Note: These are not all original thoughts, but a log of ideas and values I’ve borrowed from people I follow and admire.

1. Wake up early
Start your day early, ideally just before sunrise. And get out of the house. Make this an unconscious habit if you want to take back control of your day. Enjoy the slowness of every morning, pitter patter about, break a sweat, and then, only when you are fully ready, explode into your day with vigor and energy. Stop rushing and stumbling through your day as if being pulled by an imaginary rope.

2. See your family often
Keep your family close, stay in touch even if you’re far away. Go see them as much as you can. There’s a natural progression I think most people go through where you pull away from family in your teens and early 20s as you’re finding yourself, which is ok and normal. But make sure to roll that back as well. Acknowledge your privilege of having had a safe and stable home, and build your life with its foundations instead of creating new isolated ones somewhere else.

3. Marry the right person
I’ve known my wife since I was 18. And I had all the luck in the world to “grow up” together with her as we figured out our lives and work and insecurities and passions. I have zero advice on how to find a partner, or when to commit to someone, but I will pitch in that you should do so at some point in your life. To have a witness for your life, and to witness someone else’s and to have an always-on sink for your biggest worries and anxieties is an incredible gift that you should seek.

4. Dogs rock
I grew up being told that dogs are unclean and dangerous. And while they do have a penchant for grimyness, they are also packets of unbridled joy. They’re also a good crash course on parenting. Taking care of my dog was the first time I really felt like I had to change my life’s schedule for someone else. It taught me to be more patient and selfless.

5. Your body slows down, take care
The memes are accurate. Stuff aches randomly, you recover slower, you gain weight faster. Fight against it! Get stronger, get out more, eat a little better.

6. It’s never too late to learn a life skill
I never thought I’d ever learn how to swim. Until I did. At the ripe old age of 29. If you learn freestyle and practice good technique and learn how to breathe, you can swim for long stretches even if you’re chained to below average stamina. It’s a cheat code to staying fit.

Also, no-one warned me of this, but a long swim is very meditative. In the water, all other sounds are drowned out. And all you can do is focus on your movement, all you hear is your own breath. In. Out. In. Out. Pretty incredible, highly recommend.

7. Everything in life is impossible or trivial
Learning is a binary state. Either something is insurmountably hard and you cannot in your wildest dreams imagine doing it, or you learn to do it once and it becomes second nature. I think this is an incredible framework to view any challenge in your life, especially at work. Scared of a new responsibility? Do it once and the fear melts away. Maybe this is why serial entrepreneurs are so comfortable starting companies - because the fear and anxiety that most of us hold while creating a business has been reduced to a trivial detail for them.

8. Travel as much as your wallet or your work allows in your 20s, preferably with a partner or close friends
If you ask me for my top 10 memories of my 20s, a large portion of them were from when I traveled with my wife and/or close friends. Travel is like a portal, you enter into a trip and immediately shed any irritants or stresses, and commit to having a good time, if only for a few days. And doing it with people you enjoy is even better, because everyone shows up with their happiest, most excited, least stressed selves. I’ve never done solo travel, but I imagine it’d be pretty boring so I recommend good company.

9. Almost anything is made better with people you love
For a long time, when I thought of myself, I saw a lone ship, cutting through life with self-imposed, grim determination. And it’s only natural, after all, most of your thoughts are just inner voices to yourself. But now, I like to see myself as part of a small fleet, with my family, close friends, colleagues, whoever I’ve decided to bring into this armada. You take assistance from these support systems, but also make sure you’re fueling their journey as well.

10. Find new friends, don’t stop at the ones you have
Creating friendships when you’re in college is easy. You’re in a dense environment and everyone’s a 5 minute walk away. It’s all inbound. When everyone leaves, and you’re in a new city or a new job, creating friendships becomes an outbound process. They just won’t happen if you don’t make the effort. It’s scary but you have to do it. But you shouldn’t be too hesitant because there’s a high likelihood that there are other amazing people around you that are just as desperate to share some laughs over a meal, so make the first step!

