46 thoughts on my 46th birthday

Inspired by Kevin Kel­ly’s 68 Bits of Unso­licit­ed Advice, here are 46 thoughts which occur to me on my 46^th birth­day.

These are not the most impor­tant things I believe nor are they ranked. They’re what came to mind, and I offer them in the hope you’ll find at least one or two nuggets use­ful. Yes, I am aware that many of these are not orig­i­nal to me.

1. Lead­ers should be exam­ples and not excep­tions. Don’t impose rules upon oth­ers you are not will­ing to fol­low your­self.
2. When you’re look­ing for men­tors, look for peo­ple at least a decade old­er than you who have suc­ceed­ed in at least two dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments. Some­one who suc­ceed­ed once often has a hard time dis­tin­guish­ing what was luck ver­sus what was wise. Some­one who has suc­ceed­ed more than once is more like­ly to have learned prin­ci­ples.
3. Wis­dom is want­i­ng the right things, know­ing how to get them, and pur­su­ing them whole­heart­ed­ly.
4. There are two ways to gain wis­dom: from your own expe­ri­ence or from the expe­ri­ence of oth­ers. Do as much of the lat­ter as you can. Read wide­ly, talk to inter­est­ing peo­ple, and in gen­er­al be a sponge for wis­dom.
5. Ask peo­ple who have what you want how they got it. For exam­ple, I see sin­gle peo­ple talk­ing to each oth­er all the time about how to tell if some­one is right for them or not. That’s fine, but also ask some­one who is hap­pi­ly mar­ried how they made their deci­sion. I see new par­ents give one anoth­er advice on child rear­ing philoso­phies. I sup­pose that’s inevitable, but also ask the par­ents of admirable teenagers or grown chil­dren what they did.
6. Peo­ple on the left dis­trust big busi­ness. Peo­ple on the right dis­trust big gov­ern­ment. Maybe we should be sus­pi­cious of all big insti­tu­tions and make sure they have prop­er checks and bal­ances.
7. Most peo­ple who dis­agree with you polit­i­cal­ly are rea­son­able peo­ple who have had dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences than you.
8. No mat­ter what you believe (about reli­gion, about pol­i­tics, about some issue with­in your pro­fes­sion), there are peo­ple smarter and bet­ter-informed than you who dis­agree with you. That doesn’t mean you are wrong, but it does mean you should be hum­ble.
9. Amer­i­ca real­ly is a remark­able nation. Love it enough to keep improv­ing it.
10. The deli­cious­ness of a cui­sine is gen­er­al­ly pro­por­tion­al to the num­ber of peo­ple who eat that cui­sine at home. This is why Chi­nese food is bet­ter than British food.
11. The best hand­ful of books on a sub­ject can teach you most of what you need to know about it. You can often find great books on a sub­ject by googling “SUBJECT syl­labus” and skim­ming through four or five col­lege syl­labi and not­ing recur­ring titles.
12. In col­lege take pro­fes­sors not class­es. Find the best pro­fes­sors and take what­ev­er they are teach­ing.
13. You are not oblig­at­ed to fin­ish a book sim­ply because you began it. Give a book 100 pages minus your age to grab your atten­tion.
14. The con­sen­sus view of well-informed peo­ple is usu­al­ly right, but when it is wrong it is huge­ly wrong.
15. The cost of main­te­nance is far less than the cost of repair. Change the oil, brush your teeth, stay in shape, etc.  When rel­e­vant, put recur­ring main­te­nance tasks on your cal­en­dar.
16. When a task is impor­tant, get the tools you need to do it right. Don’t just get by with some­thing that sort of works.
17. Just get start­ed. Imple­ment and iter­ate. Begin­ning on a grade B plan now is (usu­al­ly) bet­ter than wait­ing to devise a grade A plan you can start on next year. If you just begin with an okay plan and improve it as you go along you’ll be doing some­thing far supe­ri­or a year from now than if you spent end­less hours dream­ing about The Best Way. The big excep­tion is things that are not eas­i­ly reversible (like tear­ing down a wall in a house – spend as much time think­ing that one through as you need).
18. Mon­ey is a tool. Like all tools, there are a lot of prob­lems it can’t solve. But the prob­lems it can solve it solves very effec­tive­ly. Go read the Red­dit per­son­al finance wiki.
19. Accept that writ­ing is revis­ing. It is okay if your first draft is hor­ri­ble. Just get your thoughts down onto paper and then you can work to make them bet­ter.
20. Life is the lab­o­ra­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy. Just as in sci­ence, lots of the­o­ries sound good until they are put to the test. You will dis­cov­er that some things can be thought but not lived and you should reject them.
21. Be gen­er­ous. Not only is it kind, it is pru­dent.
22. A Chris­t­ian is some­one who believes in the res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus from the grave and lives in light of its impli­ca­tions. Real­iz­ing Jesus has risen changes every­thing.
23. Every­one is amaz­ing, at least poten­tial­ly. If you can’t see the awe­some (or the poten­tial) in some­one you prob­a­bly don’t know them well enough yet.
24. A fail­ure to appre­ci­ate beau­ty is a moral fail­ing. If you can’t see the beau­ty in some­thing that many oth­ers can, try to fig­ure out why. It may expose an area of poten­tial growth.
