Category: Growth

What I’d Tell a 21-Year-Old Now

My niece is turning 21 in a couple of weeks. That milestone prompted me to go back and read a post I wrote in 2013 called Advice for a New 21-Year-Old.

Reading it now, I still stand behind it. But a lot has changed in the world and in me since then. A 21-year-old stepping into adulthood today faces a different landscape than the one I was writing about then. After more than a decade of watching young people navigate it, I think an update is in order.

Back in 2013, I intentionally opened with drinking and gambling. Those are two of the classic threshold items attached to turning 21. Things the world suddenly says you’re allowed to do.

Turning 21 feels significant in part because it comes with new freedoms. New access. New choices. New opportunities to say yes to things that used to be off limits.

But if I were to distill what I want to say today, it’s this:

The most important part of turning 21 isn’t what you’re allowed to do. It’s what you’re responsible for doing with your new freedom.

On Drinking

Back in 2013, I wrote specifically about types of alcohol, mixing drinks, drinking water between drinks, and a few other practical things. The tips were fun, and I meant them. But what I was really trying to say was simpler.

Don’t let alcohol become the thing that teaches you who you are.

A 21-year-old can easily mistake access for maturity. Being allowed to drink is one thing. Knowing how to carry yourself is another.

If you choose to drink, stay in charge of yourself. Stay aware. Stay responsible. Don’t confuse recklessness with fun, or excess with adulthood.

There’s nothing impressive about losing control, hurting people, damaging your future, or building habits that begin as entertainment and slowly become dependence.

Freedom says you can. Wisdom says you don’t always have to.

On Gambling

Gambling is worth talking about, less for the casino tips and more for what it teaches us about life.

A lot of life will tempt you into thinking you can outsmart systems that were built to profit from your confidence. Sometimes that system is a casino. Sometimes it’s consumer debt. Sometimes it’s a flashy investment story. Sometimes it’s just your own belief that you’re the exception to every warning sign.

Understand the odds. Understand the incentives. Understand that some games were built for you to lose slowly enough that you keep playing.

That lesson applies far beyond cards, dice, and slot machines.

On Money

At 21, your income may still be modest. Your savings may be thin. But your financial decisions aren’t any less meaningful.

This is the age when you should begin learning how money actually works.

Learn how to live below your means. Save at least 10% of your income, always. Learn how savings accumulate and compound over time. Einstein called compound interest the most powerful force in the universe, and he was right.

Learn how debt can easily grow if you allow it. Learn how investing works. Learn what markets do over time. Learn what risk is and what it isn’t. Learn how compounding works for you, or against you.

Don’t hand the whole subject over to experts and decide this isn’t for you.

It is for you.

Nobody can make this investment in your understanding except you. It’ll take effort, time, and discipline, but the payoff will be enormous. The earlier you begin, the more options you give yourself later.

On Taxes

This is one area I would add much more explicitly today.

Taxes shape your paycheck, your investments, your business decisions, your home decisions, and your retirement decisions. They are one of the most powerful forces shaping the economy around you. Most people your age treat taxes like background noise. They are anything but background noise.

Learn how federal income taxes work. Learn how your state handles taxes, including property taxes. Learn the basic tax forms. Learn what withholding is. Learn the difference between deductions and credits (it’s a big one). Learn how capital gains differ from ordinary income.

Most importantly, learn how and why governments shift tax policy. You’ll find that it’s often less about revenue generation and more about encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors. When you understand this, the debates about tax policy start making a lot more sense.

You don’t need to become a tax attorney. But you do need to stop treating taxes as some mysterious thing that happens in the background while adults in suits handle it for you.

The sooner you understand taxes, the less often you’ll be surprised by them.

On AI and Paying Attention to the Future

This didn’t belong in the 2013 version the way it does now.

If I were talking to a new 21-year-old today, I’d tell them to learn how to use AI well.

Not as a crutch. Not as a substitute for thinking. Not as some fantasy weapon that will let you dominate the world.

Use it as a tool.

Use it to expand your access to knowledge. Use it to test ideas. Use it to get a rough draft or minimum viable product moving. Learn what a minimum viable product is and why it matters so much to growth.

Use it to make an idea more tangible. Use it to model possibilities. Use it to iterate faster. Use it to tighten your thinking by forcing your vague idea into something clearer and more real.

