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I turned 30 today 🥳
Here are 12 lessons I've learned after my 30 years (it gets more pragmatically towards the middle):
1. Be kind
Kindness is a choice. Kindness is an expression of love or goodwill without expectation of reciprocation. That isn’t a definition I got from a more reputable source like a dictionary or ChatGPT, but it is a definition that helps frame my perspective. This definition of kindness is important because unlike niceness and meanness, which are easy, kindness is hard.
Kindness is distinct from niceness. Niceness is a social tactic that has many uses:
- To avoid conflict or rejection
- To signal moral superiority (which often stems from feelings of inferiority)
- To manipulate a target to gain something they have
Most importantly, with respect to niceness, niceness is easy. It is easy to be nice to someone from whom you want something. It is easy to be nice to someone of whom you are afraid.
Meanness is also easy and is a social tactic. Being mean is less conscionable than being nice, and the unconscionable nature falls into two categories:
1. Conscious meanness: you are choosing to be mean and you are actively making life harder for someone else. That is to say, you recognize the social efficacy of being mean to someone and you’ve told yourself, “yes, now is the time to do that anger thing in order to get what I want.”
2. Unconscious meanness: you’re emotionally dumping on others, which demonstrates an inability or unwillingness to control oneself to “get what you want.”
In contrast, to give without expectations or aim, to control your emotions, and to not manipulate others to your own aims is hard.
There is an upside to kindness. When you express love or goodwill towards another being without want of something in return, you improve your life. The logic is simple. If your life is an accumulation of your experiences and you elevate a single experience, then your total life experience increases by some tiny percentage. When we do acts of kindness, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin. We feel elevated and happier, neurochemically. Our experience of that moment, thus a small part of our life, was elevated. If this happens a lot — your life experience will increase by much more.
2. Be courageous
There are three very important times to be courageous.
First, to pursue your dream. We all dream. Every single child has an amazing dream. And, we don’t just have one — they come to us from beyond like apples drifting on a river of love. Life is better for all when we decide to jump in the water and reach for our apples.
Second, to be disliked. We’re not robots programmed to function exactly the same. We have our own tastes, likes, opinions. And, we should express them. Here is the trick — we learned in childhood that the more differently you expressed yourself, the more you’d be made fun of. Only black kid in the gifted program? You’re now Hershey. Only black kid around others that “speaks white”? Oreo. I don’t think most people intend to hurt others by pushing towards the average. However, when faced with the pressure to conform to society’s expectations of the average or expressing yourself, have the courage to express yourself and not care whether others like or dislike you for it.
Third, to fight. Violence is an unavoidable and unpleasant aspect of human nature. Violence comes in many forms: physical, verbal, organizational, digital. I label those who enjoy wielding and using violence in its various forms as bullies. Throughout life, you will encounter bullies. They didn’t cease to exist on the school’s playground. It is imperative that you learn to recognize these individuals and deal with them. Often that doesn’t mean fighting back, but there will be instances where it does. And, you should have the courage and competency to defend yourself. Lastly, if you are a bully, please see my first lesson.
3. Don’t hold on so tightly
Everything is impermanent, and that’s okay. A lot of our suffering comes from trying to make the impermanent permanent. To have a “successful and secure career,” to find the “perfect” partner, to enjoy the “beauty of youth” forever. Nothing, including ourselves, is permanent. It is a sobering statement, and it begs the question: so what do we do?
If we acknowledge that everything is temporary, then we are free to explore, experiment, and hopefully bring a little temporary joy to others along the way. This idea is also really helpful in empowering us to pursue our dreams and other important moments today. Noting that nothing is permanent — neither joy nor pain — presents us with unlimited opportunities to do what we think is most worthwhile at that moment.
4. Be like the coniferous tree
Coniferous trees (e.g., Coast Redwoods, Giant Sequoias, and Christmas trees :)) belong to the category of spiny-needle trees and cone-seeded trees. They are among the oldest organisms on Earth, dating back to 360 million years ago. In contrast, their common competitor, the broadleaf trees (Oak, Maple, Birch), first arrived on the scene around 140 million years ago.
Conifer trees take a long time to sprout. Their competitors, the broad-leaf trees, sprout very quickly and often overshadow the conifers' growth. In resource-abundant soil and warm climates, we see broad-leaf trees proliferate and force the conifers to retreat to cold climates, poorer soil, and difficult and mountainous terrains. It seems like broad-leaf trees are the clear winner in this battle.
However, this is only true in the short term. These trees have been around for millions of years, so we must take a long-term view of their fitness. When looking at the last ice age, which occurred around 21,000 years ago, all trees were impacted, but broad-leaf trees were significantly reduced and had to retreat southward. In contrast, accustomed to cold weather, the domain of conifer trees expanded greatly. Additionally, if we evaluate other metrics such as lifespan and height, we see a different picture. Broad-leaf trees live to about 200 to 300 years, whereas the core of conifer trees can be 4000 to 5000 years old. If we look at the heights of the trees, Coast Redwoods and Giant Sequoias loom 3 or 4 times taller than even the mightiest of oaks.
