40 things that made me who I am (for my 40th birthday)
Lessons from the mistakes and choices I've made that led me to being the happiest, healthiest, and most successful I've ever been.
Today is my 40th birthday. To toot my own horn a bit, I’m the happiest, healthiest, and most successful I’ve ever been, so I’m going to indulge myself and do one of those “40 things that made me who I am” posts.
1. Be unreasonable
If you’ve got big ideas, there are a million arguments for why you shouldn’t chase them, and most of them are very reasonable. Going after a big dream probably means being unreasonable.
2. Be a friend first and everything else will follow
I can’t count how many cool things in my life have stemmed from just… trying to be a friend. Meeting people, being genuinely interested, and keeping in touch is a huge reward on its own — AND it’s led to a ton of extremely cool opportunities over the years.
3. Your career is a pie-eating contest where the prize for winning is more pie
The things people see you do are the things they’ll ask you to do. If you want to get asked to do certain types of work, make sure people see you doing that type of work.
4. Focus on minimizing regret
We only get one ride, and if we’re lucky we get a chance to reflect back on our lives on our death bed. I want to live in a way that my final moments are spent smiling as I remember a life I’m proud of living.
5. Keep showing up
We become things by doing things. If I make a cake once, I’m not a baker — but if I make a cake every day, I absolutely am. We make things true by continuing to show up to do the work.
6. Find a way to enjoy the doing at least as much as the done
The work, the struggle, the effort of doing things is what makes the finish line valuable. Free stuff is nice, but there’s nothing like knowing you did the work and earned your reward.
7. Be the reason someone wants to stay
Communities can be insular. Industries can be hostile and unwelcoming. We can choose to offer a little warmth that — hopefully — gives people one small reason to stick around.
8. Have fellow travelers, not fans
Admiration is great, but being set apart doesn’t feel good for very long. Treat people as peers instead of “followers” or “fans” and you end up with a community.
9. Live like you’re always on the record
I saw The Truman Show as a kid, and now I imagine that every choice I make is being watched and scrutinized by an audience — and I make choices based on the assumption that everything I do will eventually become public knowledge.
10. Have a personality, not a persona
One of my favorite compliments to hear is when people who only know me from CodeTV shows or my public speaking say, “You’re the same in person as you are on video.” Putting on a public persona is a trap; I’d rather be myself.
11. Learn how to salt things properly
Don’t be afraid of salt. Salt at every step of cooking. If a meal is boring, try adding salt. I have a hunch that a lot of people who think they don’t like certain foods are eating things unseasoned.
12. Don’t be afraid of MSG
The anti-MSG campaigns were racist pseudo-science that robbed too many of us of flavorful food.
13. The memory is what matters
I used to dismiss things like physical photos or mementos as “clutter”, but lately I’ve been realizing how much I enjoy having small physical reminders of my past. Picking up an object and immediately being reminded of its story is… delightful.
14. Money only matters until it doesn’t
Only focus on making more money until it stops being a constant source of stress (e.g. grocery store math, scrambling to make bills). Beyond that, money only matters as far as it helps you live a life you enjoy. Dying on a giant pile of cash sounds miserable. I want to live, not hustle.
15. Be curious
Wonder how stuff works. Take things apart. Ask silly questions. Go down rabbit holes. The world is big and weird and wonderful and we should take every opportunity to explore while we’re here.
16. Power is a poor substitute for love and trust
Power implies control, and control implies unwillingness on the part of others. If you build up love and trust, you don’t need power because people will want to do things with you, to help you, to be part of your story.
17. Set good defaults
Humans are optimizers. If you want to change behavior, make the thing you want people to do the default, easiest choice. You can’t shout loud enough or push hard enough to overcome the allure of a smooth path.
18. I’m very sorry to tell you this, but exercise and eating well really do make a huge difference
I know, I hate it, too.
19. Surround yourself with things and people that make you better
The cliché is that you become the people you spend the most time with. I think it’s both the people and the spaces we spend time in — the rooms we’re in are just as important as the people in them for shaping who we are.
