I'm 29. Here's How To Not Waste Your 20s.

When I was a teenager, I was scared to death at the thought of wasting my 20s. Not because I didn't believe in myself or I didn't believe that I could do great things, but because of how common it was, how common it was to waste your 20s. And I was reminded of this the other day. I went to the gas station to get my Rice Krispy Treat and White Monster before the gym, and when I walked in there were like three dudes, and one had a 30 rack of beer in his hands, another had a like mega pack of fireball shooters, and then another had a pack of white claws. And it just reminded me of like my own college experience. But the thing here is that these guys weren't in their 20s. They weren't in college. It didn't seem like they were wearing polos. They kind of had messy hair. They look like they just rolled up out of bed. And it's like 9am. And they're getting beer and alcohol. I'm assuming to go drink during the day because why would they wake up so early to get that to drink at night. And I'll call me judgmental. I don't know who these people are. They could be great, cool people. But that's not the life that I want to live. I'm assuming that's not the life that you want to live either. And I just couldn't help but like cringe as I was there at how they were going to feel that night, how they were going to feel that morning, how they were going to feel for the next three to four days, and how because of that they weren't going to do anything meaningful. They would be kind of closed off from an enjoyable life. And I get it. I was in college. I was in their exact same shoes. I wasn't 30 plus years old doing it. I was young and I went through that phase just like everyone does to get it out of their system. But that's kind of just what encouraged me to create this video is I saw that and I'm like, oh yeah, this is the average person. That may sound harsh, but I guess a good heuristic for if you're on the right path in life is whether or not you're going to the gas station at 9am to get a 30 rack of beer. And as I said, I was in college too. I went through that party phase. But I couldn't help but think and this is why it hit me. This is why I wanted to create this video is that if I hadn't had that one moment in my life where I like knew that I was meant for more sounds weird. But I feel like a lot of people feel that you know that like you're meant for more than this you're meant for more than the mechanical work you do every day repeating the same day every six months for the rest of your life. I knew that if I didn't commit to living a good life that I would be in their shoes. And that's what kind of shocked me is because I knew that that part of myself was in here somewhere. And maybe it's not that part of myself. It's that part of society because that's just one of the few very few default past in life that you're set on at birth by nature of going to school getting a job retiring at 65 and how meaningless and honestly bullshit that is. Now of course, different people have different lives. I don't think everyone should do the same thing. Of course, I do think everyone should pursue their own version of meaningful work. But I do not see how a clear thinker could justify that type of behavior. Now the truth is by the time that you turn 23, you're faced with reality. You have to choose a path to go down. And if you don't choose a path, that's the greatest single decision you need to make is to go down a path not go down the default path the one that you're set on if you just coast along then your life just kind of starts to look like this the same job the same bars the same video games the same raves you have a few euphoric experiences because you're now over the age of 21 and want to do the things you've been told not to do for your entire life but then you try to make most of those experiences a consistent part of your life right you're so young you've been so sheltered from the world you've been doing what you were told to do for your entire life you went to school you lived out your childhood you turned 18 maybe you could start driving you turn 21 and then you're like hmm maybe I should try all of this stuff I wasn't able to try before and then you try it and you're like holy crap that's the good stuff and right your brain operates on a salience network so anything that gives you the most dopamine or euphoria becomes the most important thing to you and since the alcohol the partying the raves the drugs the bars since all of those things are technically according to that the most important things in your life at this point because you haven't experienced anything better then you fill your entire lifestyle with those things and that only pulls you down that only ruins your life unless you start pursuing some form of higher goal before you fall into this trap you do not understand what a fulfilling life is so you do not try to make that a priority all you know is going to school and quote unquote having fun now the unfortunate thing here is that everyone wants you to go down this path even if they say they want great things for you they want you to go to school they want you to get a job they want you to retire and so by default you're going to want to numb yourself from that experience because that's what happens when you only pursue the goals that others have assigned to you you haven't generated any meaningful goals of your own you're not building your own thing which brings along this unique form of excitement and engagement with it are you happy all the time no are you euphoric all the time like you are when you're drinking alcohol and not hungover yet no but what it does provide is like you're living in your natural habitat