I turned 25 today and have been listening exclusively to Chance the Rapper’s playlist “25 & Alive” - featuring heaters such as “We Don’t Care” and “Best Life”.
I wanted to spend a little time today reflecting on the past year, a tougher year for me - fighting through the “quarter life crisis” so to speak. In the past year, I tried to figure out an adult routine and “optimize” my habits - to perhaps an obsessive degree. I spent time working on my workout routine, morning routine, diet. This can be very self-obsessed, but if you don’t do it for yourself, who will do it for you?
There are a few things I’ve been especially cognizant of in the past year:
Meaningful relationships matter - I’ve really focused on maintaining one-on-one relationships with people this year and investing in getting dinners with people at the expense of “raging.” It has been an uncomfortable experience - at first it was necessitated by not drinking for a few months - but eventually I realized that I was having the most fun when I was doing the things I enjoyed with the people I cared about most.
Connecting with yourself is a lifelong practice - In November, I started meditating regularly and have been exploring the practice of sitting still and doing less. What has come of that is not some sense of zen inner peace - in fact, it’s quite the opposite. I realize how much discord there is and how much I was doing without considering my actions. It has led me to reconsider a lot of my life and appreciate how different people are in their thinking, habits and ways of life. I’ve started perusing a book on the topic called Daily Rituals, which goes through the myriad habits of many artists and thinkers. Creativity and flow are hard to find and you are really in control of how you find it.
Adult life is a marathon not a sprint - Absent of the goals of getting into college and finding a job and travelling there is a whole void of decision where I as an adult have the incredible opportunity to pick what I do day-in and day-out. However, with this great freedom comes great responsibility. Finding meaning within the constraints of the day to day is a challenge. There are a number of tasks that I have to do and a number of ways I will inevitably waste time. Sometimes, the greater struggle is minimizing the waste and not maximizing what you are doing. I remember reading in my first year out of college that people over-estimate how much they can do in a year and underestimate how much they can do in a decade. This is definitely true. Careers, hobbies, relationships are all things that take a fair degree of time, patience and agency to develop.
As I reflect though, I perhaps missed on a few things:
There’s always room for a beer with your friends - (Cliche video alert)
Although I have been trying to drink way less this year than I did in my first couple of years out of college, I have at times forgotten the importance of relaxing and scheduling time to simply enjoy. Unstructured time is sorely lacked in our modern world. I was reminded of this especially camping this weekend on Shi Shi beach with my friends. Confined to a small plot of sand, we were forced to simply play in the space that we had. We picked up sticks and hit tennis balls, played Spikeball and examined rock structures - and it felt damn good. During year 26, I want to make sure that I am reserving some of this unstructured time to think, explore and discover.
Adding urgency to any problem makes it unnecessarily hard - There is a classic matrix of prioritization of urgent vs. important from Dr. Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. However, often everything can feel urgent when you are constantly barraged with texts to respond to and emails to reply to. it is hard to recognize that a few things are truly urgent. That work email that someone is nagging you about? You can get to it tomorrow. Better still, you can create structures so that you are not reacting to it and are proactively have status ready. That vacation you always wanted to take? It will still be there if you take it in 3 months versus next week. Sometimes, it’s important to wait and consider and gather information.
Experiences are great, but true meaning comes from practice - Andy Warhol once said, “Do something either once or everyday.” There are definitely things you need to do once in your life - travel to South America or buy tickets to a World Series game with your favorite team. Then the luster of that experience wears off and you still need to find meaning the day-in and day-out. This is where having a practice comes in. I notice a lot of my friends have trained for marathons for this purpose - stay in shape; have a daily/weekly ritual; work towards a meaningful goal. I’m not a runner, but I definitely see the value in having something to look forward to everyday that is simple and consistent.
There are a few ways I think can keep in mind over the next year to counter some of these problems:
Plan time to simply play - My roommate, Corey, keeps asking me to play catch with him like we did when we were playing softball last year. I realized that I hadn’t thrown a ball in the past year and my body adjusted to be stiff and less able to throw. I played a ton of baseball growing up and it scared me a bit. But really the only antidote is to play and explore. What a better salve for the stresses of work and adult life than to schedule time to play - in a team or just on your own. Move your body in a unique way or go try that stupid skill (such as guitar in my case) that you have always wanted to do. Don’t worry about being bad. See what happens.
Spend time thinking about what’s most important to do and prioritize it. - When I was having a particularly hard time with motivation at work earlier this year, I turned to the practice of singling out the most important thing I had to do that day and making sure I got that done no matter what (Shamelessly stolen from Tim Ferriss' Blog”). I think you can do this on a month or year basis as well. What is the most important thing you can do over the next year? For me last year, it was changing teams at work. I’m still trying to come up with this year’s goal. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
Take more notes and write shit down - Part of my goal (actually most of my goal) with this blog is to capture a record of the thoughts in my head as I go through my Twenties and explore what makes my life meaningful. It is VERY easy to consume a ton of information. You can read books, listen to podcasts, watch movies, go on Youtube, go to lectures. The access to information in the 21st century is nearly endless. However, in order to construct this information into meaningful thoughts, you have to spend time with it. Come back to it and re-read. Organize and categorize and connect the dots. This is not done through consumption, but synthesis. As a note, if any of you have any recommendations on best practices for organizing notes and synthesizing learnings, please let me know!
Anyway that’s all I have for ya’ll. I’m heading out to the beach to catch a sunset with my friends. One of the life philosophies I’ve been developing is that you can measure the quality of your summers by the number of sunsets you see. Seattle makes that really easy.
-Jake
P.S. Check out this sweet photo at the the beach. It’s like the Lord of the Flies, but friendlier.