lessons from a quarter century
am I adult yet
I just turned 25 today! Wanted to share some lessons I’ve learned navigating life along the way.
Call your mom everyday.
Be someone people want to root for. And if you want people to root for you, you should root for them too.
Best way to meet interesting people is to do interesting things see here
If you want to be cool, you have to do the thing that’s cringe first, before everyone realizes it’s cool
Learn how to write a really good email, and how to pitch yourself in <3 sentences. If you can write an exceptional email you can get in touch with anyone
Go to the gym and lift weights. Pretty privilege is a thing. People will treat you better if you take care of yourself.
Your 20s are for finding the love of your life, homies, collaborators, future investors... everything compounds - relationships are so important
If you want people to help you, you have to be legible - create more touch points and share updates with your inner council
The best way to ensure you’ll be invited to things is to be the one to plan said things. Or just organize something you’d want to do anyways and invite people to do it with you
Posting stuff online creates more surface area for luck. The amount of doors that have opened just from having an online portfolio is insane. It also helps you find your people
Be a tryhard. If you don’t have the natural talent you can get there by trying harder than everyone else
Do good work, work on hard problems with smart people, and make sure you’re learning. Opportunities will naturally follow.
You kind of have to just full send things sometimes and stop overthinking it. A lot of things that have gotten a ton of traction are things that I’ve barely thought about.
There’s something special about young love and growing up with someone - someone who’s been with you before money, status, career etc ever became real.
No one will tell you to take a vacation
No one will give you conviction on your idea or what you want to do, you need to get that conviction yourself
Optimize for permanence over virality. People will forget about a tweet after 48 hours. A great project or blog post compounds forever.
Try to find ways to incorporate schemes and whimsy into your life. More doing things for the plot!
The hedonic treadmill is real. There will always be more hills to climb no matter what level you get to, or if you switch to an entirely different arena. Find ways to stay grounded and be content with where you’re at and where you’re going
Don’t do things you don’t want to do! People respect you being direct more than saying a yes you don’t mean. If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.
But also, show up to things! Some of my best friendships came out of showing up to something I almost wasn’t planning on going.
Not everything needs to last forever. It’s okay for projects, friendships, and communities to serve a specific season of your life. Better to let things end cleanly than drag them past their time.
Create more pockets of free time. I’m most creative on weekends with zero plans, and it raises the bar on plans I say yes to.
Book the ticket or else the trip will never happen
Use a password manager, get airtags, and back up your photos
Happy Birthday Mathu!! I am inspired by you to also reflect on my quarter century, thank you for sharing your reflections!
happy birthday! great list, I really resonate with numbers 5, 10, and 12 recently - doing stuff in public and reaching out to people were never really things on my radar until the last couple years, and it's definitely one of those things I wish I did sooner!