Ask HN: What advice would you give to a 20 year old?

Many teens can't wait to grow up an be free, then they reach an age and realize how complicated it can all be.

Do what you love and do not expect the money to follow, or do what pays and lets you afford your hobbies. If you're decent at the latter, there may come a point where you can afford the former.

Probably the best career advice I ever got was "You need to screw up enough to get noticed." That's easier to do when you take risks than when you are on autopilot.

Life is so different now for you than it was for me back in 2010 at 20. However, as far as general life advice goes: if you can’t decide on something, pick up a book and read.

I always liked will smith’s advice which was just “read and run”. Simply taking a walk actually is proven to help recall and memory consolidation. Odds are you already know what to do but you just aren’t aware of it.

Remain in beginner's mind. Assume you know nothing each time you are faced with a new task. Of course, you do know something, and this latent knowledge means it's easier to pick it up. But there should be no categorization like "this is a bad code smell" or "this is the best way to do it".

This is especially important as a 20 year old programmer, where you learn a lot of good practices, which don't apply for some situations or have unseen costs. For example, in many situations, a O(n^2) solution might be as effective as a O(n) solution, especially when n is very small and O(n^2) might cost too much overhead. Or say, hosting on a CDN. Make it a habit to ask yourself each time, do I really need this?

You should still learn best practices wherever possible, but assess whether they're applicable.

Lift heavy weights Take Vitamin D Foster relationships Start investing if you can Experience as much as you can Take risk

Not actionable advice, just a fact. At twenty-something you've got a LONG way to go. You become a different person every 5-10 years of your life.

In my late 40s, I lost everything while working head down on a project. All of a sudden, my entire world was ...GONE. Save every penny you can in gold elsewhere. Switzerland, preferably. They are really good at it...they have been doing it for awhile. Stop spending money on vanity things and save, save, save. You can't fix massive disasters with no money. If I had a trust, I could have called my trust officer and had them put my stuff in storage, arrange a sale for some of it...something. But I had not a penny to my name. Don't let that happen to you. Don't be me.

A couple axioms I live by. Never stop learning. Passion is a myth, so don't worry about not finding or knowing your passions. Practice makes perfect and ultimately turns into passions.

In all, have faith that everything builds towards something. It may take decades to realize that the things you do everyday do add up to a lot over time.

I'll end with an adapted version of my favorite Bill Gates quote. Most people tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in a day and severely underestimate what they can accomplish in a year.

The vast majority of things don't matter. If you see someone nice at a bar, say hi. Ask for her or her number , and actually set up a time to meet. Don't waste your time minelessly chatting with someone via text, or God forbid snapchat. Live in the real world, delete your social media. Don't take anything personally, not everyone's going to like you, and occasionally someone will say something really f*** up to you. This can even be a co-worker, it can be best to shug it off and if the behavior continues to just find another job. A boss demeans you, time to work somewhere else. Life is too short to deal with bad bosses

Also, take time to expand your Social circle. The bigger your Social circle is, the more friends invite you out to social gatherings, the easier it is to find a partner. And if not you made some great friends along the way. All the time I spent clubbing with Friends, was more enjoyable in that I got to enjoy some of their best years. Occasionally I'd meet a girl, but it was a nice bonus on top of an already good night. Likewise I'd go to concerts all the time and I find this works very well for meeting people. But I don't feel ripped off if I went to see one of my favorite bands and I didn't meet my future wife. Life can be best summed up as being happy with where you're at. I've been evicted twice, and with that in mind as long as I got a roof over my head my life is pretty good. I celebrate when I pay my rent, I'm aggressively saving my income up right now to build a nice little cushion in case the economy isn't so hot next year.

The other thing, is you need to be at a healthy weight for people to find you attractive. All this crap about methods, attitudes, whatever crap apps and dating books want to sell you , it's all garbage.

Plus once you lose weight you'll be healthier, happier, there are so many rewards to being at a healthy weight. But it takes work, looking through my fridge dumping out all the soda, and keeping my daily carb intake to around 50 g is very very hard. But it's much harder to be morbidly obese, that was my life up until my early twenties.

To end this, don't waste time on regrets. Just be aware you can't control other people, you can only control who you're around. Most regrets involve meeting someone who wasn't the best person, take a mental note to never be friends with someone like that again. Surround yourself with people who you'd like to become more like. For example if you have one friend who's running an exciting software company, that's a positive influence. If another friend is 35 years old, lives with his mom and doesn't have a job, you need to distance yourself from him fast.

Study psychology now.

Tremendously helpful understanding the various personalities/characters that you will run into throughout life.

I would advise to spend the next 10 years getting as much varied experience as possible, through travel, work, friendships, relationships, self learning and so on. Try to form a broad idea of what you want from your life, and move on that direction. Take opportunities, push yourself, keep an open mind.

Dont get married to an idea or thought - explore, experiment, be flexible when working towards what you want to achieve.

Don’t rent. Live at home and save up for a down payment in your mid to late 20s.

Continue with the best plan you came up with already. If you didn't, invest a good time planning it and keep doing it. Consistency is the key.

Im 26 now i have nothing

Dont waste time

Write jounals every month

Track progressd toward your goal

stop caring what others may think of you

Smoke weed everyday

Exercise a lot