We underestimate how much we can learn from the past decade in contrast to how much we can learn from the past year. The longer the time frame you reflect on, the more pronounced patterns have to be for you to notice them.
This week, I’m completing my 29th lap around the sun. Instead of thinking about just last year, I decided to think about the last decade. I have one more year to go in my 20s, but I’m close enough to the end to think about which big ideas in my life have shifted most dramatically.
Here are five opinions I wish I’d examined more closely much sooner.
1. Thinking My 20s Should Be All About Sex
I was a virgin until I was 23, and I’ve spent years feeling inadequate about it both before and after. Just last week, I found out 14% of men are virgins up to age 24 — and 12% of women. Who would’ve thought?
If you asked around in high school, absolutely no one. All the guys knew specific porn terminology. All the girls knew the word ‘slut.’ And yet, few people really did anything. It was all just a big cover-up for our teenage insecurities.
If you’ve spent a lot of time feeling insecure about your sexuality in high school, chances are, the first thing you do in college is feel insecure about having felt insecure all this time. So now, you really have to make it count, don’t you? Actually, you don’t.
No one cares if you have sex with 20 people, 200, or just one in your lifetime. No one will start your eulogy with, “She only slept with two guys — therefore, she left us too soon.” Your sex counter is one of the least important things about you. It does not define who you are. It’s not what people care about, and — in most cases — it’s not what they’ll remember.
You don’t have to swear an oath of celibacy. You should enjoy sex, learn what you like, and how you can make the other person feel good when you decide to be with one another. There is no age limit for these maxims. Whether you spend most of your 20s working, getting healthy, dating, or forming lots of friendships, how much sex you have is only a small part of it all.
Don’t forget it, and don’t let anyone make you feel bad for having too much or too little.
2. Thinking I’ll Never Have More Energy Than I Did in My 20s
If you spend your 20s eating fast food and tons of sugar, you’re gonna feel like shit. If you spend your 20s drinking all the time and having lots of hangovers, you’re gonna feel like shit. Sure, it’s easier to bounce back when you’re young, but if you treat your health like a piñata at a birthday party, you won’t get much out of your physical advantage.
Your energy is also affected by your state of mind — and to a ridiculous degree. It’s not even funny how subjective physical energy actually is. If you’re lazy and unmotivated, you’re gonna feel like shit. If you tackle it with some joie de vivre, it’s easier to do a mundane job well than to do a great job at all if you hate the concept of work.
The more I managed to align my life, work, and lifestyle with who I was genetically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, the more energy reserves I built up. Yes, I also formed healthier habits, but, despite working much harder than I used to five, six, seven years ago, I’ve got so much more in the tank. I love talking to 40, 50, 60-year-old people and hearing the same thing.
Yes, aging is real. But it’s not true that your 20s are your only shot at doing certain things.
3. Not Starting To Work on My Passion With a Professional Mindset Sooner
People have been arguing about whether “follow your passion” is good advice for decades. I think it comes down to a simple distinction.
“Follow your passion all the time and at the expense of everything else.” That one’s terrible. “Follow your passion some of the time until you can make it work.” Now that’s a lot better. The only way to sustainably turn “some of the time” into “all the time” is, well, with time!
When you jump headfirst into your passion and force it to pay your bills, you’re putting so much pressure on something you love that it’ll become near-impossible to keep loving it. At the same time, if you don’t show up for the thing you love regularly and treat it with a somewhat professional attitude, you’ll never become good enough to get paid for it.
Turning your passion into your career takes patience. First, you need to build actual skills. Second, you need to map those skills to what society wants. Making sure every day is fun and you’re only working on things you enjoy is the very last step of this ladder, not the first.
To climb it, sometimes, all you have to do is wait until the cross-section of what you’ve learned becomes a product people want to pay for. Two of the three main ways I make money didn’t exist three years ago. Sometimes, you’ll have to use your skills in ways you don’t prefer but that are necessary to make a living. Writing poetry is wonderful, but, until you can sell enough books, there is no shame in earning money as a copywriter.
I was 21 when I first glimpsed at the dream of being a writer. I was 23 when I started writing. Once you know what your dream is, don’t let another second pass. Carve out a small space, and work on it every day. If you don’t, no one else will. Take your time, but commit to making it happen.
4. Chasing People I Didn’t Like for Some Seeming Benefit
At the beginning of my 20s, I thought the world of work was all about being strategic. You shake the right hands at the right time, get the introduction, the connection, the interview, and then the job. Of course, that is true.
Relationships are a real and powerful factor — not just at work, but everywhere in life. What’s also true, however, is that they’re way too powerful to put them second to some ulterior motive.
At the end of the day, everyone is having a hard time. We’re all people. Humans. We want to survive and thrive and be around folks we love. We want to feel less weighed down and get through this life happy and healthy and, sometimes, all we need is someone holding our hand.
Your relationships deserve to be a standalone area of your life. Treat them all with respect, but make sure you prioritize the ones that feel like ends in themselves — the ones where you don’t have to tally a list of benefits to feel good about them. No job or hookup or invitation to a special party is worth sacrificing your peace of mind.
You don’t want to think about what people think of you all the time. You want to hang out with people who make you feel good, who allow you to be yourself and accept you as you are.
Whoever those people are in your life, they should be the only people in your life, no matter whether you work with them, live with them, work out with them, or see them once a month for Friday night drinks.
Don’t twist yourself into a knot to get what you want. Find a way to get what you want your way — and let the right people find you along the road.
5. Thinking I Have To Change the World To Be Valuable
My best friend and I used to dream up all these fantastic startups who’d solve the world’s biggest problems. Of course, we never did anything about these ideas. Never took the first step. As it turns out, changing the world is hard.
There’s a great quote from Rumi: “Yesterday, I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
You don’t have to be the next Elon Musk to be a valuable, lovable member of society. Once I started working towards what I really wanted and realized how hard it was, I learned to settle for doing the best I can each day.
Try to be good at what you do. Be kind to the people around you. Help those who are in reach right now. Don’t get lost in abstract ideas, no matter how idealistic they might be.
It’s great to have big aspirations, but it’s okay to first take care of yourself and those around you. Build a solid foundation, one you can depend on for decades to come. Then, tackle the big problems — and take them down one day at a time.