Advice to your 25 year old self
I was watching the Prof G podcast with Scott Galloway and his guest Fareed Zakaria. The podcast was entertaining. It was Professor Galloway's last question that I found intriguing. He asked Fareed:
What advice would you give to your 25 year old self? What did you get right and what did you get wrong?
This is actually 2 questions from very different perspectives. The first questions asks one to look back and give advice to your younger self. Basically, knowing what you know now what advice would you give. The second part has one look back and assess the decisions your younger self made. I have been blogging about decisions and information for several years so I found these questions intriguing. Most interesting is the general nature of these questions. Going back in time and advising your younger self could cover a wide range of possibilities. At 25 you are beginning your personal and career trajectories that will bear on the rest of your life.
Before jumping in and answering these for myself I need to recall what my life was like when I was 25. Not an easy task at my advanced age. I can still do simple arithmetic in my head. It was 39 years ago that I was a 25 year old. Like most people in my their mid 20's I was ready to take on the world. At the same time I was frightened of the task ahead. Many of my major life events occurred around this time. At 25 I was married, a home owner and expecting our first child. I had achieved my undergraduate degree and was working on my masters degree at nights. In some ways I was beyond the major decision phase of life and was in the execution phase of life. What is more important than the decisions related to who to wed and where to work? It seemed like I had things well in hand.
Also before on scrutinizes a lifetime of decisions it would help if we categorized these decisions. I decided on two categories. The first I would label as tactical decisions. These decisions address particular goals and have outcomes that would be easily measured. The second category I will describe as "foundational". These decisions are not as measurable as tactical ones. These decisions provide a basis for all other decisions. These decision provide direction. This direction affects all other decisions. The impact how we spend money and time. They are weighed every time we are presented with a tactical decision.
I think I can demonstrate these with 2 examples. The first is a tactical one. Once we started our post University careers my wife and I immediately enrolled in retirement plans. This was the 1980's and pensions were being phased out and defined contribution plans were new. We seemed to have addressed this quite well. According to most data my wife and I have done quite well and built a nice nest egg for retirement. We began with the Canadian version of a 401k, an RRSP. I am proud to say that the money is still there and compounding. I would say that this was a good tactical decision. Another decision I made around the same time was more foundational. It came about when after being laid off. The separation package included out placement counseling. This counselling gave you resources to work yourself back into the job market. It also provided seminars that encouraged you to go out and take on the world. I quickly realized that I was not a "take on the world" type of person. I was not lazy and still wanted to do a good job. The task was the motivation not the reward.
This thinking was solidified when the division I worked in was recognized for a highly profitable year. There was a great deal of back slapping and high fiving over this achievement. However when you looked at the numbers the achievement was quite hollow. The cost of the product was highly dependent on the price of oil. The cost of oil had fallen in the last half of the year. All of the profit had been due to this reduction of oil prices. Nothing the company had done that year had anything to do with the profits. I was puzzled as to why this obvious information was ignored. I did enjoy the nice bonus the company gave us all. There nothing wrong with being lucky but I could not get exited about an achievement that was not truly earned.
Another foundational decision was how we handled debt. Basically I had decided that debt was not a good thing. I am not sure of my feelings on debt were a conscience decision. I think it was more made from fear than rational thought. However it did lead to good tactical decisions. The first, was only having one car. Rather than take on debt for 2 cars we stayed with one car and I took the bus to work. We stayed in this mode until I got a job that required a vehicle. We also decided that we would only have one car loan at a time. Along with this we never bought anything other than cars and a home with a loan. We were never perfect and did have some large credit card bills. However not letting things get drastically out of hand has served us well.
As I write this I am reminded of a previous post regarding a spending code. These earlier decisions have gone a long way to defining my life and how I live it. It is a bit of a head scratcher as to what were conscience decisions and what is my intrinsic nature. I would like to think the successes were due to my superior intellect and the failures were due to bad luck. Probably not the case. Giving my self the benefit of several doubts I would assign a fifty fifty split between sound judgement and good fortune. I can live with that.
As for the things I got wrong there are a few (actually a lot). I remember not taking computer classes at university. I figured everyone was getting computer science degrees and so there would be many more graduates than jobs. Definitely got that one wrong. In my defense I was only 18 at that time.
If I was to go back and offer advice to my 25 year old self I would definitely offer 2 nuggets of wisdom. The first would have been to focus more on my health. I remained active most of my life however I feel a more structure approach to health and nutrition would have been highly beneficial. I only returned to a fitness regime in my late 40's and really enjoyed it. The second nugget would have been to write more. I am pretty sure there were no blogs back in 80's but I am sure there were outlets for writers.
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