An idea in your head can feel pretty smart. The moment you try to express it, structure it, test it, or build it into something visible, you’ll begin to see its strengths and weaknesses. AI can help accelerate your thinking process.

A lot of people are afraid that AI will eliminate jobs, upend industries, and leave ordinary people behind. That fear is understandable. But the larger pattern is nothing new.

History is full of major technological shifts that changed the economic framework people were living in. Industrialization changed everything. Then electricity. Then assembly lines, cars, computers, the internet, and smartphones. Each wave brought creative destruction. Old methods faded, old jobs shrank, new opportunities appeared, new leaders emerged.

AI is doing the same thing now. And the people who will thrive aren’t the ones who wish the old way would come back. They’re the ones paying attention to where the world is going, and responding.

Pay attention to what’s becoming easier, faster, cheaper, more valuable, or more scalable. Pay attention to which skills are fading and which ones are growing. Then adapt. Learn. Position yourself well.

That’s a far better response than fear.

On Health

At 21, most people feel almost invincible. That feeling can fool you into thinking poor habits are free. They aren’t. They just send their bills later.

Make physical activity a normal part of your life. Build it into your routine so deeply that you miss it when it’s absent. Walk. Run. Lift. Stretch. Work outside. Stay active in ways that make your mind and body stronger, more capable, and more durable.

Healthy habits pay real dividends over time. Energy, mobility, resilience, mental clarity, confidence, longevity, and quality of life. These aren’t accidents. They grow out of a disciplined and consistent approach to taking care of yourself.

If you build a strong base now, your future self will thank you.

On Faith

A 21-year-old may or may not have ever been meaningfully exposed to faith. Some were raised around it. Some were barely around it at all. Some were exposed to a shallow version of it and walked away before they were old enough to examine it for themselves.

But by 21, your openness to faith is your responsibility.

Faith should never be reduced to pretending. You don’t need to manufacture certainty where you still have questions. But you should stay open enough to seriously consider that life is more than work, pleasure, achievement, money, and survival.

Ask the bigger questions.

Why are you here? What is good? What is true? What does it mean to live well? What does it mean to love well?

These are foundational questions. If you ignore them, you’ll still build your life on some kind of answer. You just may not realize it.

Faith has a way of changing the scale of everything. It changes how you think about suffering, success, failure, purpose, love, forgiveness, responsibility, and hope. It gives context to things that otherwise feel random, hollow, or purely material.

Stay open. Read. Ask. Listen. Seek out serious people of faith, not just loud people with opinions.

You don’t have to have everything figured out at 21. But you’re old enough to begin seeking honestly.

On Learning from Good People

Find good people and pay attention to them.

Look for people whose lives make sense up close, not just people who look impressive from far away. Find people who have built something solid. Who work hard, keep their word, love their families well, handle money responsibly, and have endured difficulty without becoming cynical.

Ask questions. Watch what they do. Learn from their patterns.

At 21, you’re old enough to choose your influences more deliberately than ever before. Choose wisely.

On Freedom

Turning 21 brings new freedom. But freedom by itself is only raw material.

What matters is what you build with it. You can use it to drift, indulge, imitate, and react. Or you can use it to build capability, health, wisdom, faith, discipline, and a life that stands up under real weight.

That’s the better use of it.

The world tends to celebrate 21 by pointing to what you can now do.

I’d rather point to what you can begin becoming. That’s where the real opportunity is.

Happy Birthday, Isabella, from your favorite uncle.

Photo by Shai Pal on Unsplash

A Parable for Anyone Thinking About AI and Their Future

Let me tell you a story about a foosball player.

Not the person gripping the handles. Not the people leaning over the table. Not the ones watching from the side, reacting to every near miss and lucky bounce.

I mean the little player on the rod.

The one fixed in place. The one locked into one line. The one who can slide back and forth, but only so far. The one who can affect the game, but only if the ball comes close enough to matter.

They don’t choose the strategy. They don’t choose the timing. They don’t choose the pace.

Most of the time, they wait.

Then the ball comes their way, and suddenly everything matters. Angle. Timing. Readiness. Contact.

That sounds a little like work to me.

A lot of people spend their days in roles that aren’t all that different. They work inside boundaries they didn’t create. They carry responsibility inside systems they don’t control. They try to do their part well, even when they can’t see the whole field or understand everything that sent the work their way.

They may not know the whole game, or how the score is being kept. They may not even know what happened two lines back that sent the ball in their direction.

