Why I’m Writing Again and Why It Matters For Students.
Leverage is your greatest asset.
Welcome to issue #02 of Future You. Every two weeks, I send an article that shows you how to turn your time, skills, and ideas into leverage - and become the best version of yourself along the way.
I stopped writing newsletters for months.
Not because I ran out of ideas, not because I lost interest, but because I underestimated how much mental space it takes to think clearly when you’re balancing medicine, business, and personal projects at the same time. Most people will tell you that taking a break is fine, that consistency can wait, that productivity is a cycle. But consistency compounds only when you’re actively producing, reflecting, and iterating. Momentum is leverage, and momentum lost is clarity lost. The hiatus wasn’t neutral - it cost me credibility, focus, and the subtle but crucial habit of showing up.
You Are Optimising For The Wrong Metrics
Most students are taught to optimise for what looks impressive. That’s what your parents told you. That’s what society demands - grades, CV points, and high-paying careers. Your parents’ advice isn’t wrong. It’s just outdated. We’re trained to mimic, to check boxes, to follow instructions rather than ask questions. Then we graduate and are shocked when life doesn’t hand us clarity.
The real mistake most students face isn’t failure; it’s passivity. Waiting for validation, waiting for certainty, waiting for the “right moment.” Real mastery comes from relentless experimentation in domains you care about, through trial and error, and by stacking small wins until they become exponential.
Prestige is a Trap. Leverage is Freedom.
In my own journey, I’ve shifted from chasing prestige to chasing leverage. It is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I spent years investing in skills that scale, experimenting with online business models, building Notion systems, posting on LinkedIn, and writing sporadically on Substack.
Some of it failed, some barely worked, and some became footholds I never anticipated. The lesson: nothing scales better than ideas once you have a system to express them consistently. You cannot become the top 1% at something you only half-show up for. You cannot build an audience without giving them a reason to follow your thought process. You cannot monetise your skills without first building a body of work that proves them.
Here are the leverages in life you should start building today:
Audience: Build a following around your ideas, not just your work. Influence compounds faster than effort alone.
Skills that scale: Coding, writing, design, or systems thinking - things that multiply your output.
Digital assets: Content, software, or data you control and can leverage repeatedly.
Networks: Relationships with people smarter, faster, or richer than you. Influence is a team sport.
Time: Automate, delegate, and design your schedule so every hour works for you.
Financial leverage: Learn how to make your money work for you instead of only working for money. Invest your money wisely.
Health: Your body and mind are the foundation of all leverage. Invest in sleep, movement, and mental resilience - without them, nothing else scales.
Why I’m Writing Again
The hiatus is over. Not because I suddenly have more free time, but because publishing is a discipline, a tool, a mirror. Writing forces clarity. It externalises experiments so others can learn from them or challenge them. It is leverage. It is a distribution. It is proof of competence no CV can replicate. Momentum, once regained, compounds faster than you think. The first post, the first iteration, doesn’t have to be perfect. It only has to exist.
If you are a student, I challenge you to start leveraging today.
I will go through each aspect of leverage in future newsletters, breaking down how to build them and why they matter.
If you’ve read this far, I want to know: what’s one thing you’re experimenting with right now? School applications? Burning out? Life-work disintegration? I read and reply to every single email, and sometimes the best insights come from the smallest ideas.
Thank you for reading. See you in 2 weeks.
- Adam
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