If I could go back in time, this would be the advice I would want my younger self to know.
Why?
Because of the longest time in my life I though that I just needed to become smart and sound "intellectual" enough until I had opportunities handed to me.
It only took a few college rejections and failed college classes to realize that none of that genuinely matters until you start embodying the most important skill in the new age of intelligence.
High-Agency Intelligence
Most of us have had that moment:
You finish a course. You pass the exam. You feel smart.
Fast-forward three months… and none of it stuck.
Nothing changed.
That’s when it hits you:
Most of formal education is just paid gatekeeping. You’re not buying knowledge. You’re buying permission slips.
When you come to realize that a majority of formal education is just fluff and just you're paying to take exams. You'll understand that the only real ownership of your intelligence is when you act on it.
When you take theories and concepts to build and create, that's true ownership of intelligence.
High-Agency intelligence takes it up a notch.
You move fast—
learn then execute right away,
aim to fail until you're good enough
make it exist, before you make it good.
Low-agency intelligence is obsessed with perfection, credentials, and permission.
High-agency intelligence is obsessed with momentum, experimentation, and outputs.
Some people will say knowledge is power. But knowledge without motion is just potential energy. It doesn’t move the world until you move.
Information is Cheap Now
We live in a world where anyone can Google anything, watch a masterclass, or ask AI for an explanation.
Being smart used to be rare. Now it’s baseline. What matters is what you do with that intelligence.
For most of human history, information was a gatekept luxury. Books were handwritten. Libraries were scarce. Knowledge was power—because so few had access to it.
If you wanted to learn philosophy in 1600, you had to beg your way into a monastery or be born into royalty. If you wanted to learn engineering in 1800, you needed apprenticeship, money, and time. Even in the 90s, if you wanted to code, you had to dig through dusty manuals or pray that your computer class had a decent professor who's voice didn't put you to sleep with every word. (somethings never change i guess 🥲 )
Information used to be water in the desert. Now it’s a flood. You’re drowning in it every time you open your phone.
That’s the shift. Information is no longer scarce.
You have all the information you'll ever need.
The only thing missing is execution, which only you can do.
There is no ancient wisdom you’re missing.
Signals Have Changed
Traditional signals of intelligence—degrees, grades, jargon—are losing power.
Today, the strongest signals are:
What have you built?
What do you share publicly?
What have you contributed?
Can people feel your clarity, momentum, and originality?
You don’t need a diploma to prove you’re smart. You need artifacts.
Even more important:
Those artifacts should show your taste.
Your perspective.
Your approach on tackling the world.
Artifacts > Achievements
That’s what sets you apart from the other 8 billion humans—or more realistically, the endless stream of AI-generated content that’s flooding the web. (Dead Internet Theory? More real than you think.)
To wrap it up here's my final point. This is the harsh reality that hit me the hardest personally after years of faking intelligence for academic "prestige"
Being Smart Can Be a Trap
You overthink.
You hesitate.
You wait for things to be “perfect.”
Meanwhile, someone with half your knowledge just launched, learned, and leapfrogged you.
And I say this as someone who loves learning for the sake of learning. Books, ideas, theories—I live for that stuff.
But you can't sugarcoat the reality:
Unless you’ve got some grandmaster plan for your life (which, let’s be honest, most don’t—and even if they think they do, it usually crumbles the moment life throws a curveball)…
very niche reference hahaha
You’re better off moving fast.
Executing.
Making messy versions.
Failing but Succeeding.
By building feedback loops in real time.
That’s how you get sharper. That’s how you build leverage. That’s how you stop being just “smart” and start becoming undeniable.
If you learn anything from this, just remember don't be like younger me— stop hoarding knowledge. Pick one thing you’ve been sitting on.
Create it → Share it → Learn from it → Repeat
And here how you do just that: ↘️
That’s all for now.
Expect nothing. Give Everything.
-Mudit
