51–60 of 87 posts
You might as well take a few years to travel and make friends and do interesting things now because it will most likely be the only time in your life to do it.
- Exercise daily
- Sleep 7+ hours a day
- If you smoke cigarettes, stop immediately.
- Read a lot of history, avoid the new, self help books. They will be in the 50 cent bin in a few years, and if they are that good, you will hear about them later.
- Learn about compound interest, avoid debt, and live within your means (the money you are saving now will be worth the most later in life, invest in Vanguard funds)
- Travel as much as possible
- Interact with people that think different from you, especially politically
- Realize that (4) applies to knowledge, if you learn 5% more per week than your co-worker, you will many times more knowledgable after a few short years.
- If you're in the US, dont pay attention to the news.
- avoid all religions
- avoid sugar.
- severely limit your use of social media (it's 100% dead time)
- if you're not bilingual, learn a second language
- utilize spaced repetition as much as possible.
- invest in yourself (avoid get rich schemes)
- realize that accomplishing big things takes a lot of time, a lot of work, and a lot of luck. have patience and perseverance, and dont compare your accomplishments to those of others
Don't have kids until you're ready. Have kids when and if you're ready.
No one is ever ready for kids. Wait until your spouse or partner agrees that they want kids, and go for it.
Don't have kids until you're ready. Have kids when and if you're ready.
Age has nothing to do with it. You won't some day reach some magical age where you decide "I'm an adult." You may reach some day when you wake up and realize a lot of people rely on you to do the right thing. Congratulations; you've completed the only adulthood rite of passage that is consensus-shared in many cultures. Everything else is a lifetime of growth and gaining new skills and abilities through mostly trial and error, and there is no age where those end.
Bear your duties with pride and savor the joys of life.
Don't be in a rush to start a career. The career advantage to starting out at 18 vs 25 is negligible in the long run, and no one thinks twice about a 25 year old applying to entry level jobs. You might as well take a few years to travel and make friends and do interesting things now because it will most likely be the only time in your life to do it.
---
If you're on HN it's plausible you're advanced relative to your peers, either in your education or in your career. Don't use that to rush your way into adulthood! You have the rest of your life to do adult things, but you only get ~730 more days of being a teenager in your whole life.
Concretely: if you're ahead in your education, don't skip college, but instead use your aheadness to make time to learn more things. If you're ahead in your employability, don't jump into maximizing your $$$ but instead look for interesting personal growth opportunities.
number one tip: live healthy lifestyle number two: don’t look at others, don’t try to impress, you have your own path and your own destiny number three: take risks, later you won’t be able to number four: live frugally, invest into S&P 500 index most importantly: be nice to people, you’ll never regret being nice