The way I process information has never been linear. It's high-entropy by nature, fast, reactive, pattern-seeking, and deeply dependent on what's stimulating me at any given moment. For most of my life, I treated this as a quirk. Writing this reflection has pushed me to treat it as something worth examining seriously.
Structured or Messy? Honestly, Both.
My thinking style is a paradox. I can go deep on things I care about. I'm analytical, I invest real effort into my work, and I genuinely enjoy the process of wrestling with a hard problem. But underneath all of that, my thinking is reactive rather than deliberate. I don't start with a long-term framework and work backward. I start with whatever is energizing me right now and build from there.
I've learned this maps closely to the Promoter-Innovator archetype: someone drawn to novelty, early adoption, and making an impression. That label resonated with me. My thinking doesn't drift randomly. It gravitates toward whatever promises growth or a new challenge. The difficulty is that this tendency can override strategic patience when I need it most.
What I genuinely like about how I think: I go deep on things I care about, and I have a real tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. What I don't like: sustaining focus once the initial excitement wears off is hard for me, and I often find myself unsure about which things actually deserve my time and attention.
The MBA Decision Loop
After graduating with an engineering degree in 2022, I joined a U.S. life insurance company as an AI/ML engineer. The work was solid. Within six months, I was restless. The same thought pattern I've come to recognize kicked in: this role isn't growing me anymore, so find the next thing. I stepped back from work to co-found a startup, raised early funding across the U.S. and Canada, and tried to run both simultaneously.
Splitting focus fractured both. The startup stalled, the co-founder relationship broke down, and my work performance took a hit. Instead of spiraling, I made a clean decision: close the startup, recommit to the job. What came next honestly surprised me. Freed from divided attention, I produced some of my best work. I moved up quickly, built real relationships with leadership, and got invited to present to executive teams in the U.S. on multiple occasions.
Then, about a year later, the cycle started again. The role felt comfortable, maybe too comfortable. AI tools had made me more productive than ever, and I had mental surplus with nowhere productive to direct it. I studied for the GMAT over two weeks, wrote the test, and somehow landed a spot in Rotman's full-time MBA. I accepted the offer, then immediately tried to work full-time while starting the program. By December, that arrangement fell apart and I quit my job to focus on school.
What the Pattern Actually Reveals
Looking back, the loop is remarkably consistent.
High engagement leads to strong performance. Strong performance leads to comfort. Comfort leads to restlessness. Restlessness leads to overcorrecting into something new. Overcorrection leads to forced simplification. And simplification leads back to high performance again.
I think well under conditions of stimulation and poorly under conditions of stagnation. The issue isn't my ability to think critically. It's that I've historically waited for external circumstances to trigger that thinking, rather than building intentional structure around it myself.
The MBA decision is the clearest example. It wasn't irrational. I genuinely wanted to grow. But the thinking behind it was reactive, not strategic. I hadn't mapped out why an MBA, why now, or what I was actually optimizing for beyond escaping a comfort zone. It worked out. But success born from reactive thinking is harder to replicate than success born from deliberate thinking, and that's the part I'm still working on.
Conclusion: Building the Engine, Not Just Running It
I'm not trying to rewire how I think entirely, and I wouldn't want to. The Promoter-Innovator tendency has taken me further than a more cautious approach probably would have. But what this reflection has made clear is a real gap: I'm good at thinking fast, but I haven't built disciplined habits around thinking strategically.
The shift I'm working toward is about creating intentional frameworks for prioritization, so I'm not always waiting for the environment to tell me where to focus. The goal isn't to suppress the entropy. It's to learn how to channel it.