BrendanBooth_ and silence filters :)

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

something I didn’t expect:

consuming more content doesn’t give me more clarity
it just gives me more things to sort through

writing is slower but it’s the only thing that actually helps me think

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@praisejbr yes! then we have to actually use it though

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@LukeLansh love this, I’ve definitely been guilty of ignoring those signals first, even though they’re often the most helpful

[Anaïs @Anais_leca]

@praisejbr Kinda, more like a way to get data and adjust, not a final decision