Still, when it reaches them, their moment is real.

There’s something important in that.

We don’t need to control the whole table to be responsible for our part of the play. We don’t have that kind of control in most of life. We’re asked something simpler and harder. Be ready. Pay attention. Do the best you can with what reaches you.

That alone is worth contemplating.

But what if we add artificial intelligence to the picture?

Imagine that same foosball player being given access to a system that sees patterns faster. A system that recognizes angles sooner. A system that can suggest where the ball is likely to go before the player fully sees it unfold.

At first, that sounds like help. And often it is.

The player reacts faster. The contact gets cleaner. The scoring chances improve.

AI helps people create faster, sort faster, summarize faster, and respond faster. It removes friction. It can make a capable person more effective inside the lane they’ve always occupied.

That is the promising side of it.

But there is also an uncomfortable part.

Once the system starts seeing faster and suggesting more accurately, someone above the table is eventually going to wonder why they still need the player. That question doesn’t always get asked out loud. But it’s there. You can feel it. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make it go away.

That unease is legitimate.

The question is what to do with it.

Here’s where I think the real work begins.

What separates a great foosball player from an automated one isn’t reaction time. Machines will win that contest.

The deeper difference is harder to name. Knowing when not to take the obvious shot. Recognizing that the ball coming from a certain direction is a trap, not an opportunity. Sensing that something is off and adjusting before the moment fully reveals why. Coordinating with the players on the other rods in ways that don’t require a word.

That’s judgment. That’s situational awareness. That’s the kind of thing that lives in the player, not the system.

AI can help with speed. It can help with prediction. It can surface options. But it doesn’t carry responsibility the way a person does. It doesn’t feel the weight of consequences. It doesn’t care about the human being on the other end of the decision. It doesn’t wrestle with what should be done. Only what can be done.

That still belongs to us.

I want to be honest about the limits of that claim. The argument that human judgment is safe from automation isn’t permanently settled. AI is advancing in that direction too. Anyone who draws that line with complete confidence is overconfident.

But if I define my value only by output and routine execution, I’ll always be vulnerable to something faster.

If my value includes judgment, trust, discernment, adaptability, and the ability to connect my small part of the field to a larger purpose, then the picture changes. AI becomes a tool I use, not a definition of who I am, or an immediate replacement for the work I do.

For some people, this reframing will feel like genuine good news. Their roles have always required judgment, and AI can finally free them from the parts that didn’t.

For others, the harder truth is that their role may need to change. Some work is primarily mechanical. Some lanes will be redesigned or eliminated in this process.

The courage in that moment isn’t pretending the role is something it isn’t. It’s being willing to grow. To move toward the parts of the field where human judgment still has the most to offer.

That is a hard ask. Unfortunately, for many people, it’s becoming a necessary one.

I also want to be honest about who fits this reframing the most. If you have domain knowledge, a network, and some runway, the opportunities ahead are genuine. If you are mid-career in a role that has been primarily mechanical, the path from insight to action looks different. That doesn’t make the direction wrong. It means the journey looks different depending on where you’re starting from.

But here’s something else worth considering, especially if uncertainty feels more like a threat than an opportunity.

The same tools raising these questions are also lowering barriers in ways we have never really seen before. Starting something new used to require capital, staff, infrastructure, and years of groundwork before the first real result.

That is still true for some things. But for many others, the gap between I have an idea and I have something real has collapsed in ways that are genuinely new.

The foosball player who spent years developing judgment, domain knowledge, and an instinct for the game now has access to tools that can help them build something of their own…not just execute better inside someone else’s system.

That’s a different kind of power than speed or efficiency.

It’s agency, if we choose to use it.

And it doesn’t have to be a solo venture. Some of the most interesting things happening right now involve small groups of people — two, three, maybe five — who share domain knowledge, complementary judgment, and a problem worth solving. With the help of these AI tools, they can pool their capabilities in ways that would have required a full company to attempt a decade ago.

Not everyone will go this route. Not everyone should.

But the option is more available than it has ever been. And for the person who has been quietly wondering whether there’s a different game they should be playing, this moment may be less of a threat and more of an opening.

The foosball player is still fixed to the rod. Still limited. Still dependent on timing. Still part of a game they don’t fully control.

That hasn’t changed.

What may need to change is the story the player tells about themselves. A bigger, truer one. One with more possibilities.

