people say mastering something takes 10,000 hours.

it can either be 10,000 hours of blood, sweat and tears.
or 10,000 hours of play.

i’d rather level up while also having fun.

you’re competing in someone else’s game

for the past six months, i’ve felt like a car that keeps breaking down. i would wake up already feeling like the day was already chasing me down.

before i even got out of bed, my brain is flooded with thoughts…

“you need to do more.”
“you’re running out of time.”

so i worked harder.
i started more things.
i tried to be more productive.

and somehow, the harder i tried to make things work, the less anything seemed to work.

meanwhile, i would look at people doing incredible things and they seemed… relaxed.

they were curious.
they joked around.
they experimented.

they looked like they were playing.

and it wasn’t my first time being here…

when i was freelancing as an illustrator, there was a point where everything became a scoreboard, how many people am i reaching, how many repost can i get, how can I do more in less time.

i stopped loving what i was doing.

and the same thing happened when i started building apps.
and creating online.
and working.

i became so obsessed with playing someone else’s game, someone else’s scorecard that i forgot why i wanted to do it in the first place.

but every time i stopped caring so much about the outcome.

i got better.
ideas flow easier.
i met interesting people
more opportunities appeared.

work stopped feeling separate from my life.
it just became a natural part of my life…

a way of being

so how can we do that? when we are losing ourselves in the pursuit, how can we go back to feeling like ourselves again?

making something without knowing whether anyone would care.
making something for the sake of making someting.

how do you design your work, your life so it feels like a game?

a game that you’re so immersed in playing that you forget to look at the clock.

a game where each skill stat in each area of your life is improving and feeding onto each other.

a way of life where work and play are not seperate but together.

just like what naval ravikant said…

for me, creating a game only i can play started with three questions and i hope it can help you too :)

how do you play a game only you can play

(1) what can’t you stop learning about?

look at the books beside your bed.
open your YouTube history.
your search history.
your saved posts.
your podcasts.

what rabbit holes do you keep falling into without anyone telling you to?

for me, i learned that there were three recurring themes i gravitate towards when reading books or listening to podcasts:

• category of one → differentiation, positioning, branding, content

• mastery → learning, skill acquisition, psychology

• systems thinking → leverage, feedback loops, designing systems

at first, i thought they were seperate interests. but the more i read, listen and write, they all seem to connect so naturally into one question:

how do you build a unique skill stack and become irreplaceable by creating your own learning path?

category of one - what game is uniquely mine?
↓
mastery - how do i become extraordinarily capable at playing it?
↓
systems thinking - how do i design systems that compound that capability and create leverage?

and whatever i do throughout my day… working, storytelling, coding, and studying, it all comes back to that question.

because the things you can’t stop learning about aren’t always random interests.

maybe that’s what our rabbit holes are trying to tell us.

(2) what gives you more energy than it takes away?

if you’re not 100% into it somebody else who is 100% into it will outperform you

there are things you’re good at that exhaust you and there are things that somehow give you energy while you’re doing them.

pay attention to the second one.

for me, it’s listening to stories.

i love sitting across from someone and entering their world.

why did you build this?
why do you care so much?
what happened that made you see the world this way?
what are you seeing that everyone else is missing?

i can listen to someone’s story for hours.

especially builders.

there’s something fascinating to me about people who look at the world, decide something should exist that doesn’t yet or reinvent a system, and then dive deep to the unknown to build it.

i leave those conversations feeling more alive, curious and excited about the life.

so… what gives you energy?

what makes you feel more alive?

do more of those activities in your day.

(3) what feels natural to you but valuable to other people?

this one took me the longest to understand.

because your natural strengths rarely feel like strengths.
they feel normal.

you assume everyone can do it.

often, other people notice your gifts before you do because to them it looks like magic but for you it’s just a part of who you are.

so ask yourself: what do people keep coming to me for, even when i never advertised myself as someone who does it?

for me, it kept being some combination of:
- storytelling.
- creating content/telling their story.
- connecting ideas.

seeing what makes a person or business different and finding a way to communicate it.

years ago, i started doing this for people for free on LinkedIn.

i wanted mentorship, so i’d study someone, figure out what made them unique, and help them tell that story better through visual stories/notes.

then people started reaching out asking me to do it for them.

which was confusing.

because my drawings were kinda… ugly. not gonna lie.

and i barely understood business.
or even have any credentials in illustration and branding.

i just thought every person has something uniquely valuable about them. my job is to find it and make other people see it too.

what felt easy to me was hard for other people.

that’s usually where your unfair advantage is.

play your game

if it takes 10,000 hours to master anything, you might as well have fun doing it.

because those 10,000 hours can feel like work.
or they can feel like play.

you can force yourself to show up everyday, track each hour, progress, and constantly look at how much you still need to do before getting to the destination.

or you can become so immersed in the game that one day you look back and realise thousands of hours have passed without you noticing.

that’s the kind of mastery i want.

not less ambitious.
just more playful.

because the best game is the one you want to keep playing.

and i think for the past six months, i forgot how to play.

i got lost in the…
race.
metrics.
expectations.
feeling that we should be further ahead.

so i'm writing this as a reminder to myself, and to people like me…

find the game you want to keep playing.

because when you do,
what looks like work to everyone else
still feels like play to you.