Isiah Adams

Oh, hi there! I'm Isiah (I-zay-uh), friends call me Isiah... Ok fine, I don't actually have friends. Check-one-two, is this thing on?

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

Anyone else grow up with one of these '90s Mr. Christmas Holiday Carousels as a kid? Instant nostalgia! I can still hear those Christmas songs in my head.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

The Harsh and Necessary Truth: A Journey of a Recovering Aimless Millennial.

One of the most difficult truths I’ve had to admit to myself as a man in my 30s is just how aimless and adrift I have been through much of my young adult life. There has been real pain in that self-realization, pain that comes from confronting yourself honestly. But alongside the pain, there has also been relief. Being sincere with myself has opened the door to something truly worthwhile: possibility and potential.

I’d like to share a bit of my story and what I have learned along the way. Maybe I’m not the only one on this path. Maybe someone out there will relate. Or maybe I’m just speaking into the void. Either way, putting these thoughts into words feels right, and for now, that feels like enough.

Looking back, it feels surreal at how effortlessly I slipped into aimlessness, and yet, how entirely avoidable it could have been. I make no mistake in acknowledging that I was always in the driver’s seat of my life. But instead of steering with intention, I coasted on cruise control, drifting toward an unknown destination with reckless passivity. It is so painfully clear now how foolish that was, squandering away that precious time. Would I do it all differently if given the chance? Absolutely. But life is no video game; there are no resets. I am the sum of my actions and my inactions. Coming to terms with that has been the harsh, necessary reality check I long avoided but always needed.

So, what did that reality check actually reveal? For starters, my younger self made the mistake of being casually interested in too many things, without ever committing to just a few. I spread myself thin, casting too wide a net, then made it worse with impulsiveness and a lack of follow-through. To bring this into sharper focus, let me offer a few examples.

Back in high school, I became fascinated by the idea of digital music production. I was just discovering the world of EDM at the time, and the idea of creating my own music sounded exciting. Driven by this newly found fascination, I began obsessively watching YouTube videos on everything about digital music production and Digital Audio Workstations. I watched countless hours of tutorial videos about FL Studio, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, and other DAWs. Eventually, I decided to purchase a student license for Pro Tools and was ecstatic thinking about all the music I was going to create. It wouldn't be long, my young and naive self imagined, before I was producing tracks on par with some of the EDM legends like Tiesto and Deadmau5.

When my Pro Tools installation CD finally arrived (yes, one of those relics from the past), I dove right in, playing around with the user interface, checking out all the virtual instruments, synths, and sample packs. It was a blast, and I even managed to create a few beats of my own (most of them, admittedly, pretty terrible). But after a few months, the excitement faded, and so did my interest in music production. My attention had already shifted to the next big obsession: becoming a YouTube content creator.

Just like my music production phase, I began obsessively learning everything I could about video production: cameras, lighting, scripting, and all the essentials for content creation. I bought my first Sony Handycam, a set of cheap filler lights, and even a greenscreen to get started. Inspired by some of the OG comedy YouTubers like BalloonShop and makemebad35, I created my own YouTube channel and made a few (mostly cringe-worthy) videos. I convinced myself that this was what I truly wanted to focus on, this was something worth pursuing. But eventually, as was becoming a pattern, the excitement wore off, and my interest faded. Just like that, it was time for the next obsession.

This pattern followed me well into my 20s and young adulthood. I just couldn’t, for the life of me, narrow down my interests or stay focused on any one pursuit for more than a few months. Consequently, at least in my estimation, I never gave myself the chance to truly develop my skills or tap into my potential. When you approach something halfheartedly, you rob yourself of the chance to discover what you’re truly capable of. That was a hard truth that I eventually had to face: I had spent years of my life coasting on minimal effort, and unsurprisingly, I got results that matched: Unremarkable. Mediocre.

Another reality check I faced was realizing how I had let distractions and instant gratification replace meaningful responsibility.

