101 things I would tell my self from 10 years ago

direction I want my life to go. So heed some encouragement and caveats from your 80-year-old self. Write a letter from ‘future you’ to ‘current you’. What will they tell you to do with your life? What will they think about where you are right now? What would they plead with you to change?

So the best advice I can give a fifteen-year-old stuck in an outdated school somewhere in Mexico, India, or Alabama is: don’t rely on the adults too much. Most of them mean well, but they just don’t understand the world. In the past, it was a relatively safe bet to follow the adults, because they knew the world quite well, and the world changed slo

1. Don’t confuse what you wish were true with what is really true. 2. Don’t worry about looking good—worry instead about achieving your goals. 3. Don’t overweight first-order consequences relative to second- and third-order ones. 4. Don’t let pain stand in the way of progress. 5. Don’t blame bad outcomes on anyone but yourself.

Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that the way to succeed is through following "the rules." In fact most such rules are just hacks to manage large groups efficiently.