Today I turn 28. Which, strangely enough, means I have lived 28 years and am starting my 29th year of life.
This makes sense today, as I am now 28 years and a few hours old, but what about yesterday? When I was 27 years, 364 days, and 12 hours old, why would I tell someone that I was 27? In a lot of ways, saying “I’m on my 28th year of life” makes more sense than saying “I have only lived a complete 27 years.”
But, I digress.
I’m now 28, and my “race-against-the-clock” personality hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s the kind of personality that makes you dread your birthday because you now have to compare yourself to an ever-increasingly large population of ‘successful’ people your age.
Now, so you know my rambling above isn’t just because I’ve had no one to talk to during quarantine, I have completed 28 years of life and want to share the 28 things I’ve learned the hard way during my life.
The 28 Things I’ve Learned the Hard Way
- Regardless of what the media portrays, everyone who’s accomplished anything noteworthy has paid a very big price, whether obvious to the public (or even themselves) or not. What makes for a better story? The overnight success or the person who sucked for 10 years then finally hit the nail on the head?
- You shouldn’t believe everything you hear on the news. In fact, watching less news all together is probably a good idea.
- The difference between a professional and an amateur is a professional practices his or her craft every single day, regardless of the amount of inspiration he or she feels that day. (War of Art – Stephen Pressfield)
- Relationships, while they can seem like distractions to the outsider, are actually wonderfully beautiful for humans so long as they are healthy.
- Friends aren’t business partners. And business partners aren’t friends. Be prepared to separate the two or deal with the consequences.
- The worst thing you can do is go into business with someone who’s just like you. This happens all the time because we want to go into business with our friends and we are typically friends with people just like us. If you go into business with someone just like you, then you just have 2 people who have the same skills, opinions, and thought processes. Imagine a football team full of quarterbacks who can throw the ball really well but can’t catch a cold in an ice storm – get the picture?
- Most things in this life are actually really wonderful when consumed in moderation. The ability to control your consumption will bring substantial joy to your life and save you and your loved ones much pain.
- Try not to grow up too fast. I realize there are special circumstances that require young people to grow up much faster than normal. To these, I’m not referring. I’m referring to young people who simply are in a hurry without cause. Enjoy being young. One day you wake up and realize you’ve become an adult. And you’ve got the rest of your life to be an ‘adult’. Whatever that means.
- The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility (Diminishing Marginal Returns) is not just a fun thing you learn in your economics textbook. It plays out every single day in every person’s life. The ability to find balance may as well be a super power.
- Nothing worth having comes easy. Rarely do we behave this way, though. If we all stopped to really think about it, most things we are proud of in life came at a very big price.
- Friends are frictional. They come and go with the seasons of life. But family, will still be in your life 30 years from now when you’re no longer a kid. Remember that.
- It’s both unreasonable and unintelligent to expect your employer to conduct business with their clients and not with their employees. Regardless of the ‘stock’, lunches, camaraderie, and profit sharing, you are a number who helps the company make more numbers. Don’t let it get personal. It’s just not, nor will it ever be.
- There are two kinds of jobs, skilled and unskilled. Your pay, freedom, and flexibility, among other things, as compared to others in the company will be a good sign of what kind of job you are currently in. Experience can be a skill, but it doesn’t have a great ROI as compared to more technical skills that require both time and effort to acquire.
- Far too often, people over complicate entrepreneurship. All you need to do is create or do something useful for other people. It all falls into place once you get that right. Unfortunately, most people don’t get this first step right then are forced to try to use money to convince people their business is useful. That, my friends, is one problem you don’t want to have.
- Perfection is the enemy of progress. Thinking that in order to be healthy we must work out for at least 1 hour every day and eat vegetarian 6 days a week will ultimately make you quit and go back to working out 0 hours a day and eating vegetarian 0 days a week. Something is better than nothing. The compound effect is real. Start with exercising 5 minutes a day every day, no matter what and see where it leads.
- Learning and doing are two completely different things and should not be confused. I loved learning about finance but hated working in it. I hate learning about programming but love using it to build things. Don’t let your hatred for learning something make you think you’ll hate doing that thing. They are separate.
- You don’t have to eat when you are hungry. I used to feel at the mercy of whatever food was available come 8:00AM, 12:00PM, and 7:00PM. This is a terrible way to live. You will not die if you skip a meal – and if the meal you skip is in a situation where the food options are terrible (i.e. Egg bites at Starbucks), then you’re actually doing your body a favor by not ingesting that garbage. The hunger pain will go away and you will appreciate food on an entirely different level when you occasionally give your body and taste buds a break.
- Your attention is a currency that is fiercely competed for every day. Be aware of this and put into place both systems and people to help protect you from this.
- Just because you studied it in college doesn’t mean you have to do it. And, just because you’ve worked in it for the last 10 years doesn’t mean you have to continue doing it. You are capable of changing careers if you want it bad enough.
- Everyone, and I do mean everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be careful with how you treat people each day.
- There’s a lot more money in symptom management than in a cure. Be aware of conflicts of interest in all dealings of your life.
- Trust people, but confirm their trustworthiness. You don’t have to track every movement of employees or kids, but you should occasionally make sure the person you are trusting is worthy of your trust.
- Reflecting on the past is fun and useful, but it’s also dangerous. The rear view mirror/backup cam is critical when going backwards, but imagine driving on the highway and staring at your rear view mirror or backup cam.
- You are what you eat. No amount of exercise will fix a problem with your fork. Health starts with food, not a gym membership.
- What you see is not what you get. Goes for social media profiles, job applications, apartment tours. Don’t compare yourself to the ‘perfect’ people on-line and don’t buy it before you try it. (At Periwinkle, the second interview is a full day on the job. No amount of homework will guarantee a successful hire.)
- Be aware of your creation/consumption ratio. If you are broke, you probably consume a lot more than you create. Want more money or fulfillment? Create more than you consume. This ratio can be applied to a LOT of things in your life including your relationships. How much are you giving versus taking?
- Want to learn about compound interest? Get a green thumb. Growing your own plants is not only a great series of life lessons but also a wonderful example of compound interest in real life. Plants beget more plants. Money begets more money. The right system of money management will eventually lead to real wealth. But it’s going to feel about the same as growing plants from a seed instead of going into Lowe’s and dropping the big bucks. Each dollar you receive is the fruit of someone’s successful seed. You get to decide how much you eat versus plant.
- Stop thinking other people have that “something” that you don’t. We are all given a basket with different eggs. Some baskets will have an ‘athletic’ egg in it, other’s will have a ‘drawing’ egg in it. The only way you can discover what eggs you were given is by trying a bunch of different things. I can’t tell you what eggs you have, your parents can’t, your friends can’t. Someone’s relative success in cooking will be your relative success in something else. It’s up to you to figure out what eggs you’ve been given, then decide what you’re going to do with them.
Wrapping it up
Now, I can only imagine someone is going to find this post and get all fired up that “#24 doesn’t apply to everyone!”
To that person, and to anyone reading, I know! These are things I’ve learned that were true for me. I am by no means claiming these are true for everyone.
I only hope that something I’ve said will either resonate with you or remind you of a lesson you’ve already learned. Worst case, it will prove to you that just because voluntarily starving myself of breakfast every morning works for me, doesn’t mean that it’s a good plan for you. (P.S. The hunger pain does go away. But it’s real, very very real.)
Again, I digress.
Onward I go to my 29th year as a 28 year old. 🤔
It really was just yesterday I was dreading going to football practice at 3:00 PM.