speaking to my future self

17 Feb, 2024

what if the 40 year old version of yourself travelled back in time and only had a few minutes to give you advice? what would they say?

I spent some time imagining this conversation, and then I summarized it.

in no particular order:

• Walk, a lot.
  • Walk with intention, walk with just your thoughts, appreciate the nature and/or the city you are walking through.
• Workout everyday
  • This doesn’t mean you need to hit the gym everyday.
• Increase your rate of difficult conversations.
• Try to be more awkward - especially 1 on 1.
  • Talk about the wild things. Talk about personal things.
  • Don’t try to be agreeable. Groups are for agreement, 1 on 1s are not.
• Don’t penny-pinch
  • Spend money on your friends, family, and even strangers. Reciprocity is one of the strongest powers of life.
  • Delete apps like splitwise. Tell people they don’t have to pay you back. Have an abundance mindset
• Be comfortable with being bored. Especially if you are alone, or with your significant other
  • These are the moments of the best thoughts or conversations.
  • “To think clearly, you must have space in your day to think.” - paraphrased from Shane Parrish.
• Build a steel foundation of knowledge
  • Master the basics. Read the textbooks. Do not memorize.
• Build your talent stack
  • It’s quite easy to get to the top 80th percentile in any field. But being the top 80th percentile across > 5 fields puts you in an a 1 of N category where N is a tiny number of people you compete against.
• Try to get things out of your brain.
  • Make art. Write code. Create a diary. Record your thoughts.
• Do not complain or condemn.
• If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.
• If you find that it’s hard to say no to things, it’s probably because you have nothing to say hell yes to.
  • “Saying yes to something means you are saying no to everything else that you could be doing” - paraphrased from Steve Jobs.
• Optimize for entropy before you have found your life’s work. Decrease entropy once you have found it.
  • Speak with strangers. Say yes to invites. Play that new sport you’ve never tried. Join a club.
    • Do not jeopardize your mental or physical wellness
• Try not to die, or at least, avoid doing things that might cause death
  • Human progress is about to go exponential - don’t miss it because you didn’t wear a life jacket while jet-skiing.
• Own a little corner of yourself online. Make yourself known. Make it easy for likeminded people to find you.
  • See, entropy.
• Acknowledge when you are in your earning years, or when you are in your learning years. Typically, you should be earning in the tail end of your career.
  • It’s OK to earn when you are young. But you better be learning AND earning.
• Read and write everyday. Read about anything, write about anything. Just do it everyday.
• Learn how to speak to machines. They can help you tremendously.
  • Write code.
  • Talk to AI - build your own wallpapers, make your own AI music, have conversations with these machines.
• Hold less opinions. Understand that the work it takes to form an opinion is much higher than what everyone thinks it is.
• Spend more money to learn things. These are not expenses, these should be a part of your investment portfolio.
  • Your book budget should be unlimited. Do not think twice about the cost of a book. - Despite the negative rep they get online, courses are also a great way to learn.
• Tell more people about your plans. Put things out there in the world, you may receive something back.
  • It’s also a great way to create accountability. Tell people you plan on working out everyday? Well you better do it, otherwise you’ll be the same the next time you see them.
• Spend more time learning the core few subjects
  • Mathematics
  • Computation
  • History
  • Biology
  • Physics
  • Micro-economics
• Visualize the world.
• Visualize your future self.
  • What if you actually did the things you said you were going to do? How would that outcome look?
• Do the things you say you are going to do.
• Give advice, and then take it yourself.
• Cash makes you dangerous. Holding cash is a valid investment strategy.
• Be less risk averse. Humans emphasize the downside risk way too much.
  • Obviously, stay in the realm of legality and stay ethical.
• Perform deep work. Work is a necessary part of life.
• Make decisions your older self would appreciate.
• You’ll never regret the things you did, only the things you didn’t do.
• Tell your parents and sisters you love them.
• Buy GameStop.

#advice #meta