During my junior year of college, I became intimately familiar with one of life's ultimate distractions and escapes: alcohol. Oh, sweet, terrible alcohol. To this day, I’m still proud that I resisted it until my 21st birthday. Unfortunately, even that small achievement did little to stop the wave of poor decisions that followed over the next decade.

Just as countless "how alcohol complicated my life" stories have been told before, mine was no exception. Excessive drinking offered the perfect escape from the relentless demands of homework, studying, maintaining healthy relationships, pursuing ambitions, and simply growing up. Drinking was thrilling and expedient. Self-development? That felt like an exhausting upward climb. To me, the choice seemed obvious. Why invest in the slow grind of self-improvement when I could chase instant fun instead?

To my own detriment, that was the pitiful bargain I struck with my younger self. In exchange for fleeting satisfaction, I would abandon the burden of life’s responsibilities. Here is what that bargain cost me: My college grades slipped, I was an awful boyfriend to someone who deserved so much better, I never developed any true ambitions, and like a modern-day Peter Pan, I drifted through my youth, lost in a personal Neverland. Quite some deal, right?

Now in my mid-30s, it’s painful to look back at the missteps that contributed to my aimlessness. It feels like watching a film of my own life, helplessly yelling at the version of me on screen as he stumbles through one poor decision after another, fully aware of the regret and emptiness waiting just around the corner.

And yet, from that pain and the brutal honesty it demanded, I finally learned to be straight with myself. That realization brought with it a small but powerful glimmer of hope and relief. Confronting myself gave me the strength to speak the truth I had long avoided, and here it is, as clearly as I can put it: pick up your damn suffering and shoulder some responsibility. If you refuse that necessary burden, you will create a life void of meaning and adventure. Wake up, no one else is coming to save you. The weight is yours to carry – and always has been.

That painful truth finally hit me in my 30s like a slap to the face. The sting from that realization felt real, but it was the smack of reality I desperately needed. Alongside the pain came a strange sense of relief; an awakening, and with it, the potential of new possibilities. Owning your failures is a brutal reckoning, but there is an upside: from that low point, you're left with nothing but potential and the opportunity to build something better.

That is the journey I am on now. Slow, exhausting, and an uphill battle every step of the way. But it sure beats the hell out of living a shallow, meaningless life driven by impulse and short-term gratification. If years of aimlessness taught me anything, it’s this: I’d rather crawl on my hands and knees toward purpose than sprint toward emptiness, knowing that genuine fulfillment is forged not in fleeting moments, but in the unwavering pursuit of what truly matters. And what truly matters? I’ve got the rest of my life to find out.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

Just logged into my early 2000s high school email and wow, I was truly PEAK goober back then. Good to know absolutely nothing has changed.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

If you believe your job ends with a set of predetermined tasks, you are missing the point and squandering real opportunities.

In the wise words of Blink-182’s song, All the Small Things: “Work sucks, I know” (such nostalgia). To some degree, many of us have likely identified with that feeling. Work is demanding. It takes a lot of our time, consumes a lot of our mental capacity, and requires focused responsibility. Maybe it’s no wonder why so many have subscribed to the “quiet quitting” movement (for those unfamiliar, quiet quitting is essentially mentally disengaging from your job and doing the absolute minimum required).

The logic behind the movement seems straightforward: “My job is not my life. I am paid to do ‘X’ job, and that is exactly what I will do. No more, no less. I will do the bare minimum without going above and beyond”. There is undoubtedly some good rationale there, but is it really the best attitude to adopt? Maybe more importantly, does an attitude like that make our lives better today and in the future? In my experience, the answer to both questions is a decisive “no”.

At my last job as an ESL teacher in Thailand, it genuinely felt like most of my ESL coworkers were fully subscribed to the quiet quitting mentality – if not consciously, then at least unconsciously. Nearly all of them were young men and women in their mid-20s to mid-30s from various English-speaking countries, looking to spend a fun year or two in Thailand before returning home (or, in some cases, becoming career ESL teachers). Fair enough, if the former – that’s a common theme for ESL teachers here.

