Advice to my 20 year old self

I had a lovely interaction on Twitter recently where a young person reached out to me over Twitter DM.

She said:

If you could go back and give your 20-something-year-old self some advice, what would you say?

I’m about to graduate and I’m sort of terrified to enter the real world, so I’ve sort of been asking everyone.

What a great question! Off the top of my head - while sitting on the tarmac waiting for takeoff and frantically thumb-typing - I offered this brainstorm.

First
Avoid drama. In relationships and friends
Discard negative people
There’s 8 billion people out there
You don’t have to be friends with them all
Don’t let anyone hold you back or down
We waste hours and days and years with negative people
Collect awesome people like Pokémon
Network your butt off. Talk to everyone nice
Make sure they aren’t transactional networkers
Nice people don’t keep score
They generously share their network
And ask for nothing in return but your professionalism
Don’t use a credit card and get into debt if you can
Whatever you want to buy you likely don’t need it
Get a laptop and an iPad and buy experiences
Don’t buy things. Avoid wanting things
Molecules are expensive
Electrons are basically free
If you can avoid want now, you’ll be happier later
None of us are getting out of this alive
And we don’t get to take any of the stuff
So ask yourself what do I want
What is happiness for you
And optimize your existence around that thing
Enjoy the simple. street food. Good friends
If you don’t want things then you’ll enjoy people of all types
Use a password system like
@1Password
and manage your digital shit tightly
Be focused
And it will be ok
Does this help?

What's YOUR advice to your 20 year old self?

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