39 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

Advice to help you grow, inspired by Kevin Kelly’s posts and my life

I recently celebrated my birthday and as a tradition, I like to reflect on the past year and share different things I’ve learned that have helped me in my life. In no particular order:

Health

1. Just because you eat junk food (pizza, fried chicken, etc.) doesn’t mean it has to be all unhealthy. An unhealthy meal can be fine if you eat it with greens (salad, steamed frozen vegetables)
2. Always throw out fruit or vegetables because they rot before you eat them? Try the frozen variety.
3. I like boiling vegetables — it’s easy, low maintenance (you don’t have to keep watching it though you do have to make sure there’s enough water), and it’s hard to mess up. One simple hack I’ve found for boiling veggies: add salt to the water to bring out the natural flavour.
4. If any form of exercise is too intimidating to you (too much time, too difficult), make it easy on yourself by decreasing the time, difficulty or intensity. Focus on being active.
5. Take care of your body. Build in morning routines to brush your teeth, wash your face, and put on sunscreen. These small things help in the long run.
6. When choosing foods to eat, you can have two of the following: healthy, cheap, and easy to make.
7. In general, shop near the outside of the store for your food. There are healthy options in the aisles (beans and other dried foods), but do more of your shopping on the outside and you’ll do alright.
8. Batch cooking has saved me time and energy. That means cooking a large batch of something (pasta, rice, veggies, meat), splitting it into meal portions and then refrigerating containers so that you can heat it up for a meal later.
9. A great tip I learned from Ramit Sethi: when going to a restaurant, ask the waiter to take half of your meal and put it away in a takeout container. You will eat less and you will have a meal for another day.
10. Eat slower than you think you should. Again, you will eat less because it takes time for your stomach to tell your brain you are full.
11. You don’t need a lot of time to do a good workout. You don’t need a fancy membership. You don’t need any equipment.
12. Stretching is just as important as lifting weights or doing cardio. And there’s both active stretching and dynamic stretching.
13. Having difficult conversations early saves you time and energy.

Wealth

1. Even if you can choose the stock ‘winners’, you also need to have enough conviction to bet the house on them to get rich. Instead of trying to pick the winners, buy index funds that purchase the whole market.
2. As a general rule of thumb, saving money is more important earlier in your career. Investing is more important later in your career. That’s because you can save more money than you can earn from investments (because you don’t have too many investments starting out). But later on, your investments will be significantly more, so saving, while still important, has less of an impact on your net wealth.
3. Consistency is key to building wealth. Whether it’s in being consistently reliable at work, or consistently writing on Medium, or consistently overdelivering with your customers, consistency is much more important than one-hit wonders.
4. The extremes are never good. You can’t save 100% of your money unless you are in some special situation. You also shouldn’t spend 100% of your money. Sometimes you should live a little. Sometimes you should be more frugal.
5. Before throwing anything away, see if you can sell it on Kijiji, Craigslist or another second hand store / site.
6. Before shopping online, check to see that there aren’t coupons, discounts, cash back rewards, etc. that you can use. For example: Honey, Rakuten, Amplii are all great.
7. Do you pay off your credit card in full every month? There can be some great credit cards for you with benefits that are amazing. Google “your country” + “best credit card”.
8. Diversification lowers risk. Diversify investments. Diversify income sources.
9. Before making a major purchase (home renovations, car, home, etc.), try to get three quotes so you have something to compare to.
10. Find things that have the best ROI and get them early so you have time to reap the benefits. For example: solar panels, electric vehicles, finding a good mentor, and working for a growing company.
11. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and cold-email people you admire. Usually, you won’t get a response but even getting one response is better than not doing it.
12. Give back to others. You didn’t get to where you are by yourself. Help others get ahead and don’t worry about whether it will pay you back.
13. Be generous with your ideas. A good idea isn’t worth anything without good execution.

Wise

1. The best investment you can make is on yourself. That means books, online courses, certifications, conferences, healthy food and more.
2. A good partner is maybe the second best investment you can make. Because having a bad partner could mean divorce and a loss of 50% of your assets.
3. Used bookstores are incredible. You get access to one of the best resources available for growth at a discount. After visiting dozens of used bookstores in the past year: if you see a book you want, buy it. Don’t worry too much about the price (unless it’s at full price). Don’t think you can get it next time. Don’t think you can get it at another used bookstore. Get it now.
4. While you can try to have it all, it’s often better to focus on one thing at a time.
5. If you have the choice between short-term and long-term, choose the option that gives you a better long-term path. Short-term pain now means long-term benefits later.
6. Willpower is strongest in the mornings. Do the hardest things first thing in the morning.
7. Meditation is to your brain what working out is to your body.
8. Journaling helps slow down time.
9. Just reading doesn’t do anything. You need to read, take notes, reflect, and most importantly, take action.
10. Two is one and one is none. If you only bring one phone charger with you during travel, you don’t have any phone chargers. Bring two.
11. You don’t need to know all the answers. But get into the habit of asking better questions.
12. Being patient is an under-utilized skill. When you’re patient, things happen a lot quicker than when you’re in a rush. Remember fast is slow and slow is fast.
13. You don’t need any money for a world-class education. Your library. Your mentors. Your peers. Your online courses. All of them are free and accessible and within your reach.