Notes on "40 Lessons from 30 Years"

Err on the side of too early over too late. It’s almost always better to do things “too early.” Your conception that it’s too early is just your fear, and once you dive in you’ll figure it out. Old people tend to regret the things they didn’t do, or didn’t do earlier. Not the things they did. Things I Never Regret

Standing events are the best way to regularly see friends. Constantly having to schedule outings, dinners, etc. makes it hard to regularly see people. Create standing events. Invite people you want to spend more time with. It’s the easiest way to get more friend time in your week.

Money is a tool for freedom. The best reason to accumulate wealth is to buy yourself freedom from anything you don’t want to do, and the freedom to do the things you do want to do. Money is not an end in itself. If you sit on it and never use it, you’ve wasted your life.

Many of the best changes in life are unknown until you make them. Feeling “fine” is a dangerous attitude. You might have no idea how much better you could feel, how much happier you could be, how much fuller your life could be. Changes like exercising regularly, cleaning up your diet, doing psychedelic therapy, it is impossible to convey the change in perspective to someone who has not experienced it.

Host more events. Everyone wants to do more social stuff, but no one wants to organize it. Organize it. It’s not that much work, you’ll be much happier, and you’ll make more friends.

Money can absolutely buy happiness. So long as you spend it on upgrading and expanding the things that make you happy, instead of using it to play status games or on fleeting experiences.

Be early. Get on trends early, try new things early, visit places early, learn how to develop the requisite taste to be a little ahead of everyone else. It’s fun and can be profitable.

Embrace the many things you’ll never do. Enjoy saying, “I’ll never learn Chinese,” or “I don’t need to visit every country.” Everything you say no to creates space for the most important things to say yes to.

You only need to make a few great decisions per year. You only need to get a few big things right each year and follow through on them. Your life will be shaped by surprisingly few big choices.

You usually kill by overwatering, not underwatering. Another rule for houseplants and humans. Sometimes the best action is to do nothing or wait instead of trying to constantly do something.

Trust your negative gut, not your positive gut. If you have a great feeling about something, you might just be excited or gullible or not thinking it through, so take your time. But if you have a bad feeling about something, you’re almost certainly right about it.

Stressing about a problem rarely fixes it. Try to bias towards improving things instead of whining about them. Or if you can’t fix them, forget about them.