50 Things I Wish Hadn’t Taken Me 50 Years to Figure Out!

I turned 50 this year. I know. So old. Can’t believe it.

Emsworth, UK at sunset, 6th Feb 2020

1. Resist the path most trodden. Be a contrarian.
2. Don’t bullshit yourself. Ideally, don’t bullshit other people either, but more importantly, be honest with yourself.
3. Foods that have a shelf life more than 5 days have something in it to make it last that long. Whatever that is, you probably don’t want it in your body, so don’t eat it. Eat fresh things.
4. Mindset matters. It matters more than anything. Your mindset can make or break you. Your mindset determines your thoughts, your thoughts determine your feelings, your feelings determine your actions and your actions have consequences.
5. Don’t eat animals or things that were made of animals. We don’t need to. As well as all the environmental and welfare reasons to be a vegan, EVERYTHING tastes better without dead animals in it.
6. Create a growth list — things you do every day that will help you grow (and stick to it). My list contains 15 mins on Duolingo, journal, listen to smart people (on a podcast or TD Talks), move about 10k steps, cook something fresh.
7. Don’t be a dick. If you even sense you might be being a dick, STOP.
8. Don’t pick sides. People, politicians and marketers want to fit us into neat pockets and echo chambers. Resist it.
9. YOU are your most important side hustle. Don’t stop learning and improving. Nurture YOU, your skills and mindset.
10. Distrust the media. The narrative the mainstream media give you is probably biased to a certain agenda
11. Distrust the morons who tell you to distrust the mainstream media IF they then tell you they know the truth! No one knows what the f**k is going on.
12. Your nationality is an accident of where you and your parents were born. No more. We’re all human beings. We’re no different. If you believe you’re better than your neighbour because you wrap yourself in a certain flag, you’re a dick. Don’t do it. It’s another controlling mechanism designed to persuade people to give up their lives for rich powerful people.
13. Wherever you look, there’s f**kers trying to sell you shit you don’t need. Resist it. More than that, call it out as shit you don’t need and actively repel it.
14. You have 2 choices with your money; It works for you or for someone else. When you put your money in a bank, they give you .5% interest (if you’re lucky), but they invest your money in the market or loan it out to someone else at 20x what they are paying you. Make your money work for you.
15. At least half the country are f***ing idiots. Seriously. Just thick as shit.
16. Don’t join a political party. The idea that you should join a ‘tribe’ and align your values to that tribe is just ridiculous and actually means you have no individual values.
17. It’s OK to be an introvert. More than OK. If you feel you lose more than you gain from going out and socializing, don’t do it.
18. Friendships are difficult. People come and go. Friendships that last, that have no conditions are precious.
19. Be mindful of dead time. I’m not saying you need to be one of those wankers who say that they ’squeeze every second out of life’ and wake at 4.30 every morning to meditate followed by 3 hours in the gym. If you want to watch The Office for an hour, do it, but then do something valuable. Time is precious.
20. Racism is just stupid. We are all the same race, we just have different levels of pigment in our skin. People that don’t think that really are morons. Don’t waste your time on them.
21. Don’t be a tourist. Tourism is shit. A long weekend in Rome might sound nice, but I guarantee, it seems nice to thousands, tens of thousands of other people too and that’s just the thousands that went to Rome on the same weekend as you did and picked up the same tourist map and bought a ticket for the same hop-on hop-off bus as you did but somehow managed to stand in just ahead of you in the queue and will stand in front of you taking a selfie with their backs to the thing they queued hours to see.
22. You can’t do everything. There’s only so many hours in the day. BUT, make time for the most important thing. Get that most important thing done every day. Even if the most important thing is something that’s dull but needs to get done.
23. Inflation sucks. Saving money early in your life in a low-yield financial product like a savings account is dumb. If you earn more than inflation, you’ll be very, very lucky. If you can, invest in something that will always beat inflation (which in most countries is land or property).
24. Religion is the greatest scam humans have ever created. It’s designed to control people’s thoughts.
25. Economies require the vast majority of people to trade their time for money — they’re called jobs. The harder the job / the fewer people able or willing to do a job broadly dictates how much they can earn. The rich trade other people’s time for money. Be that person.