right well we're still monkeys at our core with a bit more developed brains but if you put a monkey in a cubicle it's going to suffer just flat out psychology study it unless you make the conscious decision to never live like the average person which is difficult to do because you're surrounded by people who feel threatened if you don't stay average then you will end up average and since this default path is so mind numbingly repetitive but also mentally demanding at the same time you only get more responsibility you only take on more responsibility as you get deeper into the default path right the bills the mortgage the kids everything else not that there's anything wrong with those things right conscious decision aligning with your own goals but with that and the repetition and the mind numbing this it only becomes harder and harder to dig yourself out so the sooner you do it even if it's painful the better so in this video i want to discuss what you can do about it if you're entering your 20s or if you're past your 20s or if you're in your 20s because whenever i make a video on being in your 20s or whatever it is because i'm in my 20s i'm not going to give advice to 40 year olds i don't i don't know but i always have people who come out and they're like i'm in my 30s i'm in my 40s i'm in my 50s i'm in my 70s it's insane the new superhuman program with a training program in it i had like a 74 year old reach out and is like hey is this okay for me to do and speaking to you directly yes it's okay you just have to know your body take at your own pace don't do anything that would hurt you take it easy at the start build up to it so on and so forth but with that said i feel like this advice can apply to anyone and even the people that are older than 20 watching this video i may give you a few ideas that will help you maybe guide 20 year olds in your life to do something better because you're from an age that is so different from now right you're not living directly in this and you can learn a lot from me and of course i can learn a lot from you i need we need to integrate all generations right the wisdom from all generations so i want to provide a look into the mindset habits skills to acquire in principles that lead to an overwhelmingly high quality of life in today's world now if you actually watch this and burn it into your brain i do not see why you can't completely change your life and the first thing i have for you is pretty cool it's pretty special so what i did for this is i went to eden which is the next variation of cortex i haven't talked about it much but we're leading up to being able to roll it out all i'll say is just look out on black friday but i went to eden i created a canvas i created multiple different ai chats on there i assigned each of them a specific person so one was socrates one was krishna murty and the other was nicola tesla and i also assigned one to lautsa but i didn't include it because it was kind of very similar to krishna murty and socrates and then i asked them the question what is the advice you would give 20 year olds to maximize their 20s considering the default path in life is to end up mediocre so we're going to go over their advice in this and then in the next section of this video i'll go over my advice and how i would integrate their advice into like the modern landscape so you can actually take their advice you can get multiple different perspectives and you can get practical details on what you can do because asking the ancients of the past and the very wise people they're not they're not very good at giving like practical details so we'll start with the advice of socrates and the way i scripted this isn't what the ai said this is kind of me trying to articulate it like they would it is better to be a conscious fool than an unconscious success the most radical thing you can do in your 20s is not to get ahead of everyone else but to discover who you truly are beneath all the noise of society's expectations in your 20s you possess the dangerous combination of energy and ignorance you mistake confidence for wisdom activity for progress and accumulation for fulfillment you say you want to become who you were meant to be but do you truly know who that is before you can make the most of your 20s you must first discover what most means for you specifically so now the practical advice of socrates is this question everything especially your own assumptions about what success happiness and the good life are now this one is especially true i'll have to create a video on this in the future but just questioning everything everyone hears that question everything question everything like this it's just the common advice but people don't really get what that means right i'm building a software startup right now i'm also in the process of launching a focus a new tropic supplement that is better than the rest on the market we'll break that down in the future and i'm kind of wired on it right now if you couldn't tell not wired it's not like jitters it's actually really good paired with a chemist and it's awesome but throughout building a startup you're met with all of these things that you should do or you're supposed to do or when you're building a business or you start writing on the internet or you start on social media or doing your own thing whatever it is there's all this advice around you 95 percent of it will not work but you kind of have to do it in order to register it as a mistake because you can't just take advice and expect to avoid the mistake you take the advice to experience the mistake so that then you can avoid it and decide whether or not you want to stick with that advice but it has been so helpful to me to just question