Use the AI tools. Learn how to maximize your position with them.

But don’t let AI reduce you.

You were never only the motion. You were never only the output. You were never only the kick.

You were the one responsible for what to do when the ball came your way, and that’s still true.

And now, for the first time, you may have more say than ever in choosing your table.

Photo by Stefan Steinbauer on Unsplash – I’ve only played foosball a few times. I’m terrible at it and haven’t played it enough to feel like the game is anything more than randomness and chaos. Funny thing is that lots of workers have a similar perspective on the job they’re doing for their employer.

The Rocks, A Higher Gear, and Campfires

In 2013, I wrote a short post called We Are All Mountain Climbers.

The idea was simple. If you look closely at life, you’ll see that everyone is climbing something.

A career. A relationship. A difficult time in their lives. A personal challenge.

Life has a way of placing mountains in front of us. Or maybe…we’re just good at finding them.

As I wrote back then, the climb only makes sense from the inside. Watching others or hearing their stories are no substitute for taking it on yourself.

There was another part of the metaphor that mattered even more.

Many of us start the climb with backpacks full of things that make our journey harder than it needs to be. Old resentments. Lingering disappointments. Criticism that stuck with us longer than it should have. Sometimes we even carry baggage that belongs to someone else.

Years later, I came across a Buddhist parable that gave a new wrapper to this idea. It described people walking through life carrying large boulders. Anger. Ego. Grudges. The suffering didn’t come from the boulders themselves. It came from choosing to pick them up.

In 2015, I wrote about riding my mountain bike.

Whenever a hill approached, I had a habit of shifting into an easier gear before the climb even began. It felt like preparation. It felt like the smart thing to do.

One day I tried something different. Instead of downshifting, I shifted to a higher gear and pushed harder.

To my surprise, I climbed much faster than before, without bonking like I thought might happen.

Sometimes growth means discovering we’re stronger than we realize.

That experience raised questions I still ask myself.

Where else in life do I downshift before the hill arrives?

Am I protecting myself from difficulty…or underestimating what I’m capable of?

Recently, I read a post by Tim Ferriss about the “self-help trap.” He described sitting around a campfire one evening with a small group of close friends, the kind of unhurried night where the conversation slows down enough for truths to surface. He found himself thinking about the fire, and then realizing the fire wasn’t the point. The people sitting around it were.

He described how easily we can become so absorbed in optimizing ourselves, tracking progress, chasing improvement, climbing toward our next summit, that we lose sight of why we started climbing in the first place.

Summits will eventually fade. Our achievements will blur with time. Recognition disappears quicker than we expect.

Perhaps the real work of self-improvement is simpler than we think.

The rocks we’re carrying were never necessary.

The hills we fear are usually smaller than we imagine, or remember.

And the fire, the one worth tending, isn’t the one powering our ambition. It’s the one we gather around with the people we love.

Photo by Marc Zimmer on Unsplash

Solving the Right Problem

Elon Musk once said he challenges requirements because they’re usually wrong. His warning is simple.

Don’t work hard to get the perfect answer to the wrong problem.

This idea goes far beyond engineering. It shows up in leadership, careers, relationships, and the quiet choices that shape our lives.

We’re trained to value effort. Be disciplined. Follow through. Execute well.

All great instincts, but we can spend months optimizing something that never really mattered.

We inherit assumptions, accept the framing, and start solving before asking whether we understand the problem.

Strong leaders question the premise.

What are we trying to accomplish?

If we succeed, what actually changes?

What are the real constraints?

There’s a related engineering mindset that captures this perfectly: the best part is no part at all.

Before improving something, ask whether it should exist in the first place.

This creates a simple hierarchy:

Delete — try to remove the requirement or part

Simplify — if it must exist, make it simpler

Optimize — only after you’re sure it belongs

Automate — last step, not first

Most organizations do this in reverse. They automate and optimize things that never needed to exist.

This is what gives us tools to manage our tools instead of time to do the work.

Six Questions at the End of the Day

For the next two weeks, I’ll be doing something new.

Marshall Goldsmith is encouraging people to ask themselves six questions every day. That’s the whole experiment.

Six questions. Asked at night. Answered honestly.

They all start the same way:

Did I do my best to…

The questions don’t ask what happened to me today. They ask what I did with today.

During his webinar introducing the experiment, Mr. Goldsmith referred to the Rigveda, an ancient poem from India that he described as being thousands of years old. He just mentioned it and moved on.

