Since now I am 30 :)

Since now I am 30, I just thought to seek advises from the older friends, readers and all others around me to suggest me with tips they would give to their 30-years-old selves. The idea was to crowd-source the life experience from the older and experienced ones and to be able to come-up with another blog based on their collective wisdom.

The result was spectacular. I received over 600 responses. It took me a solid three days to read through them all and I was floored by the quality of insight people sent.

So first of all, hearty thank you to all who contributed and helped create the present set of work readable and full of experienced insights.

It seems that there really are a few core pieces of advice that are particularly relevant to this decade of your life.

Below are 10 of the most common themes appearing throughout all of the responses.

1. START SAVING FOR RETIREMENT NOW, NOT LATER

The most common piece of advice — so common that almost every single one said at least something about it — was to start getting your financial house in order and to start saving for retirement… today.

There were a few categories this advice fell into:

Make it your top priority to pay down all of your debt as soon as possible.

Keep an “emergency fund” — there were tons of horror stories about people getting financially ruined by health issues, bad business deals, etc.

Stash away a portion of every pay-check, into some investment option or at the least, a savings account. But don’t invest in anything you don’t understand. Don’t spend frivolously.

The point was clear: save early and save as much as possible. It’s always possible. You just have to do it.

2. START TAKING CARE OF YOUR HEALTH NOW, NOT LATER

Your mind’s acceptance of age is 10 to 15 years behind your body’s aging. Your health will go faster than you think but it will be very hard to notice, not the least because you don’t want it to happen.

We all know to take care of our health. We all know to eat better and sleep better and exercise more and blah, blah, blah. But still we only know and do nothing much about it. So the advice was to get healthy and stay healthy now.

They say that the way you treat your body has a cumulative effect; it’s not that your body suddenly breaks down one year, it’s been breaking down all along without you noticing. This is the decade to slow down that breakage.

And this wasn’t just your typical motherly advice to eat your veggies. All the experienced ones said the same thing: “If I could go back, I would start eating better and exercising and I would not stop. I made excuses then. But I had no idea.”

3. DON’T SPEND TIME WITH PEOPLE WHO DON’T TREAT YOU WELL

Learn how to say “no” to people, activities and obligations that don’t bring value to your life.

Gently let go of those who are not making your life better. All those who have already crossed this decade of their age wants to go back and enforce stronger boundaries in their lives and dedicate their time to better people.

What does that mean specifically?

It means, don’t tolerate people who don’t treat you well. Don’t settle for mediocre friends, jobs, love, relationships and life. Stay away from miserable people… they will consume you, drain you.

People typically struggle with boundaries because they find it difficult to hurt someone else’s feelings, or they get caught up in the desire to change the other person or make them treat them the way they want to be treated. This never works. And in fact, it often makes it worse. As one wisely said, “Selfishness and self-interest are two different things. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.”

After all there is no shortage of people to meet and friends to be made, and that there’s no reason to waste our time with people who don’t help us on our life’s path.

4. BE GOOD TO THE PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT

Show up with and for your friends. You matter, and your presence matters. Conversely, while enforcing stricter boundaries on who we let into our lives, many advised to make the time for those friends and family that we do decide to keep close.

Appreciate those close to you. You can get money back and jobs back, but you can never get time back.

5. YOU CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING; FOCUS ON DOING A FEW THINGS REALLY WELL

Everything in life is a trade-off. You give up one thing to get another and you can’t have it all. Accept that.

In our 20s we have a lot of dreams. We believe that we have all of the time in the world. And that is the time we lose our focus.

In a word: focus. You can simply get more done in life if you focus on one thing and do it really well. Focus more.

Just focus on one or two goals/aspirations/dreams and really work towards them. Don’t get distracted. You just have to accept that you cannot do everything. It takes a lot of sacrifice to achieve anything special in life.

6. BE KIND TO YOURSELF, RESPECT YOURSELF

Be a little selfish and do something for yourself every day, something different once a month and something spectacular every year. Just treat yourself better. There is no one who cares about or thinks about your life a fraction of what you do, life is hard, so learn to love yourself now, it’s harder to learn later.

This brings me to the last line of my this blog and that is

“Thank you to everyone who contributed.”