One thing that really stood out to me after moving from Israel to the U.S. is the prevalence of obsession with credentialism. Credentialism is the fallacy of thinking you must do X to *build up to* Y, rather than just do X for X's sake. Imagine an entrepreneur (Lisa) who wants to start a business; say, a rocket launch company. Lisa thinks people won't take her seriously unless she goes to an ivy league school, so she goes to Harvard. After graduation, Lisa says to herself: you can't really build a rocket launch company before working in the industry; so she finds a junior role at SpaceX. And so forth. The truth is, Lisa doesn't need any credentials. Everything she needs to know is out there on the internet. And people are willing to help. Conviction is far more persuasive than credentials, and forgoing the credentials is a great way to signal conviction. I feel like this mentality is far less prevalent in Israel, where there's a GSD mentality that's often lacking in the U.S. I think one reason for it is that people do some pretty remarkable things young in the IDF; another is that if you're a very talented Israeli there are few "moderate success guaranteed" paths equivalent to what you have in the U.S. with PE, consulting or big tech careers. But these are just guesses. The point is: Elon Musk didn't have the "right credentials" build rockets, and Lisa doesn't need them either. So whenever I'm tempted to take on a challenge, the first thing I ask myself is: am I credential-seeking or am I genuinely interested a-priori? Eschew the first and go for the latter.