At some point in life, I no longer think the knowledge we gain in school matters. What matters more is how we view and process life experiences, which I will call a “life algorithm.”

Recently, I’ve realized that I feel stuck with my own life algorithm. I had been holding onto the belief that I must be an expert at any subject if I ever want to take an important step. I felt like I need to be at the “Professor” level from Money Heist, spending years to design a mastermind plan. I think this is precisely why I ended up with almost zero personal projects.

The sad part is that no matter how much time I spend studying a topic in isolation, what I really need is real signals, not internal certainty. Looking back, it feels like a huge waste of time to study a single subject endlessly just to feel comfortable and safe. That sense of certainty didn’t move my life forward.

Instead, I should start doing the things I’ve always wanted to do and get real feedback as quickly as possible. The question now shifts from “How can I be more knowledgeable than my peers?” to “How can I get real feedback as fast as possible?” I only need enough knowledge to get started and start creating real-world projects.

If my life algorithm never changed, I would have likely spent another year just studying topics I’m interested in—topics that may already be outdated by the time I feel “ready.”

The key takeaway is that we need to update life algorithms that no longer serve us at certain points in our lives. Some people find it easier to make this switch than others, which I suspect has to do with ego, or the lack of trustworthy support systems around them.

Thanks to ChatGPT 5, we no longer need in-depth thinking on how to bypass ego and lack of support. Rather, we simply type the following prompt in ChatGPT 5:

What are some preconceptions that I have about life? Something that can hinder me from making progress in life?

Because I’ve been using ChatGPT for over a year, it already has huge amount of data about myself from the questions I’ve asked. This approach helped me significantly, and I hope it can help others too. I will continue to use ChatGPT whenever my life algorithm seems to go stale.