One of my favourite posts every year is Ryan Holiday’s lessons posts. Each year, depending on his age, he will write out a number of lessons he learned - so, I’m going to just straight up rip off the format.

I’m not going to lie - the headline is a bit misleading. I say 22 years of living but the majority of these lessons are the ones I’ve managed to gain over the last year, which has been absolutely huge for me.

These 22 lessons are the ones that I’ve earned after a year of living and experimenting. Like all my newsletters, this is just another note to self.

Let’s get to it.

Deserve it.

This is the most simple and universal lesson I come across again and again. What’s the easiest way to get what you want? Deserve it.

You have to earn the things that you want. It’s a very uncomfortable thought for most people but we have 100% responsibility for our lives - not control, but responsibility.

It is your responsibility to deserve what you want. If you’re unhappy with your health, finances, relationship, education, or any other factor? Consider what actions you’re taking and weigh up whether you’re actually deserving of the success you say you want.

Biographies are a great way to show the prices people pay to deserve the success they have achieved - use them as a measuring stick. How do you stack up?

Risk.

This year, I learned I had a complete misunderstanding of what real risk was. 

Real risk isn’t trying and failing. It’s not having to deal with some short-term pain, minor obstacles, or having your image changed in the minds of others.

Real Risk is ending up in a life we hate. That’s a 100% guarantee of failure and misery - nothing else could possibly carry so high of a risk or so high of a toll on you. The greatest risk is accumulating regrets and mistakes until you’re in a spot where you wonder where everything went wrong.

A powerful mental model is to consider your 80 year old self - the same way Bezos did when deciding whether or not to launch Amazon - and think about what they’re likely to think about the decision ahead of you. Minimise the risk of reaching 80 with nothing but regrets.

One last note on Risk, what are you actually risking? A friend of mine recently quit the job he hated to pursue a career more interesting to him. He explained that in the worst case, he had only lost a job he wanted to leave anyway.

Consider the actual cost in your decisions.

Your Reflection.

In 2023, one of my favourite books of the year was Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger. In it, Arnold talks about being comfortable with facing your actual reflection. He says most people avoid the obvious reflections in their life because of the discomfort of reality.

You need to find out what your mirrors in life are. For some of us, it will be an actual mirror - like in that story of the man who wanted to lose weight, and stared at himself shirtless in the mirror for 10 minutes everyday, by the end of 90 days he was in the shape of his life. 

Rockefeller, Buffett, Hormozi, and basically any other titan of entrepreneurship or finance - speaks about the careful attention they paid to their finances. A tracking of every cent at every moment. They know their exact net worth, their exact earnings, and exact spending patterns. If you want to control your finances, you can’t hide from them - you need to be like them, address the state of finances every day. 

Pick the area of your life you want to improve and focus on the reflection. Your results don’t lie.

Self-Awareness.

The other type of reflection is your own personal reflection. And you need to reflect often.

The easiest way to achieve your own level of self-awareness is through journaling. I heard a great summary of this the other day: If someone asked what’s 3+4, you’d do it in your head. But if someone asked what's 3796 x 4312, you’d likely want a piece of paper and pen to help with it. 

Why would you risk keeping your entire life in your head when it's difficult to even keep a maths problem there?

Write in a journal. Reflect on your actions and your vision. Reflect on your lessons. Your reflection will give you self-awareness, and self-awareness holds your answers.

Mistakes.

I’ve learned two things about mistakes this year: Avoid the obvious ones and learn from the ones you do make.

Before you start anything, you should weigh up what the obvious mistakes would be - and do your best to avoid them. If you just avoid the obvious mistakes in life - like whichever ones you find yourself repeating year after year - you’ll get way further than you could expect.

When you do make mistakes however, don’t sweep them under a rug. Every mistake you make costs you something - time, money, confidence, whatever. You need to analyse your mistakes, take the lessons you can from them, and avoid them again in the future. 

I recently started a notebook to solely analyse my mistakes - taking note of the most major lessons I can pull from them. It’s a powerful strategy.

