Lessons From 30 Years of Living
Today I turned 30. I wanted to share 30 lessons from 30 years of living. But you know what? I’ve actually learned more than 30 things in 30 years. So here’s 47 life lessons.
Some I live by. Others I re-learn often.
Maybe they’ll save you a little trouble. Or maybe they won’t. Either way, they’re mostly a reminder to me.
Sometimes getting what you want is as simple as asking for it. Closed mouths don’t get fed.
Talk to strangers—in the grocery store, at the airport, in line at the DMV—you'll meet cool people, have great stories to tell, and maybe even make a lonely person's day.
It's cheap and easy to keep your home neat and clean. The positive mental benefits are enormous.
On that note, cleaning is easy when you do it often. Wiping up a recent spill takes two seconds. Scraping dried spaghetti sauce from the counter takes too long.
No coffee after noon and no alcohol at least four hours before bed improves sleep dramatically.
Drink more water.
Publish content online. It's a creative outlet. It's fun to watch your work improve. It's a magnet for interesting people you’d otherwise never meet.
Money spent on books is money well spent. Even if you only read some, you're getting more knowledge and entertainment than you're paying for.
Spend more time working on mobility. You'll have fewer injuries. You'll feel better. As you get older, you'll maintain a higher quality of life for longer.
Get comfortable sitting alone in silence. It’s something you'll need to practice. Put away your phone, pour a cup of coffee, and sit in a quiet place. Turn off the radio on your next long car ride. Allow yourself to be alone with your thoughts.
Have more patience, especially with your parents. If anyone deserves your patience, it's the people who had to live with you during your most annoying years.
Spend long weekends with good friends. Living together—even for a few days—deepens bonds and strengthens friendships. Life gets busy, and it's easy to not do this, but the dividends the relationship will pay throughout your life is worth the small time investment now.
Make a habit of forming habits. They are the building blocks of the person you want to become. The best way to build a habit is to start smaller than you think you can accomplish, then work up.
Bring your lunch to work, especially in your 20s. The compound interest lost from the money you spent on lunch is a terrible waste.
Early in your career you should optimize for one of three things: making a lot of money, building a marketable skill, or doing something you love. My preference is for the first. If you make a lot of money and invest it wisely, you'll be able to pursue your passions while you're still young—without having to worry about finances.
Write handwritten thank you notes. It takes five minutes and means a lot to the recipients, especially if they’re older.
When it comes to clothing, fit is more important than fashion. A $10 t-shirt that fits you perfectly looks better than a $90 dress shirt that's baggy and loose in the arms.
When you're planning anything, take the amount of time you think you’ll need and double it. Tasks usually take longer than you expect, and it's good to build in a buffer. Underpromise and overdeliver, even if it's just for yourself.
There's value in sticking with one job for a long period of time—you'll get really good at it, your confidence will increase, you'll become specialized which is rewarded financially if it's in the right area. But there's also value in jumping around—bigger salary increases, bigger network, potentially broader base of skills, more unique experiences. Neither way is wrong, you just have to be clear with yourself about what you want.
Setting reasonable expectations is a superpower. If you consistently underpromise and over deliver, people will always be happy with you.
On the other side, never agree to something you're not positive you can do. People generally don't care if you say no in the first place. They'll get really mad if you say yes and then let them down.
Your possessions increase to fill the amount of space you have. And possessions tend to be more burdensome than liberating. Before moving to a larger space, think about it deliberately. With each additional possession you purchase, ask yourself, “do I really need this thing?”
One of the biggest wins in life is finding the things you REALLY care about, and then only focusing on those things. This won’t be easy at first, but if you filter all your decisions through the question, "Does this get me closer to or further from the things I REALLY care about?" you'll continuously move your life in a direction that makes you happy. Auditing the decisions you make, and ensuring they're aligned with the things that bring you the most joy, is one of the most important habits you can build.
Do I really care about driving this car that costs me $600/month? No, I'd be happy with a car that costs $200/month. But I do really care about this family vacation every year, and reducing my car payment by $400/month helps me pay for the vacation.
Do I really care about watching this thing I'm watching on TV right now? No, I wouldn't care at all if I missed it. But I do really care about getting better at playing the guitar. Cutting out the hour of TV I watch every night makes more room for guitar practice.
Marriage is for making things work. Dating is for finding the best person to make things work with. When you break up, break up. Don’t stay friends. Don’t take a break. Move on. Delete their social media. Block their number. Forget about them. It hurts at first and it’s easier to drag things out, but you’ll feel better faster if you don’t.
People will use jargon and complicated language to make you think they're smart. But the smartest people you'll ever meet will speak so simply that you’ll underestimate their intelligence. This is because it takes an immense amount of intelligence and mastery to explain complicated topics in a simple way. If you don't have this level of mastery, you can either admit it (most people won't) or you can confuse people with big words and complicated phrases until they stop asking questions.
