21 Lessons From Being 21
I just turned 22. It’s also the end of 2021. This makes it a great time to reflect on what a year has brought by, and I think my year in life being 21 has been one with many changes in my life and my mindset. In this post, I try to outline some significant learnings these changes have brought to me the past year– some new, some that have just been more emphasized to me. I’m still trying to work on properly implementing all of these learnings into my life, but I believe in all the principles they carry (I write more about my principles here):
Your career is one of the biggest ways you can make an impact and help the world. As some of my friends know, I consider myself to be an effective altruist, someone who uses reason and evidence to have the highest possible positive impact. I’m excited to use my career to do that. For this reason, I spent a lot of the past year and a half thinking about my career a little more deeply. I’ve since officialized my career plan change from becoming a clinical doctor to working at impactful organizations.
Where you spend your money matters. I’ve made a lot of reckless and useless purchases over the past year. I find myself feeling most fulfilled when I buy functional items/software that I use every day, order healthy and rewarding food (my favorite is to order Go! Salads during finals week), and donate to effective organizations. I’ve committed to donating at least 10% of my annual allowance/income to effective charities since 2020, and I recommend you to think about doing so too (this may require some thinking and planning, but I think it is great to do so if you can). This year, I’ve donated to global health/animal welfare/climate change/meta-effective altruism charities. For my birthday this year, I am donating to The Humane League, an organization working on campaigns to improve animal welfare & grantmaking to build up the animal advocacy movement in different regions. I didn't organize a fundraiser this year, but if you are interested to donate, you can do so here (if you donate before Dec. 31, your donation will be tripled!).
Thoughts become problems when you think about them. I try to meditate every day for at least 10 minutes. As of December 2021, I’ve meditated for over 365 days, using Headspace. I find that through meditation my state becomes calmer and my moments more mindful. It becomes easier to approach thoughts when I train my mind to know when to let them go.
Working out is more purposeful when the goal is more functional (at least to me). Further, working out truly is important not only for physical health but mental health. I work out 4-7 times a week for at least 30 minutes, doing the activities I enjoy the most, with the simple goal of staying mobile and strong. This was a mindset I acquired from doing sports as a kid. Working out regularly has helped me stay flexible and de-stress. I also think this is so important just to ensure we stay healthy and increase our lifespan (and my sisters and I half-joke, to ensure we are prepped to run away from zombies).
Being plant-based helps your health, animal welfare, and the environment. This was something I firmly believed in since 2014– since then, I started eating plant-based, and this has changed my health significantly. I am now 2/3 vegan, but I intend to increase that next year.
Lead measures > lag measures. Lag measures are those we often aim for, those we see when the performance that leads to them has already passed (e.g. weight loss, X number of books). Lead measures lead to those lag measures (i.e. a proper diet, reading every day). Focusing on the lead measures allows you to stay driven and agile in reaching your goals. This is applicable to habit-building.
Mental health is way more important than you think it is, even if you currently already think it is important. I’ve always cared for mental health, and I aspire to be aware of it and how it affects individuals/collectives. But I only started to realize it to be something more significant when my own mental health started to get worse the past year– it’s something that we really should look out for in ourselves and others.
Netflixing too much without purpose can be unfulfilling. For a large portion of the past year, I Netflixed endlessly. This took up a lot of my time and led to me reading less than I probably would have this year if I spent that time on books instead. For this reason, I weaned myself off of Netflix in the latter part of the year and found myself doing more things and reading more.
Growth happens more from going out of your comfort zone than merely reflecting. Both are important, but more comes out from stepping out to experience the world. This thought struck me from this tweet. I found my self started to develop more once I started pushing myself to talk to people or do things that initially scared me (e.g. taking a leadership position, talking to people you think wouldn’t be available to talk to you, becoming braver about a well-thought-out plan).
Improving your rationality does not lead to a more boring life. It allows you to see the world as it is, not as how you think it should be (Highly recommend “The Scout Mindset” by Julia Galef to go into this with more detail). This in fact leads to a more exciting life, since you know that you are not hindered by your biases.
