List Day: 10 Pieces of Sound Advice from a 40-Year-Old

1. Work just enough for financial security and a little side pot. Do a little overtime early in your career to understand what it's like and "prove yourself", but don't fall into the trap of thinking that working more is ever necessary. With that in mind...


2. Base your career around something that you enjoy enough, are reasonably good at, and pays a decent amount. The triangle is critical. By reducing the time and increasing the money involved in your job, you can do what you love on the side. Doing something you love for a living will make you hate it.


3. If you enter a craft brewery that brews more than 2 sours or 3 IPAs, leave and find a better one.


4. Do things (like cleaning the house) in small, regular increments. It is far easier to maintain a mostly clean house than it is to Marie Kondo the hell out of it in one giant explosion of productivity. This also applies to waistline maintenance.


5. The most efficient time to go to Costco is 20 minutes before opening on a Tuesday.


6. Eat everything anytime you want to. You'll be fine. Except...


7. Always skip coleslaw. It's awful. If you go through many years of coleslaw hatred and consider trying coleslaw again in case your opinion has changed, you will be wrong.


8. Have a mix of both interactive and passive hobbies and entertainment options (like video games and TV). This will allow you to tailor your free time to your energy level and make you feel less useless in your downtime.


9. If you're watching a Netflix Original show and Episode 7 inexplicably goes off on a tangent into a random origin story of one of the characters, you can skip it without any impact on your enjoyment of the overall plot.


10. Don't accept traffic. Travel in off hours and minimize your commute. You will never get back those hours spent in your car, and no podcast is that good.