25. Beliefs dri­ve behav­ior. If you want to change the way you act, first change the way you think.
26. All behav­ior makes sense. If some­one does some­thing you don’t under­stand it is because they were think­ing some­thing you find incom­pre­hen­si­ble. To them it seemed like their best option. Fig­ur­ing out what they were think­ing doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly excuse their behav­ior, but it does make it sen­si­ble.
27. Root for your team to win, not for the oth­er team to lose.
28. Chester­ton was right: no one should be allowed to remove a fence who can­not explain why it was put there in the first place.
29. In your pro­fes­sion there are a hand­ful of peo­ple you should stalk. You are look­ing for peo­ple who have the same basic strengths as you but who are oper­at­ing at a high­er lev­el with them than you are. Read every­thing they’ve writ­ten, lis­ten to every speech they’ve giv­en, and talk to every­one who knows them. If befriend­ing them is pos­si­ble, go for it.
30. Some­day you will stand before the Judge, so don’t play the fool with Him now. Fear God like you fear elec­tric­i­ty or fire — respect His pow­er.
31. Try­ing to be cool is like apply­ing for an off-brand cred­it card. Even if you attain it, you can’t spend it any­where it mat­ters.
32. For my fel­low min­is­ters: the pur­pose of a ser­mon is to help peo­ple believe, under­stand, and obey God’s Word. You prob­a­bly nat­u­ral­ly empha­size one of these – be sure to delib­er­ate­ly include the oth­er two as well. Strive to preach so that your mes­sage is per­sua­sive to a skep­tic, com­pre­hen­si­ble to a new believ­er, and applic­a­ble to dai­ly life.
33. A few years ago I heard some­one say you should argue like you are right and lis­ten like you are wrong. That’s pret­ty good advice.
34. Bad news is like milk not wine; it does not improve with age. Open that bill, read that let­ter from the IRS, respond to that “we need to talk” text. You can only find the way out once you know where you’re start­ing from.
35. Are you sin­gle? A first date is only an inter­view for a sec­ond date, so if in doubt ask them out. Have you been asked out? If in doubt, say yes. The ques­tion is not: “Do I think I could mar­ry them?” The ques­tion is: “Do I find them inter­est­ing enough to want to spend a few hours with?” The thresh­old for going from date 1 to 2 is a lit­tle high­er, and from 2 to 3 is high­er yet.
36. Foot­notes are bet­ter than end notes. Side notes rule them all.
37. There are a few books and authors you will see men­tioned repeat­ed­ly by the authors you respect the most. Lev­el up and begin read­ing the authors your authors are read­ing.
38. Los­ing weight is very hard for some peo­ple, but don’t assume it is for you until you try it. Resolve that you will be okay with feel­ing hun­gry and set a sim­ple rule that you fol­low ruth­less­ly. For me, I decid­ed that I would not eat more than 600 calo­ries at any meal and that I would only eat three meals a day with no snacks. It worked real­ly well.
39. One of the keys to a good beard is shav­ing your neck. Avoid neck hair.
40. Inter­na­tion­al stu­dents are amaz­ing peo­ple. They left every­thing behind in pur­suit of knowl­edge. Get to know them and be excel­lent hosts to them.
41. For­give­ness is about eras­ing debts. If you for­give a loan, that means that you don’t expect it to be repaid. Like­wise, to for­give an offense is to give up your expec­ta­tion it will be made right. When you have a hard time for­giv­ing some­one, ask your­self what it is that you believe you are owed. You might dis­cov­er you are still hold­ing on to expec­ta­tions (of an apol­o­gy, of resti­tu­tion, of changed behav­ior, of vengeance, of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, etc). Put your expec­ta­tions behind you and move on. If you find you can’t, pray for God to help you. If you can’t even do that then pray, “Lord, I am not yet will­ing to for­give them. But I am will­ing to be made will­ing. Help me.”
42. For­give­ness is not the same as rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. You can for­give some­one with­out trust­ing them again.
43. Not every­one should mar­ry. Sin­gle­ness is a noble lifestyle. How­ev­er, most peo­ple will mar­ry and who you mar­ry will wind up being far more impor­tant than what you do for a liv­ing. Do you know what you call a CEO with a fail­ing mar­riage? Mis­er­able. If you spend a ton of ener­gy and time prepar­ing for a high-impact career while assum­ing that a good mar­riage will just hap­pen you are being fool­ish.
44. Cal­en­dars are bet­ter than to-do lists. When you get a task, put it on your cal­en­dar. If there’s no time on your cal­en­dar you’re just mak­ing a false promise by putting that task on your to-do list.
45. Avoid temp­ta­tion. When temp­ta­tion does come your way, flee. Resist­ing temp­ta­tion is a fool’s game. Just as flow­ing water wears down rock, so con­stant temp­ta­tion can wear down the strongest willpow­er.
46. We are sup­posed to wor­ship God, love peo­ple, and use things. But we often wor­ship things and use peo­ple or we idol­ize peo­ple and love things. Keep God first and every­thing else will fall to its prop­er place.