The Future Is a Trade

"For the next 10 years, I'm long X and short Y."

A few years back, I was talking to a few friends about how quickly time passes by, and that's when I started thinking about how most people drift through life passively. Took my tiny brain a few months, but I stumbled upon a pretty neat mental framework:

The future is a trade!

Every choice you make — how you spend your time, what you consume, who you follow, what you build — is a directional bet on the future. Whether you realize it or not, you're always long something and short something else.

So why not do it deliberately?

"For the next 10 years, I'm long AI, robotics, and crypto. I'm short alcohol, attention spans, and nationalism."

That sentence alone is a thesis. It tells you where I'm placing my attention and efforts, what I believe will compound over time, and what I'm betting will decay or destroy value. You could take that sentence and reverse-engineer my lifestyle — how I structure my day, what I avoid, who I talk to, and what kinds of information I seek. It's a filter.

(It'll be so cool if dating apps make it compulsory to post your life positioning like this.)

Why Think This Way?

This mental model, long/short as life positioning, has several superpowers:

• It forces clarity. You can't hedge everything. Choosing what to short is just as important as what to go long on.
• It reduces noise. You instantly know what to ignore. If you're short algorithmic addiction, then you stop optimizing for Instagram and easy dopamine.
• It scales. It works for both macro (“long decentralization”) and micro (“short Friday night drinking”).
• It’s sticky. “I’m long X” is a fast, transferable way to communicate worldview. Simply put, it's way cooler than saying what most people say when they talk about their future.

The best part? Your longs and shorts don’t need to be correlated. You’re not a hedge fund. You’re a human, and humans benefit from weirdly asymmetric portfolios.
Long crypto. Long monk mode. Short prestige. Long cold showers. Short sugar. Long AGI. Short populism.
That’s a direction. That’s a life portfolio.

Everyone Is Already Doing It (But Blindly)

People are already in trades. They just don’t know it.

• If you're spending your 20s chasing validation on Instagram, you're long vanity metrics and short deep work.
• If you pick your career based on brand names, you're long legacy institutions and short self-sovereignty.
• If you drink every weekend, you’re long short-term dopamine hits and short long-term clarity.

The goal isn’t to be perfect, it’s to be aware. To know what you’re actually betting on. High-agency people will thrive in the AGI era.

A Real-World Shift: Individuals as Thesis-Driven Operators

This framing isn’t just philosophical. It’s part of a larger societal shift.
Historically, “thesis” was the domain of VCs, academics, or think tanks. Now? Individuals talk like funds:

• "I’m long Solana over Ethereum."
• "I’m betting on agents, not apps."
• "I’m bullish on high-agency monasticism."

You see this especially in the crypto, AI, and creator ecosystems where people live out directional convictions, not job titles. In a world where leverage is digital and distribution is global, your bets matter more than ever.
You’re not just watching history — you’re trading it.

Objection: “Life isn’t a Spreadsheet Shaltz are you redarded”

Some might say this framing is too cold — that life is about intuition, presence, meaning. And sure, it is. But this framework doesn’t kill meaning. It amplifies it.

You’re not trading for money, you’re trading for reality.
You're trading for depth, freedom, autonomy, scale, love, and clarity.
All of that requires directional energy and a directional life.

Try It: Build Your 10-Year Trade Portfolio

Write it down.

"I'm long ____, ____, ____."
"I'm short ____, ____, ____."

Then use it to guide your life path:

• Daily behaviour: What do you consume?
• Long-term positioning: What do you build? What do you study? Where do you work?
• Circle of influence: Who are you around? Are you having +EV interactions overall?
• Future-proofing: What do you want exposure to?

Treat your life like a trade, not a reaction. The future isn’t neutral, and neither are you.