Last week I turned 35. Yeayaaa! I thought this would be a nice starting idea for my writing. But what should I do specifically? I thought, I could reflect on my life so far and see what goals and plans I would have for the next 35 years. That seemed quite daunting, as I’m not sure how should I judge my past. There is so much to unpack, that I’m not in the mindset to face all of it.
Then, I remembered the video Struthless made, on giving 32 pieces of advice. 32 because he turned 32 years old around that time. He took the idea from Kevin Kelly, who did the same thing, providing 68 bits of unsolicited advice.
I figured, let’s try this.
I wanted to share advice that is not too broad or commonly overused to the level that hey don’t really mean anything anymore. Also wanted to take these from my own life experiences, since this is the idea behind doing this around my birthday. What has life taught me so far? Have I become any wiser over the years?
It turns out, collecting these is not easy. All the common phrases and sayings kept coming to mind. Still, tired my best to provide something new.
Well, here goes nothing:
- If you love coffee, start grinding your coffee beans at home. Get different tools to make coffee to try them all. My personal favorite is the AeroPress.
- “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” – Parkinson’s law
- Good sleep is key! It is almost the most important thing to do if you want to be healthy, happy, creative.
- A simple half an hour walk can change everything. Stressed? Stuck in a loop? Don’t know what to do next? Go for a walk and be present.
- Try meditation. Not only once. Do it regularly, at least do it daily for a month. Tip.: try an app called Headspace. They have great guided mediations and pieces of information at the beginning of each session are just amazing and open up so man perspectives on how we can live.
- Let yourself get bored. Just sit and be for a while.
- Tailor your social media feeds and train the algorithm to show you content that is meaningful.
- There is no day 1. Do it now, on day 0. Whatever you want to do, whatever habit you want to build, start now, don’t wait until tomorrow.
- Save at least 10% of your regular income, by paying yourself first. Put that money away immediately as you receive it.
- If you don’t want to start working on something, do it just for 10 minutes. You can stop once the time is up.
- If you every meet a Hungarian, don’t make the joke asking them if they are hungry. It is not funny.
- If you are thinking about going to therapy. Just go.
- When you are preparing a meal for yourself and someone else, give the nicer plate, cutlery to the other person.
- Everything has a price, everything comes with a sacrifice or some level of suffering. You choose what sacrifices and sufferings are worth it. Read Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
- If you are an artist, or a creative read The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. It has the best perspective on living a creative life. Key takeaway for me is: every piece is just a snapshot of your current life, your current interpretation. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it doesn’t need to include everything that you think of life.
- When building a habit, showing up is more important than doing the thing correctly.
- Being overwhelmed is not necessarily about the amount of tasks, but about the types of task you need to do. There are passive and active responsibilities. Passive are external, while active are set for you by yourself. These two need to be in balance, to regain control. Check this video for a better explanation and further details.
- Memento mori. Remind yourself ever so often of your inevitable death. How does it make you feel? Scared? Are you ok with it? At the same time, note that you imagine yourself being dead and what you will miss, but actually, once you are dead, you wont miss anything. because you wont feel anything. You won’t be thinking at all.
- From time to time it is good to look back at life and see what you have accomplished. Even better to look at times when you were scared of something, you were stressed about unimportant things. Do those things still matter? Can you even remember all of the things you were agonizing about? If not, probably they were not that important as you thought back then. Now apply the same logic to current events in your life.
- Start journaling. It doesn’t need to be a documentation of the events of the day, nor do you need to start each entry by “Dear diary”. Use it for writing down, expressing your thoughts, your stream of consciousness, the things that actually bother you or you think about constantly. Do it often, even daily. Set a timer for 20 minutes and just write whatever comes to mind. For further information search for “morning pages”, or other types of journaling practices.
- Eat your veggies.
- Eat the frog. It is ugly, it is difficult, but start your day or your work time with the toughest thing there is to do.
- Progress is the best motivator.
- “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” – by Ronald M. Hanlon, probably.
- If you want to slow down the passage of time, do something new often. Try to be present in every moment, do things that you have not done before.
- If English is not your native language, learn it. It opens up the world. (I suppose if you are reading this, you already have this one in the bag, so good job)
- Learn the difference between opinions, value judgments and hard facts.
- Clashing views and arguments pave the way forward, not everyone agreeing on a topic.
- Being honest, is one of the toughest things to do, be it to yourself or to others. Still we must try constantly.
- Politics is important. I know, it is ugly, difficult, but it affects you and your loved ones. Discuss and vote.
- Know the rules and customs, practice them so you know how to ignore them well.
- Do your own research. Go deep. There is so much half information, shortcuts, summaries. These have only partial truths. But every perspective has some truth to it.
- Ideals are important. There are not there to be achieved fully, but to serve as a goal, a direction marker. These to strive for, but we can adjust the practice on the way.
- Experiment and play. If you need a solution it is better to experiment and try many things than to theorize and try to figure everything out beforehand. This applies to many fields of life, even your purpose, career, life goals.
- While cooking, season as you go.
I hope some of these proved as new insights or as pieces of advice that gets you thinking, maybe even trying them.
Thank you for your time reading these.
Until next time. Take care.
Mátyás.
P.S. This writing should have been done and published last week. Unfortunately I got lazy and distracted. But as I said in my New Year’s resolutions piece, it doesn’t matter if we skip once on a commitment, the point is to pick it up again where we left off.