Reading the news is wildly beneficial. Everyday routines can become very mundane, and holing up with the same scenery can lead you to forget how much is happening around the rest of the world. Reading the news reminds you that the world is bigger than you are, and it helps you pick up more puzzle pieces of life. At the same time, you should be mindful about it– some people can feel very pessimistic or negative when they read the news, and I guess sometimes this is pretty justified. However, I think it’s important to be a pro-active world citizen, and reading the news helps you be that.
Education is more important than school; these are not necessarily mutually exclusive. We learn more once we prioritize learning over only grades. Once I decide to care more about education, I end up making the most out of my classes (hence get better grades ~ this is kinda cf. #6), consuming articles/books/other content outside of academics, and having better conversations with people ~ all of which allow me to learn more, the whole point of education.
Feedback is important, being receptive to feedback is even more so. I have been terrible at receiving feedback across my life. I can be very stubborn in thinking I have always done things the right way. This was such a terrible and toxic mindset of mine– it impeded a lot of opportunities for me to learn from others. (I am still trying to work on generally being more gracious when people give me feedback– professionally and personally. I think I just acknowledge it a bit more now.)
You don’t really have to document everything. I am pretty adamant with ensuring I journal or take notes on everything– and while this can be helpful (helps you recall things quickly) it can in fact make the experience less... experienced, I guess. It also makes you think that before doing something, you need to have it documented. This led me to type too much during quarantine, and I believe was a big factor that brought me repetitive strain injury (RSI). RSI has led me to firmly establish that: (#15)
Ergonomics is SO IMPORTANT! Since September 2020, I have developed RSI. This has been a huge impediment to my productivity, making working very unattractive. I have since been obsessed with ergonomics; trying my best to optimize my workspace, doing stretches I’ve learned from therapy, taking frequent breaks, etc. I want to write about what I’ve done to manage RSI soon.
Never stop acknowledging your privilege. I know that because of my privilege I have a safety net for most of the risks I take, and I am ever so grateful for that. Acknowledging my privilege also helps me remember that: (#17)
Not everyone thinks the way you do. It took me a while to realize this, and I think it’s something I should think about more often. Everyone has different contexts. And while this does not mean that every single person’s view of the world is always right (e.g. we wouldn’t call harmful or discriminatory views right), it means that they should all be taken into account before performing judgments or expecting people to agree with you 100%. Understanding this mindset helps you to realize that it may be easy for person A to have a certain opinion, but hard for person B to share that same opinion (e.g. for person A to be fine with the patriarchy if it benefits them; whereas person B is not fine with it, because person B is harmed by the patriarchy).
The long-term future is very neglected. I’m very passionate about “nearer-term” causes, like global health and development, animal welfare, etc. I focus a lot of my efforts here, and it’s currently where my career is focused on. After reading a book about the future of humanity (called The Precipice) though, I find caring for the longer-term future (not just decades from now, but hundreds of thousands of years from now) to be pretty compelling, and I hope more people can care about this. (There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to prioritizing causes, but I won’t go into that here.)
Approaching conversations in good faith allows it to be a more fruitful one (and helps you have fewer fights). When I take part in a conversation being stubborn about my opinions, it usually goes nowhere. Realizing that a conversation is an N-way thing helps you add various perspectives together (including your own) to reach a common goal or a conclusion; sometimes that being a conclusion that there is in fact, no conclusion.
Learning via audio is very efficient. Many podcasts (like the 80,000 Hours Podcast) can teach you a lot, even whilst you do chores, administrative work, etc. I generally pay less attention and take fewer notes with audio-based content, but I’m trying to work on this since I realized that there is a better trade-off to consuming more content vs. less just because you can’t take notes (cf. #14).
And finally, being unapologetic with you are allows you to feel freer and empowered to live life to the fullest. The past year has made me feel more in touch with who I am as a person. I used to be shy about my quirks and my weird/awkward sides, or certain aspects of my personality (e.g. seeming to be the stereotypical “wholesome” girl). I’ve been learning to embrace the different areas of who I am, and this has led me to find better friends, build closer relationships, and deep-dive into what I care about without worrying too much about people’s opinions. I think this is very empowering, and I’m excited to be even more unapologetic this year. (Caveat: I think that it’s important to be unapologetic with who you are, but also important to not be unapologetic of your actions/beliefs if they hurt others.)
