I turned 20 recently. I could’ve sworn I was still 16 yesterday—the pandemic skip really hits hard. Fresh out of the military and a limitless world in front of me, I thought it’d be nice to write down some important reminders/lessons I’ve gathered thus far. It would be cool to see how my views change over the next decade(s).

• Life is short. If you plot out your life in weeks, it’s really not much (not to mention how many we’ve already wasted). Nobody cares about that van cleef you’re wearing, nor can you take your ferrari with you to your grave. We’re all booked on a one-way speedboat headed to the same destination. MAKE. THIS. COUNT.
• Genuine passion and curiosity births obsession, which, coupled with a high rate of learning, trumps anything. This sounds trite, and for a long time I’d roll my eyes to what seems like another generic self-help rule. But I’ve come to appreciate this truth over the course of my many ambitious projects. Faking it till you make it is more of a short-term optimization strategy than a long-term one—it gets really tiring. I think many turn a blind eye to this because finding your obsession(s) is really hard. But if you’ve found it, you’ve just struck the lottery.
• Competition is a process, not the end goal. Choose wisely which games to play. Play long-term games with long-term people—that’s how incredible projects are made and it makes for one hell of a ride.
• Read more, write more.
• Listen widely, but be selective with what you internalize. Don’t take everyone’s advice. We owe it to ourselves to think harder about what we want for ourselves. Write your own damn story.
• Status-chasing zero-sum games are a waste of time, and serve mostly to please the ego.
• No matter how strongly-willed you may think you are, negative people are incredibly draining. Cut them out.
• As long as it’s not lethal, it’s not that serious. Have fun with this.

The reminders above aren’t ranked in any way per se (maybe besides the first one). I didn’t want to make the list absurdly long or absurdly specific. I believe these are good rules for now. We’ll see how I turn out in the years to come.