103 Points of Wisdom, The Present of You

Life lessons will be presented to you in the order needed. Everything you need to master the address is within you. Once you have truly learned a class, you will be presented with the next one. If you are alive, that means you still have lessons to learn. – Kevin Kelly

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or whenever you find time to review these letters that become words that become thoughts and ideas. I had a good day yesterday; I did one of my favorite things, I walked my dog.  Then I headed up to our office and worked on a couple of projects.

I bought the team Basa Fish sandwiches from Calipers Fish Market and was reminded there are very few things in life better than a good fish sandwich.  I headed home and worked until 6:00, when my wife arrived to pick me up and drive me to see Baby Bo.  Her mother was over, made a delicious dinner, and we hung out before coming home and heading to bed.

I have another day of project work; I asked my wife to take off this afternoon; she has been working very hard; I’m a little worried. She is covering for our daughter, who is out on Maternity; we will take some time and enjoy some “us” time today.

My friend Nate sent me something I thought I would share; it’s long, so bear with me, and if you choose to skim it, I understand, but I would recommend you read every word. It’s from a 70-year-old man named Kevin Kelly, and I think he does an excellent job of reminding us of what is essential in life.  

Today is my birthday. I turn 70. I’ve learned a few things so far that might be helpful to others. For the past few years, I’ve jotted down bits of unsolicited advice each year, and much to my surprise, I have more to add this year. So here is my birthday gift to you all: 103 bits of wisdom I wish I had known when I was young.

• About 99% of the time, the right time is right now.

• No one is as impressed with your possessions as you are.

• Don’t ever work for someone you don’t want to become.

• Cultivate 12 people who love you because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you.

• Don’t keep making the same mistakes; try to make new ones.

• If you stop to listen to a musician or street performer for more than a minute, you owe them a dollar.

• Anything you say before the word “but” does not count.

• When you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves.

• Courtesy costs nothing. Lower the toilet seat after use. Let the people in the elevator exit before you enter. Return shopping carts to their designated areas. When you borrow something, return it in better shape (filled up, cleaned) than when you got it.

• Whenever there is an argument between two sides, find the third side.

• Efficiency is highly overrated; Goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals, vacations, breaks, aimless walks, and time off are essential for top performance. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic.

• When you lead, your real job is to create more leaders, not more followers.

• Criticize in private, praise in public.

• Life lessons will be presented to you in the order needed. Everything you need to master the address is within you. Once you have truly learned a class, you will be presented with the next one. If you are alive, that means you still have lessons to learn.

• It is the duty of a student to get everything out of a teacher and the responsibility of a teacher to get everything out of a student.

• If winning becomes too crucial in a game, change the rules to make it more fun. Changing rules can become the new game.

• Ask funders for money, and they’ll give you advice, but ask for advice, and they’ll give you money.

• Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible; instead, strive for better functions that you never want to stop doing.

• Immediately pay what you owe to vendors, workers, and contractors. Next time, they will go out of their way to work with you.

• The biggest lie we tell ourselves is, “I don’t need to write this down because I will remember it.”

• Your growth as a conscious being is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have.

• Speak confidently as if you are right, but listen carefully as if you are wrong.

• Handy measure: the distance between your fingertips of your outstretched arms at shoulder level is your height.

• The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which are way more important than what you occasionally do.

• Making art is not selfish; it’s for the rest of us. If you don’t do your thing, you are cheating us.

• Never ask a woman if she is pregnant. Let her tell you if she is.

• Three things you need: The ability to not give up something till it works, the ability to give up something that does not work, and the trust in other people to help you distinguish between the two.

• When public speaking, pause frequently. Pause before you say something in a new way, pause after you have said something you believe is essential, and stay as a relief to let listeners absorb details.

• There is no such thing as being “on time.” You are either late, or you are early. Your choice.

• Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their primary goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.

• The best way to get a correct answer on the internet is to post a wrong reply and wait for someone to correct you.

• You’ll get 10x better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially children and animals.

• Spend as much time crafting the subject line of an email as the message itself because the subject line is often the only thing people read.

• Don’t wait for the storm to pass; dance in the rain.

• When checking references for a job applicant, employers may be reluctant or prohibited from saying anything negative, so leave or send a message that says, “Get back to me if you highly recommend this applicant as super great.” If they don’t reply, take that as a negative.

• Use a password manager: Safer, more accessible, better.

• Half the skill of being educated is learning what you can ignore.

• The advantage of a ridiculously ambitious goal is that it sets the bar very high, so even in failure, it may be a success measured by the ordinary.

• A great way to understand yourself is to reflect on everything you find irritating in others seriously.

• Keep all your things visible in a hotel room, not in drawers, all gathered in one spot. That way, you’ll never leave anything behind. If you need something like a charger off to the side, place a couple of other significant items next because you are less likely to leave three things behind than just one.

• Denying or deflecting a compliment is rude. Accept it with thanks, even if you believe it is not deserved.

• Always read the plaque next to the monument.

• When you have some success, the feeling of being an imposter can be natural. Who am I fooling? But when you create things that only you can do with your unique talents and experience, you are not an imposter. You are ordained. It would help if you worked on something that only you can do.

• What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.

• Make stuff that is good for people to have.

• When you open paint, even a tiny bit, it will always find its way to your clothes no matter how careful you are. Dress accordingly.

• To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave.

• You cannot get intelligent people to work extremely hard just for money.

• When you don’t know how much to pay someone for a particular task, ask them “what would be fair,” Their answer usually is.

• 90% of everything is crap. If you think you don’t like opera, romance novels, TikTok, country music, vegan food, or NFTs, keep trying to see if you can find the 10% that is not crap.