Inversion.

As mentioned above, you should approach things with the mindset of trying to avoid the obvious mistakes. 

Inversion is a powerful tool - not only should you know what you want, you sure know what you want to avoid. If you know what you want to avoid, and what mistakes to avoid, you can build yourself a simple path to the life that you want.

The power of inversion is that it helps you notice pitfalls and problems before they arise. It automatically grants you a new perspective on your life, goals, and projects.

Inversion is a mental model we should all be using way more.

80 / 20 Thinking.

If you do one thing to start this New Year off on the right foot, please conduct an 80/20 review. 

What 20% of things gave you 80% of your negative impacts, and what 20% of things gave you 80% of your positive impacts?

For the 20%, consider people, actions, habits, events, etc. For the 80%, consider emotions, results, failures, wins, etc.

Once you’ve done the review, readjust accordingly - and try to conduct this often, on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. Use the insights.

Mostly, focus on the key 20%. Remove the negative from your life as much as possible, and maximise the positive.

Failure.

I had some pretty major failures in 2023 that I’ll explore in some upcoming newsletters (you bet I’ve analysed them in detail). 

The biggest realisation for me in light of these failures: Failure isn’t fatal.

I have no regret or pain associated with the things I tried and failed at. In fact, the only regrets I have is that I didn’t try more, that I didn’t risk more failure by being more ambitious and more active.

The only real failure is to give up - but the little cuts that lead to that ultimate death is not trying and making excuses. Avoid them.

Excitement.

For me, my favourite state to be in - and the one that I find most powerful - is excitement.

I spent a lot of 2023 trying to track what different triggers caused different states - and I found for me that having a bunch of ideas and options creates excitement. So, I’ve started keeping long lists of things to learn, ideas to implement, and experiments to try.

My advice would be to find what excites you, and use that to trigger that state as much as possible.

Work.

A great line I read this year was that work works, and it’s the only thing that works 100% of the time. 

In an era of shortcuts and entitlement, it’s incredibly easy to forget this dead simple fact. 

So we need to ask ourselves two questions: Could I be working harder or smarter at the important things? Where am I not putting in the work?

Be Multidisciplinary.

This was a major lesson for me last year - and one that I’ve worked into my plans for 2024.

You want to become multidisciplinary - this way you bring an arsenal of thinking tools to every single problem you encounter. It gives you an outsized advantage against every obstacle and opponent.

It helps prevent you from being the man with a hammer - who thinks every problem is a nail. As a bonus, becoming multidisciplinary is just plain fun.

Psychology of Human Misjudgement.

This talk from Charlie Munger (RIP) is insanely good. It’s one of the best I’ve ever heard (and read). 

If you listen to this talk, and take it to heart, you’ll find a way to master your own psychology - this basically gives you a pass to drastically improve your decision making and prevent as many mistakes as possible. 

As one side note to this, a key lesson from this talk - and one I saw played out dozens of times this year - is to beware radical ideologies. I’ve seen people take up some extreme positions on topics, on completely opposite sides of the spectrum, and crash their lives and rationality while doing it. If you’re considering going down one of those rabbit holes, take a breath and rethink.

Vocabulary.

The words you use massively influence your life - both in what occurs and how you perceive it.

If you say something is a disaster, you’ll shut down your thinking processes. Your thinking literally makes it so. But if you think of it as a minor speed bump, you’ll find a recovery. Your vocabulary can tone down the intensity of your problems.

The inverse is also true. Instead of saying, you’re okay - say you’re great, to quote W. Clement Stone, say you’re “happy, healthy, and terrific”. Act as if it is true and it will be. Use vocabulary to ratchet up your excitement.

Mindset.

Your mindset is 100% in your control - which is great news, since it’s your most powerful asset.

There’s a ton of great books on mindset: Think and Grow Rich, Awaken the Giant Within,  The Magic of THinking Big, etc. But to keep it simple you can use this hack: What do people that have achieved what you want think? How can you think like that too?

