List of Lessons

5th of October, 2026

Below is a list of the most important things I've learned in life so far. Lists like this are perhaps the most useful genre of writing: [1,2,3,4].

1. It is better to be strong than to be weak. You should try your best to become stronger.
2. You don't have much time.
3. One of the most important skills is to be able to change what you want, according to what you want to want. It's like learning to learn, but for wanting.
4. It is good to want things.
5. It is better to be happy than to be sad. You should try your best to become happier.
6. For every new person you meet, you can just assume that they like you and want to help you. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
   1. Arnold Schwarzenegger recalls advice he received from Lucille Ball: “Lucy gave me advice about Hollywood. ‘Just remember, when they say “No,” you hear “Yes,” and act accordingly. Someone says to you, “We can't do this movie,” you hug him and say, “Thank you for believing in me.”’” [5]
   2. Or in other words, “confidence” is a “strange loop.” [6]
7. Sometimes it's useful to think of your time as having a monetary value. When you decide how much money to spend to avoid something you don't want to do, you can compare it with that imagined wage. The imagined wage should always be higher than the actual wage you get paid or could get paid, because time is a less liquid currency than money. Don't be afraid to set the imagined wage outrageously high.
8. Put effort into looking good. It's similar to being polite in how you talk.
9. You can and should improve your voice and manner of speech, just like you can and should improve your visual appearance.
10. You should read many books.
11. Companies are not your friends.
12. You should not tie any part of your identity to what products you do or don't consume. Entertainment companies in particular are not your friends. They are your enemies.
13. In general, a lot of things are “the mind-killer.” [7] Learn to identify and avoid new mind-killers as they come up.
14. Sin is a real thing. You need to get a lot of practice in avoiding sin. It's a little bit like in deep learning, where when you get away with one bad thing, you'll generalize and do more bad in other situations.
15. Never lie.
16. Never complain. Complaining : ought :: lying : is.
17. Always tell the truth. This is more difficult than not lying and needs practice.
18. When you've not told the truth, it's better to go back and tell the truth, especially when it's uncomfortable.
19. Learn how to tell others “I love you,” and mean it, without hesitation, especially your parents, siblings, and friends.
20. Have a trying-hard mode. In trying-hard mode, it is not acceptable to not try your best, and it should be clear when that mode is on and when it is off.
21. There are less important things and more important things to work on. You should work on the most important thing.
22. The best thing in the world is human connection. You should make a lot of acquaintances, a lot of friends, and deeper friendships.
23. It's your responsibility to develop deep friendships.
24. Talk to more people.
25. Never speak of people negatively, including in your internal monologue and including about yourself. This needs practice.
26. You need to learn to live with silence. You should have significant time in the day where you don't engage with any media.
27. Spend more time thinking about how to make things Pareto-better, and less time thinking about tradeoffs and dilemmata.
28. Think about how to make things a lot (as in 1,000,000 times) better as opposed to a little (as in 10%) better.
29. Be generous. Don't expect anything in return.
30. Don't be stingy. Spend money to improve your life, long-term.
31. You'll likely not regret spending money on the arts.
32. Find people who will teach you important things and be especially nice to them.
33. There are no adults.
34. You can learn to better appreciate your surroundings, art, and nature.
35. Being reliable is very important. Get better at being reliable.
36. Simple things are better than complicated things. If you can't explain your work in simple terms, you should work on something else.
37. Don't pretend to be weaker than you are. It is not virtuous to be weak.
38. Not all useful information is publicly available. Some of the most useful information is not on the internet. You need to get off the internet to get the most useful information.
39. Conversely, there are special places on the internet that you shouldn't miss: forms that, if you fill them out correctly, will set the world's gears in motion.
40. Practice negotiating. You'll sign away a lot of power; negotiating minimizes this.
41. You will be judged by the most impressive thing you have done, not by the sum of all impressive things you've done.
