impatient yet patient; brilliant yet dumb ask questions that make people they talk to smarter and more specific

have specific, correct hot takes (if young, on the path there) delivered a ton of interesting projects that weren’t helpful for anything in particular (whether it’s writing, coding, leading or anything else) learn really fast & you can see it from their behavior actions reflect beliefs have a history of embarrassing cold emails

do what’s required to get where they want to get (rather than only doing what they’re good at)

take ideas seriously type really fast (clearly a spurious correlation but still interesting)

don’t settle for proxies, zoom all the way in & out keep doing what they believe is the right thing in the absence of any positive feedback or only negative (even if only perceived) feedback from others

have thought through everything use first principles when there are no priors & use priors when there are priors extremely curious