36 Lessons from Year 36
Originally published October 26th, 2022.
I treat birthdays as milestones to surface and integrate learnings from the past year.
36 lessons from my 36th year of life:
Achieving the impossible starts with friendships that expand your sense of the possible.
Assume that, most of the time, we follow the path of least resistance. Shaping our environment is the closest thing we have to free will.
Most decisions are obvious once we know what value we are optimizing for.
As a creative experiment, I underwent a media deprivation week. No reading, movies, or podcasts. Before this, I thought I didn’t have enough time. Turns out I’m just incredibly resourceful at finding ways to fill it.
Living out of a single carry-on bag for six months this year reemphasized that most possessions are unnecessary liabilities impersonating assets.
Deep friendships are long-term commitments to transcend the transactional. That mutual commitment is magical, so of course it’s rare. Gratitude doesn’t begin to describe it.
There is no escaping imposter syndrome. We are all imposters, performing for others, jumping through the fire-ringed hoops of expectation. Once we admit this, we can breathe a sigh of relief and realize that all the audience seats are empty.
The defining skill of modern times is determining relevance. The vast majority of information is noise masquerading as signal.
Most pursuits are analogous to lifting weights. Growth requires progressive overload. Train at the edge of your capacity. Put in the extra reps.
Pay attention to when goals start to feel like obligations. You’ll see this in your language: “I’d love to, but I have to . . . ” Our goals are meant to serve us, not the other way around. Isn’t this what we decided what we wanted most in the entire world? Goals should be inspiring! This is how we know we're on the right path.
The internet is a confirmation bias machine. You can find evidence for anything you want to believe. Want controversy and conspiracy? Lots of that. Want wisdom and inspiration? That too. Choose your own adventure. Me? I’d rather find evidence of the positive.
Most of the people you want to hang out with are too busy or distracted to make plans. Be the one who initiates.
Self-awareness is a permeable boundary between order and chaos. The friend with a glaring flaw who is well aware of it? An anti-hero. Same friend, no awareness? A cautionary tale.
Make what you want to do easier to do. Make what you want to do less, harder to do.
Screen-free-Sundays. Frequently recommended, seldomly followed, always a treat.
I’ve worked with enough wealthy individuals to know that money doesn’t buy happiness. But somehow that doesn’t stop me from accumulating more. Cognitive dissonance is a funny thing.
Rehashing past decisions has a poor return on investment. Look forward.
Peak performance comes from leveraging what we already have and do well. Extend existing levers instead of creating new levers.
Meaning collects in the small, messy moments with friends and family. We treat these interruptions to our plans as distractions from work but perhaps work is a distraction from life.
Good friends are willing to give obvious advice, even when we don’t want to hear it. Great friends are willing to upset us by asking why we haven’t yet done the obvious.
A fantastic way to squander a life is to achieve an endless series of impressive-sounding goals only to realize afterward that you actually wanted something different.
If we create our own stress, we can un-create it. We treat stress as if it’s a property outside of ourselves: “It was a stressful situation.” The situation might be out of our control, but our response is always in our control. Play the hand you’re dealt.
We don’t need to have an opinion about everything. Most topics are not worth the effort.
Understanding is a form of grasping. The same goes for understanding’s cousins: analyzing, figuring out, and solving. They’re all flavors of entertainment we justify as productivity. It’s like lugging around a suitcase for so long, we forget we were even carrying it. You there, with the big suitcase. You know you can just put that down, right?
A lack of prioritization → a lack of progress. Solve for inputs before tinkering with approach.
Happiness is the road. Instead of trying to figure out what makes me happy (or energized, fulfilled, etc.), I pay attention to when I feel that way. Happiness is what those times have in common.
Things I never regret doing: stretching, dancing, meditating, soaking up the sun, being immersed in water, putting my feet in the grass. I don’t know the secret to a good life, but a good start is doing all the things we never regret.
Surround yourself with quality and it will rub off.
There is no such thing as self-sabotage. Everything we do serves us in some way. Sometimes we just optimize for the wrong value. The shift happens when the motivation to achieve our goal overrides our fear of leaving our comfort zone.
Simple systems minimize downtime. Optimize for consistency by stripping away all complexity.
Cause and effect do not exist. Everything in nature is circular and interdependent. Rather than reshaping reality, strive to move in harmony with it.
Cities are best explored on two wheels. Find a bike, pick a direction, and be open to serendipity along the way.
There is a space between stimulus and reaction. In that fleeting instant, if we’re looking, we might catch a momentary glimpse behind the curtain. Oh. I see myself about to do that. What if I change the narrative?
What we think of as wisdom is the unfolding awareness of the depths of our confusion. Wise people do not claim the title.
Everything that is now carved into stone tablets was once an improvisation. There is no script. It’s all made up. Wing it.
Five of these lessons are repeated from last year. (Guess which ones!) The most impactful ideas are ideas you’ve already had. Return to the well.
I’m Chris Sparks, founder of Forcing Function, supporting executives and investors in designing habits and systems to achieve peak performance.
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