33 Lessons From 33 Years

Some things I've come to believe thus far

In the days leading up to my birthday, I spend some time reflecting on the year prior: the lessons learned, people met, and decisions made. I reflect to make sure the map I’m still using is correct, and that I’m still heading in the direction I intend to. If there are any modifications I need to make at this point, I can resolve to make them now.

What follows is this year’s reflection. Made on my 33rd birthday—a small list of Things I’ve Come to Believe Thus far.

1. Happiness is not the highest good.

2. Technology is designed to alleviate discomfort—and despite what they tell you, discomfort is not a bad thing.

3. If I could go back in time, and tell my younger self two things, it would be cultivate your sense of taste, and focus on developing your reputation.

4. You don’t really learn anything new at work. Instead, work is the practical application of learnings you have consolidated elsewhere.

5. My ability to write has become my most lucrative skill. With the emergence of AI writing, I believe it will only become more so.

6. It is in everyone’s best interest for you to become apathetic to the world—everyone but your own.

7. Writer’s block is not from a fear of perfection, or a disconnection from creativity, it’s simply a lack of having something to say.

8. Always take notes. Don’t think about it, just do it.

9. If you wouldn’t buy it, you shouldn’t sell it.

10. Truly meaningful opportunities will be around tomorrow. If you ever feel pressured into seizing an opportunity right now, it’s a strong signal that you’re about to get fucked.

11. Stop asking your friends to Venmo you. Just be an adult and pick up the tab. “I got this time, you get next time”, is a much better way of living.

12. Building a career, and building a reputation around a skillset is actually kind of fun. Cultivating that expertise is—for many of us—the closest we’ll get to traditional notions of craftsmanship.

13. With one really well written email, you can get an interview at any company you want. You might not get the job, but you can get the interview. I’ve done this thrice.

14. A friend once told me that they attribute 90% of all their career success to being good looking. The way we look plays a much larger role in our lives than we’re willing to admit. It’s not the way things should be but it’s the way things are. I think: A great smile, a healthy tan, manicured facial hair (men), and a confident personal style are the four areas that make the most profound impact.

15. You can create a vibrant ecosystem of friends in under a year if you care to. And by the way, you should care to. Not only will your life become immeasurably better, but so will the lives of the people you meet.

16. Capitalism loves to make things that are very simple seem very complex.

17. Find a group of friends who are smarter, kinder, more thoughtful, and more generous than you are. Spend all your time charming them so they’ll let you stick around. With enough time, you’ll start assimilating to their ways, and stop being such a piece of shit. (Thanks guys)

18. Most people who appear happy online are unhappy. Most people who don’t appear online, are loving life.

19. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating—Take some time to develop your own personal style. To do so is to willfully study art, history, culture, technology, fashion, and aesthetics. It's to make life light, while romanticizing yourself.

20. So much of society is about solving problems we’ve created.

21. Human curated, slow media, is the only media for me. I want to read essays from real people, who spend all their time deeply entrenched in topics that interest them. I don’t care whatsoever about media who’s origins was algorithmically lucrative.

22. A fireplace is a helluva drug.

23. Creativity, like fitness, this is not something you can just get around to when you get around to it. If you don’t make a concerted effort to commune with the creative side of yourself, you will find it increasingly hard to do so in the future.

24. Learning to enjoy all the seasons, to me, is as good a definition as any for enlightenment.

25. Get off social media—please God I’m begging you. I spent so much of this year weaning myself off, and I now feel so much lighter and clear. Trust me, your life will be demonstrably better when you no longer have a direct hotline to Mark Zuckerberg’s Digital Opium Den in your pocket.

26. Cultivate the mental stamina to read hard things. If you can’t endure difficult texts, difficult conversations, or difficult movies—you will, by default, end up consuming media designed to satisfy the absolute lowest common denominator. You deserve better.

27. Traditions have a purpose. To let them die, is to allow the world to become a homogeneous slosh of mashed potatoes. And when I say tradition, I don’t just mean some far off, abstract notion of “indigenous peoples”—I mean your grandma’s kugel recipe too. Learn that shit. Don’t just let generations of culinary craft get replaced by some TikTok influencer’s recipe.

28. Being healthy is actually really simple. Just be a normal person. Eat real food, go outside, move your body every day. Again, simple things become complicated when money gets involved.

29. There’s a difference between being a Nerd and being a Dork. Nerds are unapologetically who they are. They act with a sincerity that is fundamentally cool. Dorks however have no conviction. They’re trend surfers, driven by a desperate need for acceptance, and devoid of a true sense of self—which is decidedly uncool. Don’t be a Dork.¹

30. Happiness is not on the other side of quitting your job and moving to a remote cabin to do creative work. I know a handful of people who have actually tried it. They barely got anything done, and they’re still unhappy. Why? Because as the old saying goes: Wherever you go, there you are.

31. We all just want to be loved, and nearly everything we do is in an attempt to secure that love. Life gets real easy once you have it. It gets even easier when you realize you don’t need it from everyone, just one or two really great people is enough.

32. People with a dogmatic insistence—that their perspective alone is the one through which the world should be viewed—will, in due time, find themselves completely alone. Rigid and uncompromising beliefs run counter to friendship, social cohesion, peace, trust, and even truth.

33. Genuinely caring about what you do, what you make, and how you spend your time is incredibly cool. Indifference is not—in fact, indifference is antithetical to life.

—Zac

If you’d like to read some more, here are my reflections from last year.

If you made it all the way down here and don’t feel that you just wasted five minutes, please consider hitting the like button on this essay.

It helps others find it, and it makes me happy!

1. I think I heard McConaughey say something along these lines once.