#25 🧭💡 Life lessons from Kevin Kelly
Dear readers,
Here is a selection from a long list of life lessons from Kevin Kelly.
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.
They resonated with me and I’m sharing the selection with the hope they will inspire you as well. Our personal strategy is guided by the stories that we tell ourselves, so modern “proverbs” like these might influence your own way forward.
Highlights mine:
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.
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 of any kind. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic.
Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. Everything you need to master the lesson is within you. Once you have truly learned a lesson, you will be presented with the next one. If you are alive, that means you still have lessons to learn.
If winning becomes too important in a game, change the rules to make it more fun. Changing rules can become the new game.
Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.
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.
Half the skill of being educated is learning what you can ignore.
(…) when you create things that only you — with your unique talents and experience — can do, then you are absolutely not an imposter. You are the ordained. It is your duty to work on things that only you can do.
You cannot get smart people to work extremely hard just for money.
You can’t reason someone out of a notion that they didn’t reason themselves into.
The only productive way to answer “what should I do now?” is to first tackle the question of “who should I become?”
Purchase the most recent tourist guidebook to your home town or region. You’ll learn a lot by playing the tourist once a year.
(…) Do you make what you know will sell or try something new?
The optimal balance for exploring new things vs exploiting them once found is: 1/3. Spend 1/3 of your time on exploring 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.
When you are stuck, explain your problem to others. Often simply laying out a problem will present a solution. Make “explaining the problem” part of your troubleshooting process.
Don't bother fighting the old; just build the new.
If you repeated what you did today 365 more 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, throw out things in your life that don’t spark joy any longer in order to make room for those that 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 the things you are not interested in.
Rather than steering your life to avoid surprises, aim directly for them.
If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your opinions on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology. When you truly think for yourself your conclusions will not be predictable.
The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.
Remain astonished,
Bülent