There’s something strange about the greatest Italian painters: all of them lived in Florence, a city 1/10th the size of Indianapolis. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello, the list goes on—all Florentines.
Meanwhile, Milan had just as many people with virtually identical DNA but failed to produce legendary painters. Two Italian cities 180 miles apart, but a world of difference between their creative outputs.
When you consider the context, this actually wasn’t strange at all. Florence was bankrolled by the Medici family, which was obsessed with art. Meanwhile, Milan was fixated on agriculture and politics.
There had to be painters with the same raw talent as Michelangelo in Milan. But they lacked the most important ingredient for success: living in Florence in the 1400s.
Fast forward 500+ years and the same phenomenon applies to us. Some cities push you toward your potential; other cities pull you down to your comfort zone—socially, professionally, physically.
You can transfer information across fiber optic lines at breakneck speed, but you can’t transfer energy, ambition, or momentum. This is why, despite trillions of dollars being invested in “collaborative technology,” people still migrate to cities that are calibrated to their skills and tastes.
Paul Graham wrote that cities send you messages, whether you realize it or not.
“A city speaks to you mostly by accident—in things you see through windows, in conversations you overhear. It’s not something you have to seek out, but something you can’t turn off.”
New York tells you to go to work. Miami tells you to go crazy. Denver tells you to go outside. I’ve lived in LA for about eight weeks, which mostly tells you to reinvent yourself (a dangerous message for the insecure and impulsive).
Regardless, you want to find a city that speaks louder than the voice in your head that gives you permission to waste your life.
It doesn’t matter how disciplined you are or how many gurus you follow. It’s impossible not to be influenced by the people and places that surround you day after day. That’s why people can’t lose weight when they live with gluttons and can’t moderate their drinking when they live in fraternity houses.
When nobody around you cares about the same stuff you do, there are no consequences for throwing in the towel.
“At any given time there are a few hot topics and a few groups doing great work on them, and it’s nearly impossible to do good work yourself if you’re too far removed from one of these centers,” Graham writes. “You can push or pull these trends to some extent, but you can’t break away from them.”
Take San Francisco, for example. Despite the valiant efforts of keyboard warriors posting videos of homeless encampments and open-air drug markets, the smartest minds in tech flock there without hesitation. Why don’t they all just move to tax havens and connect with their devices?
Because it doesn’t work, that’s why.
We love to romanticize going off the grid and living as “digital nomads.” But when push comes to shove, we crave being in the orbit of like-minded people. That’s what produced the device you’re reading this on. And that’s why the best music, the best food, and the best art come disproportionately from a few hotspots.
Make no mistake: LA isn’t paradise. There’s hellish traffic and there are wild gangs of TikTokers dancing in the aisles of grocery stores. Come here in search of an endless vacation and you’ll be sorely disappointed.
But you’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t feel pushed to work a little harder, train a little longer, or at least fire off that email you’ve been scared to send.
The irony is cities that push are often painfully inconvenient. But anything worthwhile in life comes with a tax. Stress is the tax you pay to leave a cushy job. Criticism is the tax you pay to make art. Money is the literal tax you pay to surround yourself with resources.
You can whine about it, or you can pay up. But you can’t say you never had a choice.
In the history of planet earth, it’s never been easier, faster, or safer to uproot your life than it is right now.
And if that scares you, all the more reason to do it.
