I started writing these blog posts as a way to teach you so many of the things I have learned in life that I wish someone either explained or made me aware of sooner. I want to teach you things that will help you be successful in life. Not just successful in the financial sense. More than anything I want you to find life fulfilling. (Why content/fulfilled over happy?) I want you to live a life YOU can look at now and in 50 years and be proud of. I want you to be able to chase the things you want while also being grateful for what you have.

If I could only teach you about a handful of things, I suppose they would be:

1. A desire to do the right thing, and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. The point of this one is to say that above anything else, I want you to be a good person. I wanted to say "a strong moral compass", but sometimes you can have a strong moral compass and still be lost on the right thing to do because the world is not cut and dry or black and white. There is a lot of grey, unclear areas. I think something very important in life is knowing how to navigate those grey areas. How to decide when to prioritize what is right for the individual over the larger group and vice versa. As well as how to decide when to prioritize what is right in the short term versus what is right in the long term and vice versa. One day I will try to tackle this with a framework and examples. For now, I would say often what is right is what does the least irreparable harm to the least people. And the realization that emotional pain or discomfort should not be prioritized over permanent physical harm and damage. As well as avoiding emotional discomfort should not be prioritized over potentially disastrous long-term societal consequences.
2. Have a growth mindset. Believe that you can change, grow, and become better at anything you put your efforts into. You are not forever locked into who you are today. You are capable of improving at nearly anything. "I'm just not good at that." Really means either "I don't care to put in the effort to get better." Or "I've haven't put enough effort into it to improve significantly". It should never mean "I believe it is impossible for me to get better at it." Because that's simply not the case. Are some people born with natural abilities in certain things that give them a head start? Of course. But ask anyone whether talent or hard work will get you further, and anyone with half a brain will tell you hard work. Remember, you CAN do it. You just haven't learned how yet.
3. Curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, and open-mindedness. I believe that for the most part between curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, open-mindedness, and a growth mindset you can pretty much develop any other desirable trait. It's important it be curious because continuing to learn is how we grow and innovate as individuals and as a society. It also leads us to ask questions, which is incredibly important in creating robust knowledge, trust, understanding, and many more things fundamental to how we interact with our world and how we progress as individuals and a society. It's important for sustained financial success, personal growth, and personal fulfillment. For many of us, curiosity dries up as we get older. We stop trying new things. These leaves us with only the humdrum of daily life. And when everything is simply routine day after day, time blends together and years pass before we know it. Then we ask ourselves how that happened? Well, it happened because we stopped doing new things. What helps lead us into new things? Curiosity. If you want to feel younger longer and slow down the river of time, stay curious. Open-mindedness is important to help ensure that we don't close down view points that challenge our world view or that we disagree with. It is very easy to become emotional and closed off when we hear something we vehemently disagree with or that is in direct opposition to one of our strongly held worldviews. But in order to grow and truly understand something, we need to understand opposing viewpoints. We can't just disregard something because we don't think or believe it's correct or unjust or wrong. We are human. We are not always right. It is fundamentally important to society and to our own growth that we are able to participate in a civilized debate. As well as the ability to overturn or adjust previously views and opinions in light of new facts and information.
4. A strong work ethic and self motivation. I could have put ambition here. But ambition is "a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work". It's great to have that desire, but I believe it's more important to be able to execute on your desires, which requires you to be able to motivate yourself to do the work. If this is not something you have, I believe it is something that can be cultivated. In the same way that muscles can be grown with practice and repetition, so can work ethic. And like making progress in the gym, a key is to have a short and long term plan, breaking things down into steps with progressions. Let's say you have a streak of being horribly unproductive. Well today, if you can get just 15 minutes of work done, you're off to a good start. Add 5 minutes per day for the week. So from Monday to Friday you're up to 35 minutes. Then you have a weekend break. Monday start at 25 and repeat. Many people sit here and say "at this rate I'll never get anything done." Or "just stop being lazy and do the work", but for people who really are struggling to be motivated these small bursts of consistent productivity will help to build the work ethic muscles. So by going 5 days up and 2 days back, which adds 15 minutes to your base daily work time each week, in 16 weeks or about 4 months, you'll be at 4 hours of strong productivity. And no matter what anyone tells you, I promise you that is more than most people get. And if you can make that a strong, focused 4 hours, you'll be far ahead of most people. Who can focus for 4 hours?! You don't have to. You can break that up throughout the day using something like the pomodoro method.
5. Determination and Perseverance. I want you to be able to find the determination to achieve your goals and ambitions no matter how their size may seem to others. When I say this, I truly mean that you should not worry about how your ambitions appear to other people. They may think you are not ambitious enough, they may think you are too ambitious, but regardless of that I hope you have the drive to chase down what you want in life regardless of the obstacles you face along the way. I think this is so important, especially in today's society when it seems that so many people are afraid of and avoid adversity. It seems as soon as things become difficult, people quit. You won't ever achieve anything worthwhile that way. All of the best things in life require effort and overcoming obstacles. As the saying goes, "if it was easy, everyone would do it."
6. The ability to focus on multiple time scales. Today's society is more and more becoming a landscape of distractions, which is increasingly detrimental to our ability to focus. And our ability to focus is directly related to our ability to learn, create, and produce. In other words, being able to focus is a core part of being productive. Now, life isn't about "being productive" in the popular business sense of the word, but I do believe that having a feeling or purpose to drive you is central to living a fulfilling life. In order to find or act on that purpose, you need to be able to focus - on multiple time scales. Short term focus (< 1 day), is focusing on the task at hand. Medium term focus (1 day - 1 year) is sticking to a project. And long-term focus (1 year+) is sticking to a plan or goal. Another example would be short term focus as writing a few pages or a chapter in a sitting. Medium term focus is writing a story arc, which may be multiple chapters to an entire book. Long term focus is writing an entire book or series of books. I wrote more about focus here: https://twitter.com/simplyandyg/status/1400268161614635010. Focus is also important outside the context of productivity. Focusing on your family and friends when you're with them and being present in that moment is incredibly important and the ability to do so stems from a similar place.