Leverage Maps #15: Using Convictions as Your North Star
Predictions are unreliable. One wrong assumption can cause your entire model to collapse. Markets, organizations, and personal careers are full of examples where people bet on the wrong detail and drifted off course.
Convictions work differently. They give you orientation. They don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be durable enough to point you in a direction and keep you moving. Over time, that orientation is what compounds.
Why Convictions Beat Predictions
- Predictions are fragile: They break when reality deviates from the model.
- Convictions are adaptive: They bend with new information but still hold direction.
- Trends are easier than outcomes: Spotting an emerging pattern is more reliable than trying to forecast exact results.
How to Use Convictions as a North Star
- Anchor to first principles: Incentives, behavior, and energy flows shift slowly.
- Stay directional, not precise: You don’t need to know exactly where you’ll land, only whether you’re heading the right way.
- Probe through small bets: Each project, investment, or piece of writing tests whether your conviction holds up in reality.
- Adapt without losing orientation: Updating beliefs doesn’t mean discarding them—it means refining your path.
The Compounding Effect
Convictions work like steady contributions to an investment account. Each choice aligned to your North Star builds skills, networks, and reputation that add up over time.
My own examples:
- Learning smart contract development compounds if decentralization keeps growing.
- Writing about high-trust vs. low-trust workplaces compounds as technological shifts push companies to scale faster than their organizational trust systems can adapt.
- Simplifying my lifestyle compounds if inflation keeps distorting perceptions of financial success.
The people who thrive in uncertain environments aren’t the ones with perfect foresight. They’re the ones who stay grounded in convictions durable enough to carry them through noise, setbacks, and shifting conditions.
Convictions don’t need to be flawless. They just need to keep you moving in a consistent direction long enough for compounding to work.