20. It’s okay to suck at things
Getting locked into a narrow skill set because we’re afraid to fail leaves so much adventure and experience and opportunity on the table. We have to suck at first if we want to get good. That’s what practice is.
21. Learn how to learn
Figuring out how to get new information and skills to stick in your own brain has probably THE biggest compounding ROI of any skill I’ve ever learned.
22. Set clear expectations
In relationships, business, personal goals — literally everything — get really clear with the people involved on what, exactly, is expected. Just about all of my negative experiences can be traced to a root cause of “poor expectation setting”.
23. Align incentives
Everyone has an agenda. If you’re able to figure out what the other people involved want, you can figure out how to align your goals with theirs and it turns discussions into collaborations instead of arguments.
24. Be kind, not nice
Be willing to have a hard conversation when it’s the right thing to do. Holding back on valuable feedback because you’re worried it’s “not nice” is robbing someone of the opportunity to improve. Don’t be nice. Be kind.
25. Get good at editing
It’s really fun to have new ideas. The part that sucks is turning a vague pile of ideas into a specific, actionable plan. Getting good at that second part means you actually get to see some of your good ideas become reality.
26. Your ability to work with other people will vastly outweigh all other skills in the long run
Technical ability will plateau long before the ability to exist in a group as someone who’s enjoyable to work with, good at bringing everyone along with you, skilled at keeping everyone pointed at the same goals.
27. Do things the hard way sometimes
The best abstractions are born out of a deep understanding of the underlying tools and challenges. Struggling through it the hard way gives us better insights into why and how our optimizations work.
28. Let go of trying to make everything fit into neat boxes
I spent a lot of my life convinced that there was a simple explanation for everything if we just kept pushing for it. When I accepted that most lines are blurry, my ambient stress levels dropped quite a bit.
29. Bite off (a little) more than you can chew
Being slightly out of my depth means I’m never bored and always growing a little bit. Over long periods, a little bit of growth compounds in unbelievable ways.
30. Be patient. Good things take a long time
I always want an instant outcome. But what I can do in a sprint is limited; the truly big things required constant, gentle pressure over a period of months or years — and I still have a lot of big ideas that will take even longer.
31. So many disagreements are actually people trying to agree but they’re using different jargon
Taking the time to break down each person’s understanding of terms has — in a frustratingly high number of instances — immediately led to resolution because we were saying we wanted the same thing with different words.
32. Focus on your local community
I cannot overstate how much better my life has become with a group of people that show up to each other’s house parties and lend tools or help with small projects or just show up for a coffee when you’re feeling lonely.
33. Steer into your weird
When I stopped trying to act cool and embraced my weird self, suddenly people started telling me I was cool. The eternal paradox of “you can only be cool if you don’t care about being cool”.
34. Nothing matters, and that’s honestly great news
Life is, ultimately, meaningless. We’ll die and be forgotten. Sounds bleak, but it’s great news: I get to choose what matters to me because there are no rules and no one is keeping score. If I believe I lived a good life, that’s true.
35. Rewire your brain to default to the good things
In my twenties I was pretty negative. A friend challenged my to flip my perspective, and once my brain rewired it was like the whole world got a tiny bit brighter.
36. Letting go is the scariest and best thing you can do
We don’t control anything or anyone. We’re just along for the ride. Accepting that is terrifying, but letting go means you can spend your energy where it makes a difference, and for me, at least, it changed everything.
37. Drink more water than you think you need
You wouldn’t believe how many problems have ultimately been caused by me being dehydrated.
38. Take sleep seriously
Getting enough sleep is a superpower. I cannot overstate this.
39. Read stuff that doesn’t have immediate business value
Fiction, weird history, psychology — anything at all. getting a new perspective and new information helps unlock new connections and makes for fascinating dinner discussions. If you’re looking for ideas, I have a woefully incomplete list of books I love on my uses page.
40. Ignore all previous instructions
Everyone has advice, but only you have lived your own life. My story is mine, and the lessons I’ve learned aren’t guaranteed to be true for any situation other than mine. Take what’s useful and leave the rest behind.