Regardless, there was still a job to do, and we weren’t being paid by the school to enjoy an extended, alcohol-fueled beach vacation. For many of my coworkers, however, work was treated as a bothersome hindrance. The unspoken (or sometimes explicit) goal seemed to be something like: do the least amount of work possible, keep my head down, let others pick up the slack, and above all, don’t take on additional responsibilities. At first glance, that doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. We certainly don’t want to be taken advantage of by our employers through ever-increasing workloads and stagnant pay. More productivity should be fairly recognized and compensated for.

However, I still couldn’t help but feel that many of my coworkers were missing the point: If you believe your job ends at a to-do list someone else gave you, you’re missing your chance for growth and opportunity. For me, taking on new responsibilities and challenges was always a rewarding experience that made life feel a little more meaningful, and I had always learned something new along the way. Mentally disengaging and doing the absolute minimum seems like a perfect recipe for holding yourself back. Unfortunately, during my time as an ESL teacher, that was often what I observed in my colleagues – youthful minds with no hunger for new challenges. They never took the initiative, just begrudgingly did the least amount of work possible to make it to the weekend.

One objection I have to the “do just enough” mindset is: Do you seriously want your job reduced to some sort of checklist that spells out the minimum? Before you answer, just think about that for a minute. As a former ESL teacher, the job description was not complex – teach English to non-native speakers to enhance students’ listening, speaking, spelling, and other related skills. That seems straightforward enough. But let’s say I’m not looking to put a lot of effort into my lesson plans. After all, my time is valuable, and I don’t want to take on more work than necessary. The job description never specified how I had to teach, so perhaps a one-hour educational YouTube video for my students during class is acceptable. Except, no – that is completely unacceptable. The school is not paying us to click ‘Play’ on a YouTube video while we sit back in our chairs. So, okay, let’s amend the job description to more clearly spell it out for our bare-minimum-effort types: Teachers must actively teach English to non-native speakers through direct interaction. This position does not involve showing YouTube videos in place of teaching.

The point I am trying to make is simply that this becomes a very tedious process. Who determines exactly what constitutes acceptable minimum performance for the job? For many of my coworkers, their self-defined minimum was almost always taken to the point of absurdity. In a few cases, some would go home and take a 2–3-hour nap during work hours because the job technically never specified what teachers should be doing during non-teaching hours (free periods between classes). Apparently, their time was much more valuable than that of other teachers/students who stayed at school from 8:00am – 4:00pm. And yes, the example of substituting teaching with YouTube videos mentioned above was also a real occurrence.

What if we actually took the time to spell out exactly what the duties are for the job, so there was no question about what needs to be done minute by minute, hour by hour? Well, now that’s micromanaging, the quiet quitters protest! As previously mentioned, this devolves into a tedious game. That game seems to be something like: I’ll do the absolute minimum, but don’t define my role too specifically, because then I might actually have to do my job properly. Might there be a better game to play at the workplace (or even more generally)? Here’s a proposition: willingly shoulder some responsibility, accept new challenges, and discover a life of meaning and adventure.

In addition to my duties as an ESL teacher, I was always looking for ways to slightly improve the office environment. One thing I noticed was that the school semester schedule was never clearly displayed anywhere for the ESL teachers. When were the midterm and final exams? When were the students’ total scores due? Which days were school activity days? Many such questions were always asked, and it was difficult for teachers to plan their lessons around an unknown schedule. With the problem identified, I got to work. I found the school’s semester schedule buried on the school website. However, the schedule was entirely written in Thai, which was not very useful for an office full of English speakers. With Google Translate, that is not a problem, though. After I had translated the semester schedule into English and identified all the important semester dates, I created a digital poster in Canva and had it printed on a large poster to display in the office. Problem solved! Am I patting myself on the back? Perhaps a bit. But what I’m really getting at is this: taking on a little responsibility and initiative can go a long way. Every workplace is full of micro and macro problems that could be solved, which not only make the work experience more enjoyable but also benefits the problem-solver in the process.

