How to balance 2 competing ambitions

Some people struggle to find one thing they want to do with their life. I’ve always had the opposite problem: I want to do too much.

Right now, I’m a full-time medical student. I’m also building companies. I’m trying to publish research, ship software, grow a newsletter, and learn how to move through rooms of power with conviction and clarity. None of those things are hobbies. They’re all part of the work I feel called to do.

And so the question I get more than anything else — sometimes asked admiringly, sometimes skeptically — is:

How do you balance it all?

Here’s the truth: you don’t balance competing ambitions by finding the perfect system. You balance them by choosing the right relationship between them.

Not Everything Can Be the Main Character

The mistake most people make is trying to give two things equal priority. That never works. When two ambitions fight to be “the most important,” you either burn out trying to satisfy both, or you stall out doing neither.

The real move is this:

One of your ambitions should be your anchor. The other is your engine.

The anchor is the thing that grounds your life — the stable system that gives your identity structure, legitimacy, or long-term payoff.
The engine is the thing that moves you forward — where your creativity, curiosity, or raw desire for impact gets expressed.

For me, medicine is the anchor. Business is the engine.
I didn’t always see it that way — but reframing it like this is what made the balance sustainable.

Your Anchor Doesn’t Have to Be Your Passion

You don’t have to love your anchor. You just have to respect it.

Medicine gives me structure, community, and credibility. It also puts me in contact with real human suffering — something I never want to lose touch with, even if I end up far from the clinic day to day.

But medicine moves slowly. It rewards linear progress. You can’t skip levels.

Business, by contrast, moves fast. It lets me test ideas, learn in public, and build things people use. It teaches me strategy. It builds leverage. It’s where I get to play offense.

The key is knowing that just because something isn’t your engine doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time. Your anchor buys you time, access, resilience. It’s a bet on the long game. But you still need to feel like you’re moving — that’s what your engine is for.

But What If They Conflict?

They will.

There are days when I think:
“If I dropped out, I could scale this company 10x faster.”
Or:
“If I let the business go quiet, I could rank #1 in the class.”

Here’s how I stay grounded:

Competing ambitions are only truly in conflict if you demand short-term maximization from both.

You can’t play two games on “hard mode” at the same time. But you can play one long and one fast — as long as you're honest about what each role serves.

That means:

• I don’t try to be the perfect student. I try to be a strong one.
• I don’t aim to be the most productive founder. I aim to ship meaningful things consistently.
• I don’t maximize for grades, or money, or clout — I optimize for motion, credibility, and freedom.

A Framework You Can Use

If you’re juggling multiple ambitions, here’s the framework I recommend:

1. Name your anchor and your engine.
   One is your base. One is your accelerant. Don’t let them compete for the same role.
2. Set constraints for the anchor, and goals for the engine.
   Your anchor should have boundaries. (e.g., “I will pass all classes, but I won’t obsess over them.”)
   Your engine should have outputs. (e.g., “Ship one new product per quarter.”)
3. Protect the integrity of both — but not the perfection of either.
   Let go of the idea that you're supposed to do both flawlessly. You're not. You're supposed to do both deliberately.

What You Gain By Not Choosing

The world will pressure you to pick one path.

But the truth is, multi-dimensional lives create multi-dimensional leverage.

Studying medicine gives me credibility in rooms that wouldn’t listen to an internet entrepreneur.
Building companies gives me speed, independence, and pattern recognition most doctors never develop.
Writing this newsletter connects the two — and opens doors I never even planned for.

It only works because I’m not trying to be everything at once. I’m trying to be intentional.

One anchor. One engine.
Respect both. Let them serve different ends.

And—to quote my favorite childhood movie—Meet the Robinsons, “keep moving forward.”

— Ali

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