25 thoughts on turning 25
Today marks my quarter of century on this planet.
Inspired by the post by Herman Martinus, I decided to put together a list of 25 thoughts, advice and reflections accumulated over the last 9131 days.
To complement these reflections, I plan to send an email to my future self too; it will be fun to compare such ideas and see how they have stood the test of time in 5/10/20 years.
Hopefully someone will find them useful.
- Explore many paths and always have a curious attitude towards life. Maintain a spirit of discovery, but deep dive into stuff once things become more clear.
- Pursue creativity as a means of expression and enjoy the sense of accomplishment it brings. Shift from being someone who consumes content to someone who creates it. Do not seek perfection in the process, very often a local maximum is enough, no need to seek the global maximum.
- One of the best indicators of success is the ability to delay gratification. Think education, drugs, money, food, health. Besides, be punctual.
- Avoid comparing yourself to others. There is no wrong or right track, only a (usually non-linear) path of discovery. No judgement.
- Humans struggle to think rationally and we suffer from many biases and heuristics. Being aware of this, let's try to use our prefrontal cortex more.
- Aim to travel in a genuine way, while learning, volunteering and meeting local people. Travelling as a tourist is overrated and bland, especially considering that everything starts to look the same.
- Volunteering is one of the best ways to make a (small) difference in this world. Pick a cause and donate a fraction of your time, it is amazing to do something without self-interest.
- Sleep is crucial for mood and energy levels. It is no coincidence that sleep deprivation is considered one of the worst forms of torture.
- Always retain the ability to surprise people. Do not reveal all your cards at once.
- Be genuinely interested in people: you will hear interesting stories and make connections. Social skills can be learned with practice and a bit of psychology application (e.g. remembering and repeating people’s names).
- Small habits for big changes. Trick your mind with routines that create small changes that add up over time to produce the results you want.
- Spend quality time with your parents. As a children/teenagers we spent most of our time with our family; on average, by your mid-late 20s, 90% of your time on this planet with your parents is already over. Make the most out of the precious 10% left.
- The progress of time narrows down life possibilities. When you were a child, infinite options strechted before you. Your parents took your nose picking as a sign that you'd become a famous archaeologist. Then you finish uni and realize your options have been drastically trimmed down. However, the upside is a chance to go deeper in one direction.
- Achieve your childhood dreams. Do not forget about your inner child and make his (yours) dreams come true. It’s not too late.
- As the Stoics said already 2000 years ago (!), suffering is an integral part of life and we need to embrace it.
- Most things are beyond our control. And we should not worry about them. If there is a solution why do you care? If there is no solution why do you care? Furthermore, regardless of skills, connections and good intentions, the curse of luck will inevitably affect the outcome of many events (for better or worse).
- Learn to focus deeply. Embrace minimalism, cut out the distractions and focus on the few things that matter.
- Stay offline, reduce screen time and spend more time in the nature. The Internet is basically a bunch of crap.
- Be intentional about life. Practice journaling on paper to record impressions and experiences. Perform weekly and monthly checks to plan for the short and medium term future. “There is no favorable wind for the sailor who doesn't know where to go” — Seneca.
- In principle, be generous to everyone, then evaluate. Moreover, as stated by Confucius (?), do not do good if you hate ingratitude.
- Invest early and consistently to build the basis for financial independence. Building up a large amount of wealth in a short time is only possible through crime (risky) or entrepreneruship (difficult). Yet, do not obsess with money, after all, the best things in life are free.
- Life is skewed. Most important phenomena in our lives have an heavy-tailed distribution (read Pareto’s law), like it or not, adapt your behaviour accordingly.
- Develop a circle of close, trusted friends. Use introspection to learn what your values and ideas are and look for alignment in friends and relationships.
- The only constant is change (Heraclitus confirms). Each day may look similar to the previous one, but when you zoom out, big changes appear. Time is a double-edged sword: it heals, but it also forgets (almost) everything.
- The true answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. Put another way, find your own life meaning and enjoy the journey.
Bonus: a document (in Italian) written by Lieutenant Franco Rosso, distributed to new army recruits in the 1990s. Althought it's only 2 pages long, it is dense with life advice and I’m happy to share it.