Writer, photographer, conservationist, traveler, futurist, technologist, and all-around interesting human Kevin Kelly recently turned 68 and wrote a blog post on his birthday titled “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice.”
I loved his list, and since I turned 32 last week, I decided to write my own.
32 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
- Be more generous than feels comfortable. Your comfort level will eventually adapt, and your life, and the lives of many others, will be better for it.
- Do what you say you’re going to do. This is hard. And it is much easier if you don’t overpromise.
- Speaking of overpromising, everything takes twice as long as you think it will (to do well) so commit to half as much as you think can do.
- Anytime you lose yourself in something (i.e. you notice afterward you weren’t thinking about when it would end), take note, and do more of that thing.
- Don’t keep food in your house that makes you feel bad when you eat it, because you will eat it. (Same goes for beverages.)
- Learn to cook well. The best way to learn to cook well is by cooking a lot.
- Consciously eliminate or reduce the animal products in your diet: your food will be less expensive, better for the world, more morally sound, and healthier.
- Systems beat willpower every time.
- Take whatever steps necessary to develop a strong sense of self-love and self-worth. Not only is this the greatest investment you can make in yourself, but it’s also just true. You are worthy of love. You are amazing. You are capable. And you should know that better than anyone.
- If you’re a recent graduate the best way to get off the treadmill/hamster wheel of bullshit is to never climb on to it. This probably means you shouldn’t go work for a big company.
- The best time to start investing is 10 years ago. The second best time is today.
- When going out to dinner with a date: if the restaurant serves food at the bar, choose bar seats. A) the wait time is usually shorter B) It is lower pressure because you don’t have to stare into each other's eyes the whole time, C) watching the cooks and bartenders and other patrons gives you easy conversation topics when there are lulls and D) it is more intimate than a table, since you’re sitting so close to each other, with plenty of opportunities (should you wish) for knee grazes and such.
- Move your body every day.
- The most important decision you ever make will be who you spend your life with. It will affect your life in every single way possible.
- You and your partner will have problems. The key is not avoiding problems, but learning how to solve them together.
- Whittle away at your ego every day. You are neither as good or as bad as you think. And nobody else is spending much time thinking about you.
- If you want to buy something, write it down. See if you still want it in a week. (You’d be surprised how often the answer is “No.”)
- When in doubt, take a walk.
- Dropping your expectations of other people is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself and to those other people.
- Don’t believe everything you think. At least half is likely wrong.
- Get serious about your sleep. Do whatever you need to do to get enough deep sleep. This is the foundation for everything else.
- Be nice to everyone. Nicer still to your friends. And nicest to your family. This is hard. We usually do the reverse.
- Resumes are becoming quainter by the day. If and when possible, show your work.
- You don’t owe anybody anything. On the flip side, nobody owes you anything.
- Increase your ratio of creation:consumption and you will feel more satisfied with life.
- Eat seasonally. Butternut squash is much more exciting when you only get it for 25% of the year.
- People you love will die suddenly. Act accordingly. Don’t wait until the end to say the things you want to say, otherwise they won’t get said.
- Speaking of which, if you think something nice about someone, say it to them. People don’t get enough compliments.
- Develop a bias toward encouragement! There is not enough encouragement in the world. When someone tells you an idea for something they want to start, resist the urge toward punditry or critique. Simply encourage them to keep going.
- Start something. Anything. A new habit. Learning a new skill. Building a new company. Taking ownership and control over something is an amazing feeling.
- As you get older and more successful and start making more money, don’t let it get to your head. Your circumstances are 90% luck of the draw of where you were born, how you grew up, who you know, etc.
- Spend time learning about and practicing negotiation. It is an essential skill in life and work with huge potential upside. For example, if you are able to negotiate an extra $5000/year at work just once, that will be worth hundreds of thousands (even millions) when compounded over the course of 30+ years.
- (Bonus!) Life is short, random, hard, crazy, and magical. Don’t take things, or yourself, too seriously. Enjoy the ride.
Peter
p.s. In my excessively eager brainstorm session for this post, I wrote down 50 bits of advice before I finally stopped to count, and realized I had overshot. So I called in my trusted editor (Keeley) to cut me down to 32. She happily obliged. If you’re curious about which ones didn’t make it off the cutting room floor, here they are. In Keeley’s words, she cut them because they were, relative to the keepers, more “cliche, repetitive, unremarkable, or lacking in context.”
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2 minute plank. Do a push up every 10 seconds, and return back to plank.
Break into 2 - 4 sets if needed NOTES!
⬆️Scale Up: Do 3 rounds (A, B, A, B, A, B) // Do the Warm-up twice through // Make your squat hold a goblet squat hold.
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Total reps means the total across both sides. For example, 100 lunges = 100 total, or 50 per side.
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