Listening to other people, especially to women, is a skill. Don’t spend silent time in a conversation waiting for your chance to speak or be smart or witty, stay quiet and really process what you’re hearing. Imagine yourself in their situation. Accept that what they say is exactly how they feel.
The less time you spend talking, the more your conversational partner will tell you, and the more you will start to understand them, their lives, their goals, and their anxieties.
Knowing and understanding other peoples’ experiences will help you not only make better decisions in your own life, but understand why other people act and think the way they do. You’ll be less likely to snap-judge or make assumptions about others. And knowing more about your loved ones, co-workers, and neighbours will allow you to help them effectively if they need it.
And travel abroad as much as possible - listen to people from other countries and cultures. The human experience is wildly varied and endlessly fascinating.
Don’t think you’re grown and will only make smart decisions now. I only started making the right decisions yesterday. And I’ll say the same thing tomorrow.
Around 30 years old your body stops healing, injuries are just things you live with forever now, and old injuries you thought had healed come back as forever pain… just keep that in mind when doing stupid shit… This includes injuries to your lungs and mind from things like smoking and drugs.
If you want to help people in any way, get rich first. No one will pay you enough to live off of for helping people… Better to bring your own wealth to the table and hopefully be able to help people for real with it.
If you don’t already know how, learn to code asap… In 20 years, programming will be one of the few jobs left… Maybe
Project yourself 20 years into the future. Imagine yourself saying this to present day you. Then act on that advice. Much of these suggestions can apply to anyone at almost any age.
Not meant as offensive at all or any way to discredit you, but this is horrible/useless advice. Because humans mostly don’t think longer term, especially with younger people. A LOT is about the short term satisfaction. E.g. a lot of people know alcohol is so damaging but the short term benefits are just so big
The best raise you can get is by changing jobs. Businesses are not going to be loyal to you, there’s no benefit to being loyal to them - add either a customer or employee. Embrace and welcome change.
When you get a pay raise immediately increase your 401k (or equivalent retirement fund) by at least 1%.
Enjoy your 20s, they don’t last long but the person you are today is who you will feel like you are in 20 years. Don’t rush your life. There’s plenty of time to get married and have kids. You and your kids will benefit from you having an extra decade of experience before raising another human.
I’m 39, but this is mine: do you just feel kinda “blah” all the time, don’t enjoy anything including things you used to enjoy, and can’t motivate yourself to do anything? That might be depression, and it might also be undiagnosed ADHD. The sooner you learn about that and get help with it, the better you’ll feel and the more effective you’ll be (and the less you’ll let down the people you love).
Go to the dentist. Get a little exercise. Find a way to reduce calories over the next 20 years, spend as little as possible. Borrow a little money for your car. Stay away from credit cards until you make enough to pay the cards in full every month. Keep track of every skill you learn on the job, using that information to transition into higher-paying jobs. Get a savings account. Spend as little as possible without skimping on food quality. Save 1 months salary and keep that in checking. At the end of each month, transfer everything above the target funds into savings. Save 3 months salary for an emergency fund. Once this financial foundation is established, divide additional funds into two buckets: one gets invested each month, the other is for major purchases and travel.
When things are great, even small things like a cup of coffee with a friend or a quiet morning, take a minute to say to yourself, “this is really great.” Say it out loud. Years later you will realize those moments are as good as it gets, and if you don’t mark them they just disappear. Bad moments stick around in your head regardless, but the good ones need to be memorialized.
Get in shape. Lift weights, do cardio, eat healthy. Cut garbage food out of your life completely; no cheat days ever - it needs to be a complete lifestyle, not a “diet”. Learn what macros are, and follow them. Take up running, and make it a habit so that you run every. Single. Day, sun, shine, hail, or snow. (Yes, you can get snowshoes for running in snow. I like barefoot shoes, since that’s easier on my knees and back, but they take a long time to get used to.)
Get an education. Go to school. DO NOT FOLLOW YOUR PASSION; get an education in something that you can stand doing and will actually be employable. Following your passion and trying to make a living doing it leads to burnout. Let your passion be it’s own thing, instead of something that you try to make money from. EDIT - an “education” can also mean going to trade school, if you can’t stomach the idea of sitting behind a desk all day for 40 years. Yes, take English lit classes and art classes if you’re passionate about it, but do that for fun. Depending on a fun thing for keeping a roof over your head quickly leads to fun not being fun anymore.