26. You’ll never get what you want until you figure out what it IS you want. Spend the time visualizing it, writing it down, then map a path to it. You’ll never find a way to a destination that you’ve not actually identified. If you’re happy going with the flow and seeing what life offers you, that’s cool, but don’t then complain that you’re not where you want to be. It’s difficult, but it’s vital. Get some help if you need it. But do it.
27. We’re all work in progress. No-one is perfect. We are all version one dot something of ourselves. Even at 50 I still believe that, and I possibly spend far more time thinking about how I can improve than most people and it’s still not enough.
28. Control the controllable. Don’t sweat about anything else. Set goals about the things you can control. Too many people let expectations (theirs, or other people’s) ruin their lives.
29. Working for someone else to make a living is a mugs game. Totally.
30. Routines and rituals are absolutely key to getting shit done. Everyone knows babies need routines. Then babies turn into toddlers and they fight routines and we carry on fighting them into adulthood. It’s just one of many ways humans sabotage themselves. The older I’ve become, the more I appreciate and treasure my rituals.
31. If you’re lucky enough to have children, love them for who they are. Other people’s children might seem more talented, cleverer, more confident, but please, resist the temptation to compare them. Your only job as a parent is to make your children happy and confident and to make them smarter, better versions of you. The only way to do that is to give them your love and attention. Nothing else matters.
32. Buy property to rent. It’s the easiest way to create wealth because you’re effectively making money with other people’s money!
33. Be sceptical about everything. Most people that are ‘sure’ are idiots or liars. Some things are easier than others to be sceptical about, but while you can’t use scepticism as a hammer to beat the ideas you don’t like, you should be sceptical about the ideas you gravitate towards as well.
34. Opinions are like concrete — once set, they’re set hard so don’t waste your time trying to change people’s minds, it so rarely happens. Move on.
35. If you do something that doesn’t work, use your brain and find a new way.
36. Say yes to challenges. Whatever it is, say yes, then figure out how to achieve it.
37. If you’re feeling unwell, do something about it. Don’t be one of those dicks that think, ‘it’ll be fine’. Do some research and go to the Doctor.
38. Make space between some kind of stimulus and your response. The more the stimulus impacts you, the greater the space you need to create. I’ve never, ever regretted pausing before I’ve replied (for instance) to an email. I’ve often regretted NOT pausing. Our personal growth lies in how we respond.
39. Seek out opportunities to earn passive income; paid content on platforms like YouTube and Medium, books and e-books, buy to let properties, stocks and inflation-yielding savings, affiliate marketing and courses. Make money in your sleep. Most people don’t do it because it’s hard to set up and the returns are slow. Don’t be like most people.
40. Everyone is trying to steal your time and attention. It’s social media companies’ ‘product’ and they’re as good at it as Airbus is at making planes and Mercedes is at making cars. Be aware of it and resist it!
41. Not everything will go smoothly in life, you’re not in control of everything. But you are in control of how you respond.
42. Change is hard. So hard, most people give in. Don’t give in. The easiest way to change is to start small — aim for the easiest thing to achieve and stick with it. Let that change embed, then grow. AND celebrate little wins.
43. If you’re genuinely interested in things and people when you are young, you’ll likely be an interesting person later in life. Don’t waste your time on one thing.
44. The destructive impact of grief is enormous and fucking awful. It amazes me that humans have evolved to feel such joy but haven’t (seemingly) evolved to feel less pain. I don’t have any wisdom beyond that.
45. Sleep is crucial to the way human beings survive. Sleep well. 8 hours.
46. Every decision you make has pros and cons. Every one. Go for the one that has slightly more pros than cons. The decisions that seem to have no cons are likely to be the worst decisions. Live with it.
47. We’re brought up to care what other people think of you. It’s a societal tool to keep us in check. And it’s also bollocks. Care what the people you care about think of you, of course, but everyone else, f**k them.
48. Keep moving, keep creating, keep learning. Don’t stop. Momentum is key. The greater momentum you have, the harder it is for people to stop you or knock you off track.
49. If you’re going to create a list, don’t choose an arbitrary length in case that means you fill it with it nonsense.
50. And the last one (IF you’re still reading this), figure out what makes you happy, and do more of it and less of what makes you unhappy. That’s it.