What is the difference?
Conifer trees take time to build deep and powerful roots before expanding toward the sky. Their foundation requires patience to build, so instead of competing directly with broad-leaf trees, they retreat and wait for their opportune moment. The reward for their patience is more resilience in difficult times and locations, longevity, and the achievement of greater heights.
Don’t be like the broad-leaf trees, quickly taking what you can when the times are good. Be like the conifer tree:
- Spend time building a strong foundation.
- Don’t feel compelled to compete directly for competition's sake; instead, take a long view and position yourself towards where you want to be when the opportunity arises.
- Live well; live long.
5. Start small
Over my professional years, I’ve become an expert at going from zero to one on something. Bringing ideas from the eternal plane into the physical or digital one. While I’ve struggled with scaling and building out most of my zero-to-one outputs over a long period of time due to the plaguing of my own impatience and monkey-brained tree hopping, I’ve gleaned patterns that may help when starting new things.
The most important of these patterns is to start small. Starting anything new requires a ton of activation energy. The bigger the objective, the more activation energy required. The problem is that we don’t always know what the new thing should be or what it will become. We have an idea, but once our idea is introduced to the physical or digital world, it rarely continues to look exactly the way we first envisioned it.
Thus, starting small has another advantage: you can modify it more easily. Let's demonstrate this point. Which sentence is faster to correct:
"The dgo walks."
"Upon walking the four-legged creature, which is commonly called a dog, the owner noticed that there was an aparent mistake in the sentence that he was reading."
Small is easier to get going, nimbler, and faster. Even the mighty conifer trees start as small pinecones.
6. Work, masterfully
Work is serving your community, the nation, and the world by producing something that others value. One of the greatest contributions of capitalism is helping us understand and improve our productivity. Furthermore, I have found that I am happier when I’m working on something that I find useful to other people.
When working, it is important to aim to work as masterfully as possible. There are three approaches to working masterfully that I’ve learned:
Work continuously and consciously. If we were to analyze Jiro from the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, we can see what working continuously looks like. Jiro has had roughly the same routine every day for the last 40 years. However, each day he consciously and ruthlessly pushes for improvement. Every day of work is an opportunity to improve upon your craft, so take those moments to out-do your previous self.
Learn from the greats. You’ll notice that throughout, I have examples of people who have started useful businesses. I’ve studied over 200 founders, and I’m only just getting started. If you want to be masterclass in your domain, study the masters in it.
Purpose can be found in work. Because working serves your community and helps you find a place therein, it can be a great source of meaning. Thus, we should take pride in our work because it reflects an aspect of our social identity. This is expressed naturally in our language, such as when saying “she is a dentist.” Simple. However, this may be changing soon like all things. So, we must not get too attached to this idea. If work is how we serve our community, then it is possible that work will always be present, but the work today and the work in the future will be dramatically different due to advances in artificial intelligence.
7. Look above; Look within
Religion is important because it encourages humans to look up, aim for an ideal, and strive to rise above where they currently are. These are all positive pursuits. I believe in religious freedom, so whether those sets of beliefs are Christian, Muslim, Democracy, Capitalism matters less to me. What's important is to actively choose the set of ideals you aspire towards.
The most amazing aspect of human beings is our well-documented ability to physically achieve more based simply on our beliefs. Studies have shown collegiate athletes running faster, jumping higher, and scoring goals better from their own baseline when told that a rubber wristband would increase their performance. This is incredible. It also means that what you choose to believe will have profound outcomes on your life and others. So, take a moment to look up. What do you aspire towards and why?
Look within.
As important as looking up is, I must also emphasize the importance of looking within. The Oracle of Delphi's message of “Know Thyself” is equally, if not more important than your aspirations.
From my brief time on Earth, I have found Buddhism as a philosophy to be the best explanation of the pitfalls of the human condition and prescribe the best medicine to remedy those afflictions.
Yes, meditation. I’ve meditated close to 1000 days of my life, and while I am by no means an expert meditator or even close to the elusive state of enlightenment, I have noted incredible benefits in my life.
There are two:
It has helped me understand myself in ways that would be difficult to begin to describe. But, in short, it has:
- Helped me develop my understanding with God, my own psychological patterns, and ability to focus.
- Enabled me to respond instead of react to situations in my life. This has helped me in good times and bad, and is an incredible gift.
The point is to go deep within yourself so that you can become yourself.
8. Count your pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves.
We cannot control how much money we make, but we can control how much money we spend. One trap of the human condition is lifestyle inflation. This trap often leads to the famous imagery of “golden handcuffs.” In addition to restricting your freedom, oddly enough, earning more money can also lead to patterns of great waste. There were periods in my life when I became much less scrupulous of my money because I thought there’d be more tomorrow. This is most unfortunate and can be easily combated.
I record my costs manually. It allows me to bring thoughtfulness to my spending patterns. It also gives me a moment to analyze myself. Why am I doing certain actions? Do I actually value this service? It’s sort of like cutting my fingernails; with time, my spending patterns grow too much and they need to be cut back a bit.