like okay this big elon musk said this that means it must be so important but then you question it it's like do we really have to do that does that actually move the lever does that make the product better does that get more customers to the product does that actually help the other person does that generate revenue whatever it may be question everything on to the rest of the advice when someone tells you to build a business or make more money why for what purpose what kind of person will that make you embrace not knowing because the beginning of wisdom is knowing that you know nothing your 20s should be spent in experimentation and discovery sounds a lot like my book the art of focus reflect daily why are you doing what you're doing if you don't do this you will find yourself in a life you didn't intend beware of replacing one form of unconscious living mindless pleasure seeking with another mindless goal chasing now on to some somewhat similar advice but advice i like a bit more from krishnamurti the problem that young people face is not that they lack ambition or goals but that they are living entirely from psychological conditioning their goals aren't their own instead they were programmed into them by what society family education and culture want for them they mistake this conditioning for their own authentic desires and intelligence so the advice of krishnamurti here is to learn to observe without choosing watch your own fears and ambitions without immediately acting on them rejecting them or accumulating something to numb them question everything you've been told you should want you'll be surprised at how many options you eliminate giving you immense clarity understand that psychological time is the enemy of living the mind that is always living for the future misses the extraordinary nature of what is actually happening now so very similar things there with questioning everything but on that second part psychological time and how living for the future makes you miss the present the next person Nikola tesla kind of has an antagonistic viewpoint to that and i kind of do too i don't think it's all about the power of now or living in the present because i took that to heart i took that as law for a good period of my life maybe like two to three years and i fell into a few traps with it but i do not think that that is how you should live your entire life so if you want to make the most of your 20s understand there is no path to uniqueness the moment you follow someone else's formula like starting a business making money or self actualizing you are living second hand copy imitating now on to the perspective of Nikola tesla and we'll start with a direct quote let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments the present is theirs the future for which i have really worked is mine the fundamental problem in young people is not laziness or distraction though these are symptoms but rather intellectual cowardice they fear being thought of fool more than they fear mediocrity so develop an unshakable faith in your ability to see what others cannot now tesla was called mad and crazy for envisioning wireless communication across the world and for believing that ac or alternating current could power the world or for seeing energy patterns in his mind's eye when it wasn't yet in reality yet these impossible visions became the foundation for society young people have accepted boundaries that others have drawn around possibility so you need to cultivate magnificent obsession by choosing one great work not a career but a mission that could take decades let it consume you learn to think in systems because everything is connected electricity magnetism matter consciousness train your mind to see invisible connections on that note i have this book right here that i'm finally getting around to reading thinking in systems pretty good basic introduction to systems and systems thinking another video i'd recommend is intro to systems thinking by actualize.org i really like that one but it's also just a higher stage of consciousness according to the levels of ego development the stages of spiral dynamics at stage yellow i believe it is is when you become construct aware and you can see the world from a higher perspective which is systems you see in holes rather than parts back to it embrace solitude because the crowds will never understand true innovation until it arrives fully formed learn to work alone with your own thoughts young people today have unprecedented access to knowledge yet lack the patience for deep contemplation they see quick results rather than profound understanding so those are all of the perspectives from some great thinkers the people that i think are great thinkers of the past so now we're going to go over my perspective and how to not waste your 20s if you can learn how to learn how to think and how to earn you become an unstoppable force those are the three skills of an irreplaceable individual learning how to learn because if you learn how to learn and you can learn faster than you can learn anything faster and you can do anything faster and learning involves doing so by learning how to learn you learn how to do and you end up building a project that can actually set you up for success and then learning how to think how to think clearly rather than just deeply because you can think deeply and be insane but you have to be sane to think clearly and then how to earn because we live in the third millennium the 21st century money governs a lot of the potential opportunities in our lives it dictates whether or not we're going to have shelter money is something that you're going to have to pursue and if you have a poor relationship with money or think that