After a run this morning, my friend told me about Linkin Park’s new song, “[Heavy is the Crown](https://genius.com/Linkin-park-heavy-is-the-crown-lyrics).” Apparently they’re making a comeback? I never really got into them, so I don’t know.

But.

I listened to the song on the way home. It gave me a bit of a headache (why are they yelling so much?) but the lyrics were great.

> This is what you asked for, heavy is the crown /
> Fire in the sunrise, ashes rainin' down /
> Try to hold it in, but it keeps bleedin' out /
> This is what you asked for, heavy is the / 
> Heavy is the crown

[No one really seems to know](https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkinPark/comments/1fogrhh/what_do_you_think_the_lyrics_to_heavy_is_the/) exactly what the lyrics are referring to. Some say it’s a bash on critics saying the band was over, others say it’s a stab at politicians: “I think it's aimed much more at world leaders in general, politicians playing the politics 'game'. This is what you asked for, you're in a position of power, so deal with all the shit. It's not nice, heavy is the crown, but you put yourself there so do something about it.”

Although I don’t analogize that reasoning to the political sphere, I had the same interpretation about the lyrics. It made me think about people who want something really bad and them complain about it when they get it.

I’m reminding myself of this now when I fall into a victim mindset about law school. For the most part, I’m loving all of the reading and class time. But it’s a lot. And it’s stressful. So much of my future—so they say—rests on my first year. I want to do well so I can get a good job, and because of that, I add even more pressure on myself to perform, feeling like this year is all or nothing.

But sometimes I wonder, is it worth it? When I’m falling into the mindset of, “There’s so much reading,” or, “I’m so busy,” or, “Why do we have to do this extra class?” I’ll try to remind myself, “*this is what you asked for...*”

*I* took the LSAT, *I* wrote the application essay, *I* paid all the money for textbooks. This is, quite literally, what *I* asked for.

Heavy is the crown, but if I don’t want to wear it, I can always just take it off.

Heavy is the Crown


I just finished my second week of law school, and when people say it's a lot of reading...it's a lot of reading—even for someone who loves to read like me.

But I've been explaining to people that, so far, the material isn't hard, it's the volume. It doesn't take the same type of brain power that learning calculus does, but the amount of information you're expected to absorb (and retain) is a lot.

But that's not what this post is about.

I had very little formal training or experience in the law before going to law school. I had a laymen's understanding of the Constitution and knew that we live in a common law system, but I still expected most of the "rules" that govern society to be somewhat clear.

They're not.

For the ten days I've been in school, this was frustrating to me for nine of them. When we're given cases to read, I want to be able to finish the case and understand that rule completely. I felt like I could do that the first week, but then during the second week we read so many cases that essentially reversed the rules we read in the first week, or changed them so drastically, that those cases aren't as clear as I thought they were.

On the face of it, that isn't too difficult to understand. It's important to know how the law has changed over the years because it will change again. The difficult part is that the new cases don't "wipe away" the old ones every time. They're only applicable sometimes...and other times the original ones apply...and sometimes *none* of them apply! Can you see how this becomes difficult?

This was really starting to confuse me until one of my professors made an off-hand comment that is going to be my motto for the rest of my time in law school—and maybe even after I graduate.

A student was trying to get clarification for when we're supposed to use one standard over another, and my professor kind of took a deep breath and said something alone the lines of: *You guys want me to give you a bright line answer. If I could give you a bright line answer, I'd be on the Supreme Court because I could say 'This is the law now, move on.' But practicing law is not like that. Ambiguity is where the work is. If there wasn't ambiguity, we wouldn't have jobs.*

**Ambiguity is where the work is.**

I immediately wrote that phrase down in my notebook and have been thinking about it all week. Before, the ambiguity was frustrating; now, it's exciting. Yes! Ambiguity—that means I get to research this problem and think deeply about what I think should happen (or shouldn't happen), come up with an argument for why, and then argue that. Ambiguity is where the work (and the money) is. If the law was black and white, and anyone could easily figure out what to do, there would be no need for lawyers. And the little need there would be for them wouldn't create the range of "Ok" lawyers, "good" lawyers, and "great" lawyers that we have today. Ambiguity gives me the opportunity to become great.

This isn't just in the legal field, though. Many people now are some sort of "knowledge worker." They don't work with their hands, they make proposals and sit in meetings and create strategy decks and figure out how to run their department. All of those situations are full of ambiguity. If there was a playbook, they wouldn't need to pay you! They could pay some kid who knows how to flip burgers at McDonald's to "flip burgers"—follow the exact steps laid out for them by "best practices" or something—in their marketing department.

Embrace the ambiguity. That's where the work (and the money) is.


Ambiguity is where the work is


One problem I run into a lot while producing *The Knowledge Project Podcast* is making timestamps for multiple versions of an episode.

For example, we have different videos that appear on Spotify and YouTube. The full-length interview is the same, but the YouTube version and Spotify version have different introductions; the Spotify version is much longer because there are ad reads and a longer guest bio.

This proved difficult to manage timestamps because once I had them for the YouTube version, I either had to re-watch the Spotify version for the adjusted times, or do some math in my head to calculate the difference in every timestamp.

But then I realized ChatGPT can help. So here's what I do.

1. I watch the YouTube version of the podcast to create the timestamps.
2. Then I note the difference in timestamps between when the full-length interview starts on both versions. For example, if the interview starts at 01:00 on YouTube and 03:15 on Spotify, the difference is 02:15.
3. I paste the YouTube timestamps into ChatGPT and ask it to add 02:15 to each timestamp and return it to me in the format that's suitable for Spotify: (00:00) Intro).
4. Sometimes I have to prompt it a few more times to get the format right, but the answer it gives are now the timestamps I use for the Spotify version of the podcast.

This seems dead simple—and it is,—but it's been really helpful for me, and when I was trying to figure out the quickest way to do this, I couldn't find much online, so I thought I'd share!

advice