23 Pieces of Life Advice from 23 Years of Living

I turned 23 this March. Here are the most important lessons I’ve learned along the way.

1. Some things are abundant at the top: money, new destinations, people who like you. Other things are always rare: time, home, people who love you.
   
   You are free if you can afford not to trade the rare for the abundant.
   
   You are wise if you choose not to. 

 

2. If you dream of doing it in 10 years, do it for an hour a day now.

 

3. Assess a pay cut or raise not as a percentage of what you make, but as a percentage of what you save.

 

4. Pray for those who need it. It may not help them, but it will help you.

 

5. Your fears define the boundaries of your being.

 

6. Anxiety—the anticipation of future hazards—is more unpleasant than actual hazards.

 

7. The most pivotal project of your life—the project that will change your future forever—will feel as mundane, misguided, and imperfect as any other when you’re doing it.

 

8. Action creates state.

 

9. Pay attention to the correlation between how you feel and what you’ve eaten.

 

10. If something wrong happens to someone else, take a stand. It will happen to you sooner than you think.

 

11. Sleep, exercise, nutrition, flow, connection. The ingredients for happiness are surprisingly simple. And totally underestimated.

 

12. Distraction is the biggest killer of modern human dreams.

 

13. The Principle of Perceived Motion: You get more credit if you break something and fix it than if you never broke it in the first place.

 

14. In a fight, speak honestly but in the most charitable way you can.

 

You can say the harsh thing at any time. You can never take it back.

 

15. Don’t be a book perfectionist. Start from any page, read anything, and on any medium.
    
    Instead of waiting to get your hands on an interesting book, download it on your phone and read a few pages.

 

16. Every mood passes. This is only worth remembering when the mood is bad.

 

17. If you’ve slept on a decision and you can’t choose, you won’t know until you choose.
    
    Knowing is usually worth the cost of choosing wrong.

 

18. Lactose free milk exists. It’s worth it.

 

19. Humans seek transcendence. They can only achieve it through absolute love or absolute freedom. All other pursuits are either helpful intermediaries or distractions.

 

20. The highest quality people are selective and busy. It is always worth the effort to find and befriend them.

 

21. There is a special gravitational relation between a toilet bowl and valuable objects in your hand.
    
    The same applies to white t-shirts and curry sauce.

 

22. When things get real—life-and-death real—your ambitions will feel empty. Mindfulness will be everything.

 

23. All except the very last thing you intend to pack will fit. Let that go.

---

I’m on a mission to build an internet for big ideas. And I would like to do it with you.

To stay in touch, consider joining my email list. I write once a month, sharing insights from me and brilliant ideas from other writers.

Thank you to Kevin Kelly, David Perell and Ryan Holiday, whose use of this format have inspired my own.