11. Be passionate about where you come from
I grew up in Riyadh. I went to university in the US. But whenever anyone asks me where I’m from, I’ve always snap responded “Bangalore!”. This may be a particularly Indian trait, but detaching us from our homeland seems to make us even more patriotic. After I left university, I spent 6 years in Bangalore to reassure myself that this really was where I felt I belonged the most. And so I cheer loudly whenever there’s good news from my city. Be proud of where you’re from, study its history, understand the sacrifices that were made for it to exist, celebrate its progress. 

12. Don’t overthink your past
Have you ever played the “What if” game? 

It goes like this - “What if I had studied CS instead of Mechanical, I’d be sitting on half a mill of comp at FAANG”, or, “What if I’d started saving earlier, I could quit my job and travel around for a year”. 

Don’t do this (too much). 

There is literally no point of recounting the hundred different paths your life could have gone down had you made some obscure choice. We’re usually over optimistic about the future, so it’s likely that some version of you who was at FAANG with an overflowing checking account would reminisce about not doing exactly what you’re doing today. 

I will say this, if there is a “What if” that eats at you, do it today! You’re still young, and your life has a lot of flex. Learn CS and go work at FAANG. Start saving aggressively. Don’t say “What if”, think “Why not now?”.

13. Want to take risks? Reduce your personal burn
If you ever want to start a business, learn how to live frugally. As you progress through your career and make more money, you will artificially inflate your lifestyle with bigger apartments, nicer cars, more expensive knick knacks. Each additional dollar/dirham/rupee of fixed outflow increases the activation energy needed to quit your job. Live with less, save more money, and take the leap.

14. Money matters
I only started saving seriously in my late 20s. There are two reasons for this - One, I never made much money at the jobs I worked at because I prioritized working at small startups. Two, I spent everything I would make. My bank account hit zero every month and I lived off credit cards for a long time. Back then, I had decided that I’m either going to make all my life’s money in one big wave or none at all. This is the stupidest thing you can do. While it is not wrong to sacrifice pay to work at early-stage companies, you must also start creating financial security from day 1.

15. Fall in love with your work
Your life is a hollow shell until you add meaning into it. You should start with friends and family, and then add in purposeful work. Purposeful work doesn’t have to mean saving the world, it only needs to be clear and inspiring to you. Do you enjoy doing it? Can you make a living off of it? Does it make you love Mondays?

Most of us spend our 20s drifting through jobs, hoping to get magically struck by purposeful work, but I think this is the wrong way to do it.

You have to go hunt for it. 

And you can’t give up until you find it. When I left university, I had a vague idea that my purposeful work would be starting my own business and having ownership in the value I create. But I had no idea how to do it. And so I hunted. I tried out different ideas, I went to work at smaller companies, I did sales, product, marketing, design - anything that I sensed could lead me to purposeful work. And with each step, the path became clearer. So go out and hunt.

16. You are not your work
If you take a lot of pride in your work, at some point it will become 100% of your personality. It was mine for most of my 20s. And while this frame of being gives you superpowers, I think it’s a long-term net drag on your life.

If you put all your pride in your work, and your work is risky and prone to failure, then you tie up all your confidence with its outcome. Avoid doing this. There is Work Imad, but there is also Husband Imad, Family Imad, Dog-Dad Imad, Swimmer Imad, Foodie Imad. Think of yourself as a sum of these parts, and you’ll become more resilient to take big bets in life with longer time horizons.

17. Read widely with abandon
Read a lot, but never overcommit. I recommend the Naval style of reading. Give yourself permission to jump around, skip chapters, ditch it if it’s uninteresting. Books, blogs, papers, tweets - do it all. But stay hungry for new ideas. Anything good I’ve created was a new link in a chain of seemingly random ideas I read about. And so if you’re creatively inclined, and want to become an idea generation machine, read.

18. Stop daydreaming
Everything is beautiful in your head. Get out of it and try the things you want to. Accept that anything new is worse first and needs to be built to greatness.