it's evil you're going to have to get over that now personally the advice that has always helped me the most is like harsh truths just people being harsh with me people saying hey you're screwing up do this and then i do it and then even though i'm following prescriptive advice which is what the thinkers of the past would tell you not to do right take your own path don't take others advice sometimes you need to just confidently move in one direction so that you can make a mistake and if someone else's advice leads to you making that mistake so that you gain experience and then you can reflect and realize okay i'm going to take a different path that is valuable it is much better than sitting around thinking oh should i do this should i do that should i do this just take someone's advice make the mistake and from that mistake that mistake gives you point of view it gives you a data point from which you can then make your own decision with that said i want to focus on the actions that will one teach you about yourself to help you think for yourself three eight in the discovery of your life's work and four set you up for some form of success in today's world so the first and foremost piece here the foundational principle is that your ideal lifestyle comes first please do not take this as some kind of like fortune cookie like quote just you have to understand this this is the pillar this is the core this is something that i've been trying to articulate for a long time and it's been very difficult your ideal lifestyle comes first always because every year or so i find myself just taking on too many opportunities too many responsibilities i say yes to multiple businesses or multiple projects i fill up my calendar with meetings and events i tell myself that i can handle it that i'm capable that like give me it right let me put the big stone on my back and let me climb up the mountain but then i asked myself after i hit this point of like damn maybe i took on too much i asked myself is this really the life that i want to live the life that i'm living right now with the meetings the events just no time living in this doing mode narrow minded stressed out state not being able to think no that's not the life that i want to live and then that's when i realize that i was just either acting unconsciously where i was persuaded to pursue someone else's goal and these are the times where i just let go of everything you drop everything and see what sticks you do a complete reset on your life that's why i created superhuman 90 link in the description check that out i'll keep that brief but now i have become quite clear on what my ideal lifestyle is over the years and that's the thing is you don't know this all at once you cultivate it it's something that you're always refining personally i want to wake up go on a walk write about my interests for about two hours go to the gym read new books build creative projects eat great food and feel as if i am making consistent progress toward my goals i've determined that when that lifestyle is maintained my mind body spirit and business have this ample space space to grow space to breathe space to think and i do not bog myself down to the point of life becoming too repetitive or mundane because i leave space for the novel now why do i like this routine so much and this is something that you should do right is as you start to create this lifestyle you need to have these intrinsic reasons you need to stack reasoning behind your actions as to why you do something so that you can return to it so it's a strong philosophical base for living so for me walking keeps you lean it maintains circadian health therefore sleep it improves creativity and productivity and pulls you away from the fast pace world that everyone wants you to participate in writing is the crux of thinking learning and attracting an audience to your work my entire business stands on two hours of high leverage writing per day reading new books based on genuine interest improves mental metabolism when new ideas come in they need to come out and they can be used as fuel for creativity the gym and creative projects provide structure for mental and physical progress without them the natural tendency is for mind and body to decay the last thing here is that i've discovered that without these habits life becomes drastically worse for me so here's my advice before you make a decision that could impact your future consult with your ideal lifestyle if it does not align tread carefully if you do it anyway be ruthless and eliminating it when the time comes if you do not know what your ideal lifestyle is forget everything i've said and take on any opportunity that comes your way gain experience reflect on that experience and slowly start to make decisions that move away from the parts of that experience that you never want to live through again now the second piece of advice is to start building the business now because everyone and their mother is telling you to start a business so much so that by my course has become a meme with that said link in the description for my courses and it's unfortunate that it's become a meme because then it turns people away from it it turns people away from an interest based education you know that thing that actually leads to an effective skill stack and a unique life simply because a few people on the internet made it uncool or like a mark of stupidity for you to either sell a course or to buy a course personally college taught me very little i went five years and then i dropped out and when i bought my first course my first scammy course it changed everything that's how i learned the skill set that i have now and yeah you can learn stuff on youtube you can