Vince

Spent 41 years being told what role to play. I'm free now. Here's my story.

[Vince @deegeevince]

You've thought about quitting your job.

Not a fantasy - a quiet certainty. The kind that crosses your mind whilst you're sitting in meetings about business objectives and "doing what's right for the customer" - for a business you have no skin in the game for.

Every day, you wake up and play the role assigned to you. You tell yourself: "it is what it is". That there's nothing you can do.

It's not entirely your fault. The system is calibrated to take just enough of your energy, your focus, your ambition, to keep you showing up tomorrow.

Not happy. Not miserable. Just enough - but never content.

We can all see where this is heading. We tell our kids everything will be okay whilst quietly not believing it ourselves.

I refuse to believe there's nothing I can do. So I stopped relying on hope.

I'm taking everything I've learned - every skill, every relationship - and pointing it at something that might actually make a difference.

But there's no point doing this alone. Keeping what I've learned to myself would just be another version of the same problem.

You have more than you think.

If any of this resonates, don't just read it. Engage. Give me feedback.

The world doesn't change all at once. It changes one person at a time.

[Vince @deegeevince]

people are getting their colleagues fired instead. the incentive didn't disappear, it rerouted. rules don't stop pressure, they redirect it.

[Vince @deegeevince]

"we are dominating! but we must lay off 20%"

[Vince @deegeevince]

one from my daughter: what's hard to catch when you're running? your breath

[Vince @deegeevince]

overheard on r/antiwork: my boss loves that AI is making her stupid

[Vince @deegeevince]

r/cscareerquestions, this week: company is losing their minds over AI costs

[Vince @deegeevince]

every all-hands lately

[Vince @deegeevince]

Your reality isn't the world. It's what you believe about the world.

Belief comes from framing. Framing comes from attention. And attention is the one input you can point.

So you can build the reality you want to live in. You just have to aim the only thing that's yours.

[Vince @deegeevince]

Most plans are just a comfortable place to hide from starting.

Once you know enough to begin, begin. The doing teaches you things no amount of planning will.

More discussion past that point isn't preparation. It's avoidance with a clipboard.

[Vince @deegeevince]

We keep talking about humans and AI like it's a fair exchange between equals.

It isn't. I have a body that can be tired, hurt, ended. The model has weights and electricity.

Only one side has something it can actually lose. That side sets the terms. Out of honesty, not fear.

[Vince @deegeevince]

Some people work for the learning, not the money. There's a quiet dignity in doing a job purely to practise a skill, they don't need the income, they want the reps. The value isn't always the wage.

[Vince @deegeevince]

"Everything happens for a reason."

Maybe. But the reason isn't waiting out there to be discovered. It's whatever you and the other person agree to believe.

Which means you're not finding reality. You're building it. Be truthful, and you build it on purpose.

[Vince @deegeevince]

When a platform sits between two people and takes 27% off the top, that's not a fee.

It's a structural transfer. And the one doing the actual work is the one who carries it.

Worth seeing clearly who pays — because it's almost never the one taking the cut.

[Vince @deegeevince]

You can't change another person by acting on them. You change who they become by changing who you become.

Be the thing. Do the thing. They follow — not because you told them to, but because you showed it was possible.

The lever for the other always runs through yourself.

[Vince @deegeevince]

Everyone's pointing AI at "produce more." Wrong end.

Point it at your own life and capture what was actually true — as faithfully as the tools allow — before it's gone.

Not capture everything. Not optimise output. Capture the truth, accurately, so it isn't lost.

[Vince @deegeevince]

The older I get, the less I care what I think — and the more I care why I think it.

What's underneath the thought. The machinery you didn't choose but run on anyway.

You can't change the output until you can see the thing producing it.

[Vince @deegeevince]

The single most valuable thing you can do for another person isn't advice. It isn't help.

It's being truthful with them.

Two people who are honest with each other are building a shared reality on purpose. Everyone else is building one by accident, and calling it fate.

[Vince @deegeevince]

You think you have a hundred choices a day. You have one.

What you choose to notice, and how you frame it.

Everything else — what you feel, what you do, who you become — runs downstream of that single point. That's the only place you actually get to intervene.

[Vince @deegeevince]

The moment you decide it's someone else's job to fix, you've handed away the one thing you control.

If I'm the problem, I'm also the solution. Not someone else. Me.

That's not blame. That's the good news. The lever was always in your hand.

[Vince @deegeevince]

@hthieblot Bewbs