19. Have heroes, learn from their lives
Whatever you’re trying to build has been done successfully before. Go out and find those people and befriend them. If they’re too far from your contact zone, read about them. One of the great advantages of reading this in 2024, is the aggressive documentation of successful people in print or audio. Study their lives, look for patterns, and model behaviors. Tread with caution here, you don’t want to “Mr. Ripley” this and fake an existence, take what’s good and leave out the rest.

20. Do your best today, don’t optimize for tomorrow
The stupidest thing I did in my 20s was not giving my all to the jobs I did. In my head, I had built up this glorious eventuality of starting a company, and so I felt it ok many times to underperform or hold back ideas. This is moronic, don’t do it. Successful people compound successes. They are incredible at work regardless of how much equity is in their comp plan. 

21. Be a little scared
You should always be a little scared of the work you’re doing right now. This means that you’re trying to do something that is just outside the grasp of your capabilities. This is the only way to grow. Everything is impossible till it’s trivial. The more times you overcome scary obstacles, the tougher muscle you build, and the larger opportunities you can grab. One caveat is that you should find the right balance. If it’s too far outside your capability zone, you will give up and be constantly frustrated. Too small of a jump, and it won’t push you. 

22. Work with urgency
Set tighter deadlines, build block by block, never all in one go. Work like a squirrel, small and light but fast. Not like an elephant, giant and imposing, but lumbering around without purpose.

23. Stop avoiding feedback and questions
Have an idea? Show it to everyone. Invite criticism and battle-test your hypothesis with as wide a base of people as possible. Show it to other people working around the same problem. Show it to your friends. Show it to your mom, what does she think of it? Does she understand what you’re trying to do?

24. Get over the fear of saying “I don’t know”
Everyone can tell when you pull answers out of your ass. Avoid random reasoning. Get comfortable with admitting to not knowing. Go find an answer, and follow up quickly. Your colleagues will appreciate you for it.

25. When inspiration strikes, don’t procrastinate, do it now!
Whenever you have that feeling where your heart starts racing and an idea takes shape in your head, give into it. Write it, build it - use this excitement to overcome the cold start. Don't temper yourself by pushing it to another day. Inspiration is a rare commodity.
 
26. Be grateful
People around you will succeed and do very well for themselves. Don't count their wins as your loss. Kill the envy inside of you. If you don't, then your default state will be helplessness and the feeling of 'being stuck' in  life while everyone moves ahead.

Practice gratitude consciously. Say it out loud often. Lay your own path.

27. Visit Formentera

 
28. If it’s not in your control, don’t be anxious about it
There is no future. There is no past. There is only now.

29. Believe in yourself a little more
The biggest culture shock when I landed in the US as a 17 year old was how confident everyone seemed of themselves. For the longest time, I couldn’t understand how everyone was so friendly and open for conversation and quick to voice opinions. Maybe it had something to do with being raised in environments that encourage kids to speak up. But I never really saw it as a disadvantage - until I started working. 

I found that I was deeply unconfident of voicing my ideas or challenging someone else's constructively. Which would lead me to resenting other people and being even more guarded with ideas. This is the hardest one on the list, and I still haven’t cracked it but it helps to keep repeating to yourself that you can do anything you want to as long as there’s intention and work ethic to back it up. 

30. No one will remember what you fail at
Your entire life so far has been centered around progressive hits - high school grades, college degrees, great jobs at companies everyone admires, annual promotions - and so it’s only natural to be afraid of failing publicly. There is no quick fix to it, being comfortable with failure is a muscle and it only gets trained over time. But take some solace in the fact that no-one around you really cares. Everyone’s busy. Everyone’s got their own lives to conquer. And so set your fear aside and take bigger swings, everyone only remembers the hits.

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Thank you to Nat Eliason and Delian Asparouhov whose pieces inspired this one. 
Nat's piece - https://blog.nateliason.com/p/40-lessons-from-30-years
Delian's piece - https://delian.io/thirty

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Imad
@alicapxyz on twitter