Advice · Patrick Collison

By all means make friends but being weird as a teenager is generally good.

Make things. Operating in a space with a lot of uncertainty is a very different experience to learning something.

Make sure that the things you're pursuing are weird things that you want to pursue, not whatever the standard path is. Heuristic: do your friends at school think your path is a bit strange? If not, maybe it's too normal.

If you think something is important but people older than you don't hold it in high regard, there's a reasonable chance that you're right and they're wrong.

If you're 20–30: I don't know yet. I plan to think about this when I'm 35-40.

Make friends over the internet with people who are great at things you're interested in. The internet is one of the biggest advantages you have over prior generations. Leverage it.

Go deep on things. Become an expert. In particular, try to go deep on multiple things.

If you're 10–20: These are prime years!

To the extent that you enjoy working hard, do.