42. Some people understand and implement the ideas on this list much better than you. Find them.
43. Make something people want. [8] Better yet, make something people need.
44. If you're not proud of what you're doing or who you are, you need to fix that quickly.
45. Dance, and sing.
46. Take responsibility for yourself, your home, your family, your hometown, your country, humanity, the universe.
47. Write a lot. Writing is thinking.
48. Go on walks.
49. When you dream of doing something, start doing it now or stop dreaming about it.
50. Never make a negative trait part of your identity.
51. You should think more.
52. Quality over quantity when it comes to possessions. Your days will be better when you interact with fewer, higher-quality objects.
53. Teach others what you know. For example, you can just ask people to let you give talks about your work; they might say yes.
54. Cold email people. Even very successful people read their email.
55. Get used to constant failure and rejection. You don't fail enough.
56. It's possible that all your friends, family, and schoolteachers are all wrong about the same important thing at the same time.
57. Make friends with the eminent dead. [9]
58. Live close to where you work.
59. Discard beliefs that don't predict anything about the world or help you be a better person. [10]
60. Work on one very big thing rather than multiple small things. Work on one thing at a time.
61. Your family probably wants to help you, but they don't know how.
62. Write like you talk. [11]
63. Get a job at a young age.
64. You are the bottleneck.
65. Learn to love this world and your fate in it.
66. When writing for others, it is slothful not to compress your thoughts. [12]
67. Become more curious. Never get comfortable.
68. Renew yourself, like an axolotl.
    1. For example, you can delete your music library once in a while and forbid yourself from listening to songs you already know, forcing yourself to listen to new music.
69. The more you know, the easier it is to learn more things. Your mind won't become full.
70. Your fears will turn out to be unfounded, and the things that become your problems will be things you never feared.
71. Excelsior.
72. Learn how to smile better. You can just force yourself to smile, and you'll become better at it, like other things. One trick for learning how to smile is to train for competitive ballroom dancing. The coach will force you to smile. Frowning is bad form.
73. Become conscious of your fear and shame, and crush them.
74. Escape death.
75. Underpromise and overdeliver.
76. Be kind, surprisingly so.
77. Don't put effort into becoming sophisticated.
78. Be fast.
    1. “Get action. Do things; be sane; don't fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody.” [13]
79. Clean up and simplify your physical environment.
80. Set yourself a goal and just don't go to bed until you've accomplished it.
81. Do not apply any stereotype or archetype to yourself. Be cautious describing yourself with nouns and adjectives.
82. Make schemes, plans, lists, diagrams.
83. Work in public.
84. Don't take a job you're not excited about.
85. Tell people what you want.
86. Be thankful for being here.
87. Try to make your interlocutor more cheerful after talking to you than before. If you become good at this, your life will drastically improve.
88. Generally aim to talk much less than your interlocutor.
89. Remember people's names. There is no excuse for not remembering names.
90. Reward and cherish people for being harsh and honest with you.
91. Learn to enjoy pain.
92. When you talk to someone, pay attention to them one hundred percent, look them in the eye, and for a moment make them the center of the universe.
93. Serve.
94. When you see other people make a mistake, ask yourself how you could have made the same mistake and how to avoid it, instead of condemning them.
95. Few good artists have graduated from art school.
96. Explore the city and the country you live in more.
97. Work hard.
98. Make something with your hands and see it in the world.
99. Prizes don't matter.
100. Have an empire.

1. Alexey Guzey, Advice. ↩
2. Helena Rosengarten, 49 Lessons. ↩
3. Sam Altman, The days are long but the decades are short. ↩
4. Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack. ↩
5. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (2012). ↩
6. Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979). ↩
7. Frank Herbert, Dune (1965). ↩
8. The motto of Y Combinator. ↩
9. Charlie Munger, USC Law School commencement address (2007). ↩
10. Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences),” LessWrong (2007). ↩
11. Paul Graham, Write Like You Talk (2015). ↩
12. Winston Churchill. ↩
13. Theodore Roosevelt. ↩