Fuck this. I’m a computer guy who didn’t finish high school (credits wouldn’t transfer) and got a GED so I could start college early. I didn’t finish that either. I got a job among CS grads at one of the most prestigious tech companies because I spent a ton of energy learning about computers because that shit was exciting to me.
I’m bored and lazy as fuck about it now. I’m still learning new things (started a new homelab again two months ago) but it’s nothing like when I was younger and had a ton of energy to stay up until dawn learning. I had no future and it still worked out because I pursued my passion to the fullest degree.
If your passion isn’t marketable, perhaps this makes sense. But the all caps “this is a truth” way that this was presented really rubbed me the wrong way.
I love and support education. Go to school. Get an education. Most people will likely not build a career without that. But holy shit, if you’re hardcore about a thing and that thing can make you money, you might be able to do without the education only because your education comes from spending every minute of every day educating yourself outside of the system.
Ok, going back to bed. Apologies if any of this is muddled.
Relatable. I’ve been working in IT for over eight years now. I didn’t study it because I didn’t qualify for university and people constantly told me I am so bad at math that I would never work in the field. Here I am, doing exactly that, just because I was really interested in computer stuff in my youth and learned something new almost every day just by myself.
I was also able to study at a design school for two years. I have already used this knowlege to design brochures, logos and various other things for customers successfully. My art teacher in school always said to me I would never be able to do something like this because she just didn’t like my art style.
I’m glad I never listened to all of these people and did indeed follow my passion. The added bonus is that I actually like my job (most of the time).
Trying and failing with a lot of passions means a lot of debt and lost time. Student debt happens to be debt that you can’t discharge through bankruptcy either.
But you ignored the central point - for most people, taking a thing that they love doing for enjoyment and turning it into something that they have to do every single day or risk being homeless sucks the love right out of it.
Do you have any data to back up your second point? I know dozens of people that have made careers out of passions that they discovered in high school and college. And those are only the people that I’ve asked about it.
But we could expand a little bit and make your claim more likely to be true, and also more reasonable. For example, if Jimmy loves playing the guitar, he could try to form a rock band and get successful enough to make a living touring. That’s kind of hard. Possible but the odds are against him. So he might try that and later transition to some other job that’s still in entertainment. This example, and generally the shift from a single job to something else that’s related to it, is something that young people should expect. Focusing too much on one area could be a weakness if you have to change jobs later. And in general, the majority of workers will make major changes to their careers at least once in their lives.
No it doesn’t. Didn’t for me. I lived in a twenty year old Ford explorer for almost a year pursuing mine. Didn’t succeed or make it big, but I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Not every dream relies on college loans, dude. Not if you’re an artist.
I’d go so far as to say man, many dreams people have don’t require a degree.
And if they do? DO IT ANYWAY. I attended two years of college for film. Never got a career out of it. Still paying off my debt. Still don’t regret ANY of it.
Still getting by on the strings of my butt hairs in my 40s. Still wouldn’t take any of it back.
Never sucked the love for either dream out of it. Did I get depressed? Sure. Did I go through a lot of shit and a lot of disappointment? Definitely. I’m two years out from failing in my latest attempt at pursuing one of my many dreams. You couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to take it back.
You’re speaking to me… about me. About my experiences and telling me how it made me feel. Sorry my dude, I can’t agree with you.
Take those chances. The memories are worth it. The stories are worth it. The lessons you learn along the way are definitely worth it, homie
(44) look, listen, you don’t have to figure everything out right now. There will come a time in your late twenties and early thirties that you’ll feel like you’ve missed the boat, that you’re lagging behind, that it’s too late to still start or switch… And then you’ll get over it in your late 30s again. Finally realise that life doesn’t end and in fact that there is a lot left after 40. And that’s when they call it the midlife crisis, it’s not a crisis. The crisis is in your late twenties and early thirties.
Plus, if you preserve your hearing you'll be able to hear all the high dog whistle frequencies that everybody else won't be able to, and you'll feel just a tiny bit superior for no good reason.
Especially if you have an office job. Get a really good and really expensive office chair with a flexible back and adjustable arm rests so you’re not sitting in the same position every time.
And also, take a walk every day. I do that every time on my break and haven’t had back problems in years.