The best way to approach mindset is a combination of modern psychology and vintage self-improvement. The combination of the two creates a powerful weapon - genuine mind control over yourself.

Leniency.

I like the idea of having seasons of life. One of the seasons I went through in 2023, was a season of leniency. This was in response to many people advising me I was too harsh with cutting people off. I figured maybe they were right, so I displayed complete leniency this year.

Massive mistake. I ended up having a bunch of people that I probably should have dropped, bouncing around in my life, creating waves of annoyance and resentment. 

This year I’m taking a clean state approach. The leniency is gone but everyone is back to a clean slate. I’m sure this year will be way more enjoyable because of it.

Biographies.

Every year, I am reminded of how great biographies are - and realise I’ve been underestimating them.

There’s an abundance of lessons you can learn and apply to your life from biographies. It’s great to learn through experience, but significantly better to learn vicariously.

Last year, I learned about the sheer amount of businesses Warren Buffett tried his hand at and failed, the angry letters Abraham Lincoln would write and not send, the hour every day Charlie Munger gave himself for his own work when trying to become an Entrepreneur, the effort Theodore Roosevelt put into life, and the list goes on.

You can bet that Lincoln letters, Munger hour, and all the rest have found their way into my plans for 2024.

Systems.

Everywhere I have systems, I operate way better.

For example, the systems I have in place for University, means that I can still get grades I’m more than happy with while my focus is on my own self-education and projects.

I definitely want to put more simple systems in place and let them do the heavy work.

Intuition.

I need to trust my gut way more. The amount of positions that I could have avoided if I had trusted my instincts is insane.

I’m still completely for the idea of reviewing my feelings for any potential misjudgement - but I need to make sure that I don’t try to reason my way out of strong gut feelings just to try to be more “rational”.

Character.

Here’s a simple fact of life: Character won’t stay hidden. This gives us two insights.

First, be on alert for the obvious signs of someone’s character. Ignore completely what they’re saying, and focus on what they’re acts reveal. Try to counter liking / disliking tendencies where possible. Let the acts do the speaking.

Second, make sure to work on your own character. Your character is fate. Make sure you’re in line for a fate that you want.

Anti Role-models.

I love using role-models to set the pace for where I’m going and the type of person I’m becoming - but similar to the inversion mental model above, I’m also a HUGE fan of anti role-models.

Pick the people you dislike most or who’s results you want to avoid, and consider your actions through their lens. 

Ask: Is this something they would do or think? If the answer is yes, make sure you reconsider your stance or course of action.

You can use people that are public facing or people in your own life.

Opinions.

Napoleon Hill has a great line, and I’m paraphrasing here, that people who feel insecure or unimportant, will hold intense opinions on nearly everything. It makes them feel important, wise, and superior. 

Most of the time, however, they’re just opinions loaded with misjudgements. They’ve usually taken them unquestioning from someone (or the modern equivalent, a YouTube video) and they’re filled with misjudgments. The worst thing is, they’ll feel these are their own conclusions and be attached to them. 

We should all take a leaf from Charlie Munger’s book, and refuse to have an opinion on something, until we can state the opinion of the side better than they can (which is usually pretty easy since they didn’t do their own thinking).

One last point on this, and something that made my 2023 a lot easier, is another simple rule: you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. So, if someone has an insane view, they’ll only lock into it deeper. Every time I strayed from this rule last year, I wasted energy and just got disappointed. And if this is too hard to stomach, just try to be a good example of what you believe in instead of arguing about it.

Do Good, Feel Good.

Finally, I was reminded of the most simple maxim I know: Do good, feel good.

When you’re doing the right stuff - eating well, studying, being kind, avoiding toxic things and people, you’ll feel better about yourself

When you do the opposite, you’ll feel bad about yourself.

One compounds into progress and joy, the other into procrastination and pain.

Choose wisely.

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Thanks as always for reading.

I hope you've found something useful to apply in the coming year, and I wish you all the best for what the future holds.

Until next week,

Zachariah.