• You will be judged on how well you treat those who can do nothing for you.

• We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. Miraculous things can be accomplished if you give it ten years. A long game will compound small gains to overcome even big mistakes.

• Thank the teacher who changed your life.

• You can’t reason someone out of a notion they didn’t assert themselves into.

• Your best job will be one that you were unqualified for because it stretches you. Only apply to jobs you are unable for.

• Buy used books. They have the exact words as the new ones. Also libraries.

• You can be whatever you want, so be the person who ends meetings early.

• A wise man said, “Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself, “Is it true?” At the second gate, ask, “Is it necessary?” At the third gate, ask, “Is it kind?”

• Take the stairs.

• What you pay for something is at least twice the listed price because of the energy, time, and money needed to set it up, learn, maintain, repair, and dispose of at the end. Not all prices appear on labels. Actual costs are 2x listed prices.

• When you arrive at your room in a hotel, locate the emergency exits. It only takes a minute.

• The only productive way to answer “what should I do now?” is first to tackle the question of “who should I become?”

• Average returns sustained over an above-average period yield extraordinary results. Buy and hold.

• It’s thrilling to be highly polite to rude strangers.

• It’s possible that a not-so-competent person, who can communicate well, can do much better than a super-intelligent person who can’t speak well. That is good news because it is much easier to improve your communication skills than your intelligence.

• Getting cheated occasionally is the small price for trusting the best of everyone because when you rely on the best of others, they generally treat you best.

• Art is whatever you can get away with.

• For the best results with your children, spend only half the money you think you should, but double the time with them.

• Purchase the most recent tourist guidebook for your hometown or region. You’ll learn a lot by playing the tourist once a year.

• Don’t wait in line to eat something famous. It is rarely worth the wait.

• To rapidly reveal the true character of a person you just met, move them onto an abysmally slow internet connection. Observe.

• Prescription for popular success: do something strange. Make a habit of your weird.

• Be a pro. Back up your back up. Have at least one physical backup and one backup in the cloud. Have more than one of each. How much would you pay to retrieve all your data, photos, and notes, if you lost them? Backups are cheap compared to regrets.

• Don’t believe everything you think you think.

• To signal an emergency, use the rule of three; 3 shouts, three horn blasts, or three whistles.

• At a restaurant, do you order what you know is excellent or try something new? Do you make what you know will sell or try something new? Do you keep dating new folks or attempt to commit to someone you have already met? The optimal balance for exploring new things vs. exploiting them once found is 1/3. Spend 1/3 of your time on researching and 2/3 time on deepening. It is harder to devote time to exploring as you age because it seems unproductive, but aim for 1/3.

• Actual great opportunities do not have “Great Opportunities” in the subject line.

• When introduced to someone, make eye contact and count to 4. You’ll both remember each other.

• Take note if you wonder, “Where is my good knife? Or, where is my good pen?” That means you have bad ones. Get rid of those.

• When you are stuck, explain your problem to others. Often simply laying out a situation will present a solution. Make “explaining the problem” part of your troubleshooting process.

• When buying a garden hose, an extension cord, or a ladder, get one substantially longer than you think you need. It’ll be the correct size.

• Don’t bother fighting the old; build the new.

• Your group can achieve great things beyond your means by showing people that they are appreciated.

• When someone tells you about the peak year of human history when things were good before things went downhill, it will always be the years when they were ten years old — which is the peak of any human’s existence.

• You are as big as the things that make you angry.

• When speaking to an audience, it’s better to fix your gaze on a few people than to “spray” your look across the room. Your eyes telegraph to others whether you believe what you are saying.

• Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout.

• When negotiating, don’t aim for a more significant piece of the pie; strive to create a bigger pie.

• If you repeated what you did today 365 times, will you be where you want to be next year?

• You see only 2% of another person, and they see only 2% of you. Attune yourselves to the hidden 98%.

• Your time and space are limited. Remove, give away, and throw out things in your life that no longer spark joy to make room for those who do.

• Our descendants will achieve things that will amaze us, yet a portion of what they will create could have been made with today’s materials and tools if we had had the imagination. Think bigger.

• For a great payoff, be especially curious about what you are not interested in.

• Focus on directions rather than destinations. Who knows their destiny? But maintain the right direction, and you’ll arrive at where you want to go.

• Every breakthrough is at first laughable. It will not be a breakthrough if it does not start foolish and absurd.

• If you loan someone $20 and never see them again because they avoid paying you back, it is worth $20.

• Copying others is an excellent way to start. Copying yourself is a disappointing way to end.

• The best time to negotiate your salary for a new job is the moment AFTER they say they want you, and not before. Then it becomes a game of chicken for each side to name an amount first, but it is to your advantage to get them to give a number before you do.

• Rather than steering your life to avoid surprises, aim directly for them.

• Don’t purchase extra insurance if you rent a car with a credit card.

• If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your views on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology. When you genuinely think for yourself, your conclusions will not be predictable.

• Aim to die broke. Give to your beneficiaries before you die; it’s more fun and valuable. Spend it all. Your last check should go to the funeral home, and it should bounce.

• The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.

Well, was it worth the investment of time? I have read it a couple of times; it might be a good thing to bookmark and return to now and then. Wisdom is a gift, as is art, as are you. Enjoy the present you are to our world. Enjoy the day; I will. See you tomorrow.

Life lessons will be presented to you in the order needed. Everything you need to master the address is within you. Once you have truly learned a class, you will be presented with the next one. If you are alive, that means you still have lessons to learn. – Kevin Kelly