A conversation I had with a friend about what to tolerate and what not to tolerate has stayed with me for a long time. It seemed connected to my recent concern: “What can I give up, and what can I not give up?” So I kept mulling it over.

I came to the conclusion that my performance was best when I had high goals and didn’t tolerate falling short. Now I’m thinking about how to sustainably pursue this high quality. Jensen Huang said that people with high self-expectations tend to show low resilience, and I flinched the moment I heard it. That’s the problem.

In the past, this obsession with good quality led to the thought that I had to produce good results all at once, which led to fewer attempts. I consider this the starting point of the low quality I’ve maintained over the past few years. Because of this, I’m now shifting almost all my work methods to executing fast and failing fast. Sometimes it works well, and sometimes it doesn’t due to inertia, but this is how you change things little by little.

I’ll end with the last words from the friend I mentioned above: “Since we’ve been doing various things from an early age, let’s think of it as repaying the debt of various concerns we’ve put off. I think such moments are necessary to develop our own perspective as we move forward in whatever direction.” I keep mulling this over whenever I feel impatient. Now is not the time to move forward, but to build a solid foundation.