20 lessons i learned in my 23!
what my 22 years-old self needs to hear!
today, i turned 23, and it’s much better than i expected. a year ago, i thought i would feel depressed and upset about getting older, but aging while doing good things and making an impact is actually a pleasure. i can feel it, and i hope to be happier in the coming year. :)
but here, like last year’s essay (20 lessons i learned in my 22!), i’m gonna make a list of lessons i learned in my “23”. i think it’s a good time to review my lessons from the year and i hope to write it for the next year too.
you mostly don’t need to impress people, but if you had to, your “learning rate” can actually do this for you and you don’t need a lot of fancy things.
“tit-for-tat” is for losers. winners give more than what they receive. much more! (tweet).
think about entrepreneurship like marriage, think about marriage like employment, think about employment like investment, and think about investment like entrepreneurship.
the best role models have never optimized themselves to be the best role models. so if you want to be one, don’t try to optimize!
"you're good for your age" means that you're not good enough to avoid mentioning your age when talking about you. you may hear this sentence in your path, especially when you're between 18 and 22, and i want to assure you that it's not good news! aim to be just "good," not "good for your age." (read more).
there is no zero-sum game. every competition is a negative sum and you can not change it.
never start to build anything with a team. start by yourself and the people you need will join automatically! (read more).
you can not ever find the best options among the options optimized to be presented to you. you should search for the best in the almost reversed side of what is optimized for people like you. as a rule of thumb, if you can find the best easily, that is probably not even good, nor the best! (tweet).
don't disagree with someone whose claim you can not defend better than that person.
put aside anything that tells you to work less and please work more! you're capable of much more, and you're underestimating your ability.
you should not let “everything" make you happy! (read more).
there is something great out there waiting “just” for “you”! this is true, so don’t settle for something less than your value, if you know.
you’ll never regret removing the people who broke your principles.
don’t forget that a candle loses “nothing” by lighting another!
the only way to improve your communication skills is through having a lot of hard conversations, so embrace it. (tweet).
avoid the things that are "over-persuasive". the best things are not usually that persuasive to be clear to everyone that they're the best things! (tweet).
red flags, if genuinely selected, are good things. be serious with them, especially when it comes to choosing your colleague.
don’t start working on anything without love, a true love for the “user”. no matter what you’re gonna build, if it begins with love, you’ll make it, and “many” problems won’t even exist.
it's completely ok if the best advice doesn't work well for you! (read more).
as you go ahead, you’ll encounter things that you don’t entirely expect to happen, both on the good side and the bad side. this is what makes life fun-to-live. :)
PS1: i have collected these sentences from a lot of lessons i have learned this year and these are just the most important ones.
PS2: i will write 20 lessons learned in the years ahead too and “20” means nothing but a “short” number to make me more selective about the lessons.
PS3: there isn’t a meaningful order of the points and the order is somehow random.
Well done 🤌🏼, happy to get this wonderful advices