When you meet a jargon junkie, you can expose them by persistently asking simple questions and maintaining your composure. But the more mature you become, the less likely you’ll be to do this. Instead, you’ll start to feel bad for these people.
Relatedly, the most insecure people you meet will often be the loudest. Confident people don't need to draw attention to themselves. Insecure people do. They are compensating for a lack of confidence or competence. It's meant to be a distraction so people don't "find them out."
The biggest difference between this observation and #25 is intelligence level. This tactic will more often be used by people with lesser education or lower intelligence. The previous tactic will be used by people with higher education or intelligence.
Cell phones are best used resourcefully, not reflexively.
Pull out your cell phone when you have a specific task to complete—you need directions, you have to make a call, you want to listen to music—not when you have time to kill.
My experience with cell phone scrolling is that it results in two things: dissatisfaction and anxiety. People say you never regret a workout, well, the opposite is true with a scroll session: you always regret it.
Avoid complainers at all costs.
Complaining is more contagious than COVID, and it's more deadly.
Being a complainer means you always find the bad in a situation rather than the good. You often find an excuse rather than a solution. And your overall mood and wellbeing will suffer.
Being around complainers makes you more likely to complain. It kills morale and productivity in teams. It limits your potential.
As a manager, do not tolerate complaining on your team. As a parent, don't complain in front of your children, and respond to their complaints with the positive side of the situation. As an adult, be direct with your friends and family members. Tell them you don't tolerate complaining. The sooner you eliminate it from your life, the happier and more successful you will be.
When people perpetually have "bad luck," it's usually not bad luck. It's the result of their perpetually poor decisions. Identify these people and avoid them.
One heuristic to tell how good someone is at making decisions is by how much time they have. The busiest people are often the ones who make the worst decisions. Busy people spend a lot of time correcting poor decisions. And because they’re so busy correcting past decisions, they don’t have time to make good decisions. - Shane Parrish
The best time to do everything was ten years ago—investing, exercising, learning a new skill, etc. Talk with older people you respect and ask what they wish they had started doing in their 20s, then start doing that thing immediately. It's rarely too late, but it's always better to start sooner rather than later.
Waking up naturally, without an alarm, is a great feeling. Creating a consistent routine is one way to do this. Freeing yourself from work obligations is another. I recommend pursuing both.
You have to take calculated financial risks to see large increases in your net worth. I bought and sold investment properties leading to about a 15% increase in my net worth. I bought crypto which also increased my net worth by about 15%. I started a company that never made money and cost me about 6% of my net worth. Two wins and one loss, but the wins significantly outweighed the loss. The key is calculated risks. In each of the above ventures, I knew my absolute worst case scenario—my downside was capped. I also predicted potential upside in each case and determined the potential upside outweighed the potential downside. You won't be right every time, but if you take calculated risks, you should be right more often than you're wrong.
Think about starting a lot of businesses. You won’t follow through on most of them, but the act of thinking through a big idea is a special type of exercise most people don't do often (or ever).
One of the biggest secrets of fitness is avoiding injury. If you're healthy, you can exercise consistently. If you can exercise consistently, compounding will do its work. To avoid injury, tame your ego. There's rarely any reason to push past 85%, and if you don't, you're less likely to get injured.
Seek advice from everyone, but filter it to fit your life. The purpose of asking for advice is to gain as much perspective as possible then make your own decision with that perspective, not to get someone else to make your decision for you.
So much of the technology we lose our patience with today would've looked like magic ten years ago. Remember this when your phone is taking too long to play a YouTube video while you’re sitting on the beach.
If you're constantly busy, you have underlying issues to address.
If someone is bothering you, it's your fault until you've told them.
If you aren't absolutely thrilled to watch it, turn off the TV and pick up a book instead.
Get on the dance floor at every wedding. Nobody cares if you're bad at dancing. They're too concerned about how bad they are. Plus, the more people on the dance floor, the more fun the wedding. Consider it your gift to the newlyweds.
Set rules for yourself. They make life better 95% of the time. Then break them 5% of the time.
Spend less time checking boxes and more time building relationships. Checking boxes brings a certain level of success, but relationships bring fulfillment and opportunity you'll never find on your own.
Buy a nice suit in your 20s and never let yourself outgrow it.
Pick one or two hobbies you love and spend time getting better at them. Seeing yourself progress through deliberate practice is a confidence builder and a satisfaction booster.
Spend enough time alone that you're comfortable doing it. Enjoying your own company is a wonderful gift to give yourself.
Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead.”
Maybe by 40 I’ll have a shorter list, but at 30 I haven’t had enough time to narrow it down. For now, this will have to do.
Photo by Pablo Fierro on Unsplash