This rule also applies to many other areas in life. If you focus on the details of a product or service, the quality and thus dollars will take care of itself. If you pay attention to the details of what you're learning, the big concepts will lock themselves into place.
9. Foster your curiosity
Human curiosity propels human learning. Learning compounds, like financial investments, over time. There is a great myth that learning stops once you’ve finished school or that your brain “stops growing” at a certain age. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
This is absolutely false and dangerous thinking.
We are always growing. We are always learning. And, our knowledge compounds to enable us to fly above the birds, talk to people across the world, and capture lightning itself and use it to make rocks think.
Frictionless learning, however, needs curiosity. It’s like learning's cleanest fuel source. Yeah, you can learn a new skill because you’re afraid of losing your job, but learning it because you think it is interesting is far more enjoyable.
Curiosity needs to be fostered. It is fragile. You can tell by comparing a child to a middle-age middle manager in a large logistics company. Something happens that erodes curiosity over time. So, we should be aware of this atrophy and do things that grow curiosity over time.
For me and many of my close friends, that is having some sort of art that you’re pursuing. For me, it is generally broken into 3 areas:
- Dance / Ballroom
- Martial Arts / Muay Thai
- Language Arts / Chinese
These three areas inspire a completely different part of my brain than what fires when I’m learning to code something. However, that part of the brain creates dreams of the cool complicated thing that could yield some amazing future. It illustrates your narrative. And, that illustration begs the question, “Well, how does that work?”
These areas have very little friction for me. They feel like play.
Curiosity is the magic sauce to the greatest human compounding effect: learning. Curiosity is born from playing. So, play to learn and become the best human you can be.
10. Do One Thing.
“Intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out resources in people that they didn’t know they had” - Edwin Land
If you’re struggling to bring your talents to life, narrow your focus. Do less. It’s very hard, but the rewards are certainly worth it.
Focus is probably the second greatest predictor of success, next to…
11. Persevere.
When I was in third grade, my teacher gave me a superlative. It was “Perseverance”. At the time, I was very dismayed. I was hoping for "most intelligent," "best at math," "best overall," something along those lines. What I heard was “tries hard”.
My teacher very delicately explained to me that this may very well be the most important superlative and that he gave it to me with much consideration.
Today, I am so thankful for that award as it serves as a reminder of what is most important: don’t stop.
If you’ve known me through practically any stage of my life, you probably think of me as a try-hard. In college, I sat in the front of the class. When working at LinkedIn, I would stay late on Friday nights to push my work forward or learn the next skill.
When I learned to dance, I struggled for a year and made mistakes that most dancers consider inexcusable, like losing the count of the song when auditioning new group members. Eventually, however, I became a good dancer and competed in dance performances in college and throughout the West Coast.
When I was at LinkedIn, a manager told me that “I think you can do analytics but you may not have the brain for it.” I then went to LinkedIn and applied a novel approach to segmenting (“analyzing”) potential customers based on platform and third-party data sources and opened up 12 new markets using my approach.
When Sam Walton was starting in retail, his manager told him that Sam just wasn’t “a retail guy”. Sam Walton later went on to build, at the time, the greatest retail store chain the world had seen – Walmart.
I’m not saying I’m the next Sam Walton. My point is it doesn’t matter what others say — no matter how smart they seem. When you’ve decided, built the courage, and the strong roots to set upon your path, don’t stop for anything or anyone. Persevere.
12. Work, Faithfully
“Have Faith and act as if it is already real” - Rick Rubin.
Faith works have been a central theme in my life, so I leave this at the end with you. I can’t speak to the why as much here as I’m still on a journey of discovering the why. But, I can tell you about all the times that faith works have occurred in my life and how I’ve benefitted from them.
I started learning Chinese because I had a dream that said “learn Mandarin”. The next day I went to the internet and started with some apps. I’ve been studying every day since. The benefits from learning a hard thing like Mandarin on the internet have helped develop areas that I was historically weaker in, like consistency and follow-through. Chinese has also opened up a world of experiences, relationships, and insights that are too numerous for me to attempt to list.
When I started at LinkedIn, a woman came to speak to my starting class. She normally didn’t do public speaking and she was asked at the last minute to fill in for someone else. She shared a story. At the end of the story, I heard a voice at the back of my head say “you have to work with her”. I didn’t know who she was or what her team did, but when we were all dismissed, I caught up with her and asked if she had time to chat more over coffee. Being my first work week in the working world, the default time request for Google Calendar was 1 hour, so I booked an hour on her calendar. She responded back, requesting we shorten it to 30 minutes. Then we had to reschedule. Then reschedule again. Each time I asked her for less and less of her time. Eventually, I found out what building she was going to be in and asked if we could chat in between her meetings. That 5-minute chat grew into a 45-minute one as we delved into a world of various topics around learning. My mentor introduced me to her team, which opened a constellation of mentors who taught me everything from how to take notes, how to build data products, and how to design my life.
It is difficult to say what this voice is or where it comes from. However, it is easy to say to follow it. Do the work, faithfully.
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