I had never heard of the Rigveda, so down the rabbit hole I went after his webinar ended.

The Rigveda is a collection of hymns. A lot of it is about everyday things. The sun rising. Fire. Breath. Life continuing. There’s a sense that daily life matters. That how we live each day counts.

People have been trying to figure out how to live a good life for a long time. Way before self-help and leadership books. Way before webinars and podcasts.

St. Ignatius of Loyola comes to mind. He developed something called the Daily Examen. It’s a review of the day. You look back. You notice where you were grateful. You notice where you fell short. You think about tomorrow.

Different times. Different traditions. Same basic ideas.

At the end of the day, pause and ask, “How did I live today?”

Goldsmith’s six questions fit right into that pattern.

Did I do my best to be happy today?

The question hits differently when the day is already over. I can see clearly whether I purposely enjoyed the day or just rushed through it.

Did I do my best to build positive relationships?

Now I’m thinking about the way I spoke to someone. Whether I listened. Whether I gave someone my full attention.

The questions are short. The reflections take some time.

Goldsmith describes happiness as “enjoyment with the process of life itself.” Happiness lives inside the day. It grows out of our engagement with what’s already in front of us.

The writers of the Rigveda seemed to understand that. Ignatius understood it too. They’re asking us to pay attention to our life and actively engage in it.

I’m only a few days into this experiment. Nothing dramatic has happened. No big breakthroughs.

But I know I’ll be answering these six questions later. I move through the day with more awareness. I catch myself sooner. I stay present a little longer. I think twice before reacting.

It’s a small shift…but small shifts repeated over time shape our lives.

Thousands of years have passed since the Rigveda was written. Centuries since Ignatius taught people to examine their day.

Our modern life looks very different, but the question remains the same.

How did I live today?

Here are Goldsmith’s six questions:

–Did I do my best to set clear goals today?

-Did I do my best to make progress towards my goals today?

-Did I do my best to find meaning today?

-Did I do my best to be happy today?

-Did I do my best to build positive relationships today?

-Did I do my best to be engaged today?

h/t – Marshall Goldsmith

Photo by Jonh Corner on Unsplash – looks like an awesome spot to think about these questions.

The Second Generation Is Where It Gets Real

The first version of almost anything is an act of discovery. We’re learning in real time, usually without understanding what we’re building. We don’t yet know which parts will matter, which ones deserve less attention, or where the challenges are.

The first version is shaped by assumptions. Some accurate, others incomplete. It’s often held together by optimism and a willingness to learn as we go.

The first generation isn’t meant to be polished or permanent. Its purpose is proof of life.

Does this idea work at all?
Do we enjoy pursuing it?
Is there something here worth continuing once the novelty fades?

Many ideas never move beyond that first stage. Excitement gives way to routine. Maintenance enters the picture. It’s decision time.

Is this something I’m willing to own, or was I simply exploring an interesting possibility?

If the answer leans toward exploration alone, the idea stalls, usually forever. It never makes the leap from curiosity to commitment.

That leap matters.

William Hutchison Murray said it well, “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy…the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.”

The second generation begins at that moment of commitment.

If we choose to begin version two, everything changes.

We’re no longer experimenting or learning if this idea works. We’re deciding that it matters enough to carry forward.

We’re operating with experience now. We’ve seen where effort was misdirected and where the momentum came from. We understand which details carry lasting value and which ones only seemed important at first.

More importantly, we own it now.

That’s why the second generation feels heavier. The weight of responsibility belongs to us. We know too much to pretend otherwise.

An idea that survives long enough to earn a second version has already passed an important test. It has encountered reality and endured.

The first generation asks whether something can exist. The second generation answers whether it should continue.

From there, our work evolves. Spontaneous ideation turns into direction. The purpose becomes clearer than the feature set. Identity begins to emerge.

This is how we do it.
This is what matters.
This is what we’re willing to stand behind.

The second generation is the foundation for everything that follows…far more than the first. It establishes patterns, standards, and expectations for what comes next.

Tackling version one takes courage. But finishing that version is only part of the journey.

The deeper test lies in beginning again. This time with clearer eyes, better judgment, and full ownership of what we’re building.

We move from discovering what we could build to owning what’s truly worth building.

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

If you know someone standing at the edge of a second generation, feel free to pass this along to them.