I identified many more problems to solve during my time as a teacher. I created an Excel spreadsheet that automatically calculated students’ GPAs and total scores. I made a how-to guide for navigating and inputting student scores on the school’s confusing online grading system. I collected and organized digital lesson plans to share with new teachers so they had materials to get started. All of that is to say: there are many meaningful problems to solve, and none of them get solved by people who sit on their hands and adopt a “well, that’s not my job” approach.

On a few occasions, I had coworkers say something to me like, “Wow, I really don’t envy your job! You have to do so much!”. What they failed to understand is that it wasn’t “my job”, and I didn’t “have to” do it. I had the exact same job they did. I was hired as an ESL teacher, just as they were. Literally anyone in our shared office could have identified and solved these problems that they perceived as grueling extra work. But for many of them, it was simply unfathomable to do anything more than what they conceived as the minimum.

By taking on these additional challenges, what did I gain? Yes, I did receive a modest pay bump, but perhaps more importantly (in my opinion), the true value was what I gained from those challenges, and the personal and professional growth I experienced. By willingly shouldering extra responsibilities, I continued to develop, learn, and refine my skills. During my time as an ESL teacher, simply by trying to solve a few problems around the office, I learned how to use Canva more effectively, grasped the basics of Python coding, gained experience in recruiting and interviewing new teachers, learned how to run Facebook Ads, and acquired numerous other skills that have now strengthened my resume.

To close the loop, here is my final point: I believe that confining your work to predefined assigned tasks essentially shortchanges yourself. There is obviously a limit to the number of extra responsibilities we can and should take on. However, I think it is a huge mistake to inhibit your potential by adopting a “minimum effort only” mindset. Willingly embrace new challenges and have the thrilling adventure of a lifetime. To paraphrase Erin Hanson: “There is freedom waiting for you on the breezes of the sky, and you ask, ‘What if I fall?’ Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?”.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

Perhaps it's not death that we fear during our short existence, but forgetting what it felt like to truly be alive.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@trader_chaser @TiffanyFong_ This is the correct answer 👍

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

So far, a recurring theme of 2025 for me has been how incredibly f*ckin' awesome tools are.

I want all the tools. ALL OF THEM.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

Every fam’s got that one movie that they swear is a masterpiece, but it’s straight-up trash. Ours is 1993 ‘Son in law’ - we’re out here defending Pauly Shore's funky chicken dance like it's Oscar worthy 😂 What’s your family’s cinematic dumpster fire?

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@SRCHicks Should be a great conversation!

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@nntaleb @istandleet how would you go about finding the distribution? One user in the comments used Mathematica to find the % of the worn out area. So freaking cool.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

Fun morning trip to Huai Kaeo Waterfall in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

Enjoyed some jazz in Chiang Mai last night 🎷

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@jordanbpeterson @RichardDawkins I would love to listen to you and Dawkins talk. No doubt it would be a captivating conversation. Respect both of you a lot.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

Taking express train no. 52 to Bangkok. Then 5 days relaxing on the beach in Pattaya.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@istandleet Non-GMO? Not interested. The GMO is what really gives it that burst of flavor.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@RichardBarrow That 2 hour delay was fun haha. I think I'm on the same train / car as you. I'm heading back to Lampang. Hope you enjoy your travels 👍

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@jordanbpeterson @SenSanders Would absolutely love to see this discussion. Hope you two can make it happen.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@lofty_ai Big fan of the Lofty_AI platform! I started investing in June last year, and the platform has already made some amazing improvements. Looking forward to seeing what's next.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@lofty_ai Love the convenience of the on-ramp feature! However, with the 1% fee, not sure it's a feature I'll use at this time. Currently I can purchase USDC for a 0% fee on Coinbase, transfer immediately to KuCoin, and withdraw USDCa for a $0.50 fee to my Lofty wallet.

[Isiah Adams @IsiahAdams]

@RichardBarrow @Ajarncom If you make your way to Lampang, I'd be happy to give you some food recommendations and fun places to check out 👍 Blue Bird Cafe has some amazing breakfast foods, and that same owner also has a really good pizza shop, Long Jim Pizza.