40, 30, 20 and 10.
Some advice to younger people, make time to enjoy your life, with balance and moderation. Don't lose yourself to addictions society has normalized. Overworking, doom scrolling, gambling, video games, drugs, alcohol, they'll steal your life if you let them.
Get a paper calendar and put it on your fridge. But don't use it to plan for the future. Instead, write down what you did that day, if it's a workout, or you went on a hike, or just to work, whatever.
It becomes a visual diary that you're forced to see every day. It makes how you spend your time very tangible. If you haven't worked out in a week, it's right there staring at you, motivating you to fill in today's box with a workout.
That can help you find ways of enjoying yourself and minimizing regrets every day, and every week, and those will add up to months, and years. We really only have one shot at this, it goes by fast, and this gets clearer and clearer as you get older.
When you're young it's easier to spontaneously travel and go backpacking, do extreme sports, and take big risks. Don't count on doing that stuff in your 30's or 40's, or retirement. If you live that long your body, finances, or lifestyle, might not be able to bare it.
If you get invited to a wedding, out to dinner with friends, to see your parents for the holidays, or whatever else, just go. It might be one of the last times you see those people in good health, or at all. Sometimes there's a next time, but you have a finite number of next time's and they run out very quickly.
I think realistically if you're in a relationship with someone and it's been a year, you should be seriously considering if you want to marry them and have kids. By the second year you should decide and do it or move on.
Finding the right person is so important. When you're young it can seem like you have all the time in the world to delay this stuff, you really don't. People will happily tell you about their three friends who had kids at 37, but the odds of a successful healthy pregnancy go down rapidly every year. If you're at all considering it you shouldn't wait long.
We're heading into 2026 and things like new years resolutions might seem cringe, but it's a chance to reflect on your life, develop more willpower, and try to realign yourself with what really matters to you. It's probably something we should do every season and not just once a year. Make a list of things you want to accomplish, memories you want to create, and do something every day to make them happen.
Turning forty feels better than I expected, but it's been a hard year. None of my work this year bore fruit, a lot of personal grief, a pending biopsy that's hopefully benign, and my mom is dying. Peak midlife crisis stuff. But looking back, despite all of my regrets and hardships, I've mostly enjoyed my life. I've gone through things I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, but I've also been very lucky and had a lot of success. A life of extremes in a lot of ways.
But really I'm mostly just talking to myself with all of this. It's kind of basic and often repeated advice.
That's one of the weird things about life though. We all kind of have shared similar hardships, and we all kind of make the same mistakes, even though we're all trying to warn each other to learn from our mistakes.