learn stuff on twitter you can learn stuff really anywhere but that's usually unintentional learning it's not structured so with that said i'm not here to sell you on a specific business model i simply want to lay down some ideas so that you can make a decision for yourself so here's why i hold that belief why i think everyone should at least try starting a business you don't have to stick with it but at least try it why here's why autonomy which is making independent decisions that align with personal values and goals is fundamental to the psychology of enjoyment and fulfillment many jobs promise autonomy yet you are still being assigned projects and tasks an increase in challenge and skill is necessary for growth growth is necessary for developing the complexity of the self the complexity of the self is necessary for the depth of experience the top one percent of careers allow for this type of development but it is baked into any level of entrepreneurship because only one percent of people are going to get one percent of the careers but if you become an entrepreneur boom you get all of that immediately without being a success it's just the natural way of living i'm actually going to write a newsletter about this about why everyone is quitting the 40 hour work week and how nine to five jobs have only been a thing since the 20th century and they're probably we're probably going to shift back to self-employment and artisanal work like was the case for a lot of history any objection around needing startup capital connections or knowledge are irrelevant in the digital age if you can't start your dream business you can start a business that eventually allows you to start your dream business like a personal brand or freelancing or digital product or coaching as cringes those may sound to you those are zero startup costs and then you can build the cash flow to start the apparel company or the software or the supplement or whatever it is you want to start your brain is wired to hunt entrepreneurship facilitates this part of your brain you weren't meant to be a monkey in a cubicle if your ideal lifestyle comes first it creates the constraints that allow for creative solutions you do not have to work 12 hours a day if you move the right levers like having the skill to write a post that reaches millions you can work one hour a day and make more than many top paying jobs with that said that's probably unlikely when you first start but still there's this argument going on online about how when you start working for yourself you work more and frankly that's a choice it's a problem of understanding if you actually understand what it takes to make money in other words you having a product and you getting someone to buy it and you were to simply focus on the levers there then why can't you work an hour a day if you know what to do of course an hour a day probably isn't enough but four hours a day more than enough and in order to understand that deeper don't start commenting now wait until the last section where I talk about leverage lastly credentials are dying and people crave authenticity AI creating content as an excuse signals a lack of critical thought and time spent in the game in other words if you're worried about AI flooding the content space and just taking over everything you don't understand it sorry now have many more arguments as to why entrepreneurship is a great path to take but you can just read my book for free purpose and profit link in the description now here's the thing that I have not mentioned yet is that there is a barrier to entry you have to spend about one to three years of trial and error before you actually understand most of your effort will not bear any fruit for the first one to three years you have to go through this period of having no idea what you're doing no matter what advice you take no matter what course you take so you can either spend four years to get a degree and maybe get the job you want or you can spend two years lost in the unknown and if you make it through that you have a skill stack that makes you unemployable with exponentially higher upside the third piece of advice is to master these skills and topics so if you want to become future proof you need to prioritize self-study self-education as a whole as a skill around these epistemology the study of knowledge so you can derive truth from known facts so you can sift through misinformation and prevent poor decision-making systems thinking the ability to observe reality from a higher more holistic level because a whole is greater than the sum of its parts psychology how to discern and understand the motives of yourself and others persuasion so you can spot persuasion tactics from others and use persuasion to strive for mutually beneficial value exchange marketing and sales which is applied psychology and persuasion as media so that you can attract an audience to and earn from your independent work writing which is externalized thinking the ability to communicate the unique value of your mind agency the ability to set and pursue your own goals without permission so that you become in control of your life and research or self-education which is how to chase information on a subject that is conducive to your personal goals or hunt for knowledge to lean into your survival wired psyche we survive on the plane of knowledge in today's world if you were to pair these skills with your own personal goals and interests you would learn how to create your own path in life now the fourth piece of advice here i think i said the last one was the fourth that one was the third this is the fourth is that above all focus on leverage so let's start with the great quote from Archimedes