A recent viral thread about life advice for twenty-something’s prompted me to reflect on how I’d respond. I (and you) have of course accumulated brimful learnings over the years, which is not unexpected given the multitude of situations we face each day.
It’s actually quite enamoring to consider that obtaining wisdom is not some programmatic smart contract that resolves after arbitrary logic executes. We usually don’t recognize what we’ve internalized until consciously taking time to reflect on the transpiring events.
And that’s ok — could you imagine the inverse? I suspect this delayed action-reaction feedback loop is what gives us the sense of purpose that we each are so undoubtedly searching for. To be clear, mining our nuggets of wisdom is not for the faint of heart. Life is tough as we all can attest to, with ‘tough’ deserving an accented emphasis. Recalling your personal learnings, however, serves to crystallize them so that they become innately understood, as a springboard for experiencing life thru a somewhat modified lens.
And so reflection can be a somewhat daunting, but necessary exercise that I personally find a lot of pleasure in. Now there’s a fine line between over-dwelling on the past and leveraging your experiences to project forward an aspirational guide of how to go about the world — sometimes I also l spend too much time in the furthest points of my personal life lattice.
But as I inch towards the next decade of life, I will take a spin at rattling off a few lessons of my own, the breadcrumbs I wish I saw outlined for me in my twenties.
So, in no particular order:
Contemplating the vastness of life provides solace that we are never truly alone. Being in nature or studying history and the cosmos often serves as a personal reminder about the infiniteness of life. We are all in it together.
Nourish the body with whole foods, water, and sleep. In my thirties, I’ve realized that nothing good happens from being awake past midnight.
Failing is inevitable, so don’t dwell on it. Kaizen teaches us it is imperative to move forward at all costs. Every hole is a chance to reset.
Cherish downtime to learn about the world and partake in culture. Cultural sharpening stones can even include lowbrow TV. And read more books.
Close down threads. In business and life, ‘threads’ (as they call them in big tech) increasingly pile up. Quickly closing open threads removes ambiguity and creates clarity for you, your family, customers, and colleagues.
Assemble your championship team. You are a reflection of who you surround yourself with, so take great pain to deliberately craft your teams with people you want to learn from, laugh with, cry with, and build together with.
Tackling hard problems leads to outsized outcomes. Embrace complexity and adversity because fortune favors the bold. Value accrues to the eccentricities of our world.
You can’t outsource conviction. This applies to investing, business, and relationships. The world is constantly trying to rock your boat off course. We all have a compass pointing north (yes you do!). Don’t be ashamed to follow that compass.
In investing, supposed experts should be treated with skepticism until you can validate their claims with your own self-imposed process.
When deliberating a purchase, restaurant, or a doctor, read the reviews. In a world of infinite choice, reputation matters doubly so. Optimizing to avoid the tail risk failure case is a particularly helpful framework.
People are typically genuinely rooting for you. In a hyper-polarized world, it’s easy to forget this.
Everyone is dealing with fires. Remember that when getting the urge to hold resentment or grudges about some perceived slight. You want to be known as someone with positive vibes.
A tidy home is a tidy mind. This means, yes, you should make the bed every day. Clean the dishes and don’t leave trash behind.
Move with haste on two-way door decisions. As Brian Armstrong regularly says, action produces learning. Juggling options in life has extremely negative theta decay, not just in the investing world.
However, I’ve found my greatest joys in life stemmed from taking my time on foundational life-defining decisions that have reshaped my arc. This cuts across education, career, and relationships. I met my life partner in my thirties only after I think I had gained enough understanding of who I was as a person. And now I feel like the luckiest guy alive.
Don’t compromise goals based on what society supposedly expects from you. Because society is hardwired with mean reversion, greatness comes from refusing to succumb to its norms. Don’t ever be the person that says “this is how we usually do it”.
In an increasingly complex world, distilling complexity into simplicity is an invaluable skill.
The arcs of life are extremely lumpy. Patience and commitment to a routine that you know will get you where you need to go may not show dividends immediately. And you may feel like a fool and proclaim “why me”. As a friend has popularized the saying, keep going. Keep going.
Forgive old wounds. Life is better without grudges.
Give gratitude to your tribes. Tell your partner you love them every day. Tell your parents you appreciate everything they did for you. Write handwritten notes in cards. Text your friends happy birthday in the group chat. Tell your teammates you appreciate their hard work.
There it is, twenty lessons for those in their twenties. Well, maybe one last one if I may - don’t ever step in someone’s line on the green.