give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and i shall move the world now everyone loves to throw around the word leverage but what is it what does it actually mean leverage is the ability to amplify your inputs to create disproportionately larger outputs it's doing more with less it's getting maximum results from minimum effort time or resources in today's world leverage comes from capital people technology knowledge and network and if you don't have leverage you must invest your time in acquiring it without leverage your results are directly tied to your time and effort it's a linear relationship you work one hour you get one hour of results this limits your potential but if you spend your time acquiring leverage you start to break into exponential growth companies can scale beyond their founders because they can hire people and even without people founders can now scale beyond what they were previously used to thanks to technology social media and ai they can write content reach millions of people which didn't happen before and with ai they can tap into really any source of expert knowledge and even if it's not the truest or the most correct their founders they know how to make mistakes learn from those mistakes and acquire the knowledge they need faster investors as an example make money while they sleep because they deploy their capital into appreciating assets authors can reach millions of people without actually speaking to the person by distributing their book you write a book you sell it a million times writing is just high leverage in and of itself software as another example can serve billions of people with a single code base it's the same thing media and code those are today's leverage writing code choose one i would probably start start with writing because no barrier venture you can literally start writing right now and then your success on social media or in other things depend on your ability to write persuasively in an intention grabbing way while still putting out novel perspectives in my own experience i always knew just somehow that i did not want to live a life where i trade my time for money i had to do something else and i did that for a long time i knew that some form of entrepreneurship was the only way to create various forms of leverage in my life so i tried to build every online business model under the sun then i made freelance web design work and i realized i was still trading time for money because it was freelancing client work then i started writing on social media to build an audience i started a newsletter built digital products focused on cash flow and then now i can use that cash flow to start other companies like the software or the supplement and those can grow much further beyond my own audience so in short to summarize all of this and if you want to start now here's what i'd recommend one audit your time note activities where if you stop doing them the results stop to develop a high leverage skill invest one to two hours daily for six to twelve months into writing coding sales or marketing and once you have money investing three build your own thing a blog youtube channel newsletter digital product app template library investment portfolio physical product etc start the business for automate and systemize for repetitive tasks create templates or checklists document the process refine it until it gets the most results it can and potentially use automation tools or ai to take it a step further five find your tribe attempt to help three people per month with no expectation of return join communities where like-minded people or potential customers are and share what you're learning publicly on social media this is such a big one that people just don't like to do because they're not social and they haven't practiced being social so of course they're not social because you're not going to be good at something unless you practice it it's not talent but starting these companies doing well on social media doing well in anything when i reflect it almost has always come from just having a conversation and making a new friend that can provide me with some kind of insight or resource to make that thing work if you are not meeting at least one new person a month bare minimum that's not hard then you will start to question why it is so difficult to succeed now six practice hiring and training hire a va for basic admin tasks and partner with someone whose skills complement yours and when problems become too painful for you to solve on your own bring adaptable people onto your team seven scalable income streams negotiate equity or commission as an employee or convert a service into a product as an entrepreneur and eight distribution equals freedom build an email list build an audience make content a dedicated part of your deep work blocks check out two hour writer for that no matter where i research more about leverage in an attempt to ensure that myself bias and what i do writing and social media doesn't take over what i'm trying to say here the fast track advice always seems to be something along these lines learn a valuable skill create content and invest your cash back into assets that compound start with one hour of learning a day shift to one hour of learning and writing a day build a digital product or service that you can generate cash flow with and validate an idea then turn it into a more scalable higher risk company thank you for watching i hope you found value in this video watch the next one there's like probably two on the screen right now or just go to my channel and watch some cool videos that said like subscribe there just buttons on your screen if you press them i deeply appreciate it i hope you enjoy the rest of your week bye