- be confident enough to start purging negative people and situations from your life.<p>- Early in your career, if you ever find yourself saying "I wish I could do X, but I work to much/have already used all my vacation time, etc" - without question you should to do those things and work less. Nobody ever looks back in time (especially in a situation when they are out of time) and says "gee I really wish I worked more".<p>- You are about to enter the age of drinking/bar/club/happy hour culture. Sure, have fun. But remember that there is almost never any return on this investment. All that time spent in the bar (and the time spent recovering from it) costs you time that could be spent pursuing your passions, hobbies, fitness, etc. Those things return in MULTIPLES later in life.
Cynicism is lazy and intellectually bankrupt.<p>Tell your loved ones that you love them.<p>Exercise classes can be really fun.<p>That calculus class the university thinks you tested out of is pretty important and you should take it anyway because EE classes will make a lot more sense if you already know Taylor series.<p>Also, take stats in college even though you don't have to.
Don't waste time with religion, drugs, or alcohol. They all consume too much time and lead to useless guilt.<p>Exercise more. Don't let yourself get fat.<p>Stick with the guitar or piano or whatever instrument you play.<p>Put off marriage as long as possible. At some point you will have an urge to reproduce. Until then, enjoy life. Once you have kids your priorities dramatically change and by the time you can get back to what _you_ want to do, you'll be too old and broken down to do it.<p>Don't get into debt. Better still, live below your means and save like crazy. When you do spend money, spend it on experiences (like travel) rather than things (like a car). The memories of your experiences will stay with you for the rest of your life, while the things you buy will get put aside as soon as you have kids.<p>Spend quality time with your parents. When you're older and they're dead you'll wish you had.<p>Keep a journal.
Be who you want to be. At 18 I thought I could do what I wanted and eventually morph into a person that had qualities I valued.<p>You won't magically turn into who you want to be. If you want to be a hard working person then start working hard. If you want to be an independent person stop depending on others. If you want to be a nice person then start being kind and empathetic towards others. You have to BE, right now and in the present, who you want to become.<p>So simple and self evident but I didn't figure it out until my mid-late 20s.<p>I would second the never start drinking and stop doing drugs advise but pretty sure 18 year old me would never listen to that advice.
Get laid. A lot.<p>Depending on where you live / the culture you grow up in, this may be easy or challenging. I had to make up for "lost time" after I arrived in America as a 24 year old from India (where, as you may or may not know, dating is(was?) a taboo.)<p>Youth is fleeting.
Strike a better balance between studying and socializing.<p>In the real world nobody cares that I was a nearly straight A student, and my grades haven't helped me move forward in my career in the slightest.<p>I should have taken more time to cultivate my friendships and get out more.
- The truth of the matter is that while you're good at programming and 'tech' in the abstract, you're missing the key production skills that actually make you employable. Spend less time on Lisp and more time on the kind of thing that people post job ads for. Employers will be more satisfied with a decent Django project than a great Diplomacy Adjudicator.<p>Web frameworks are a great idea anyway, you'll be happy you used one.<p>- Every project needs an interface, stop neglecting subjects like typography and really learn how to make something good.<p>- Read CLRS start to finish. This will make you more employable than most other ideas you pursue.<p>- There's a bus stop just up the street from you, it's not actually that hard to go places and the world isn't that dangerous. You should get out more, it'll be good for you.<p>- You're going to forget where you're at right now with this place in your life, this is a problem because such amnesia makes it hard to evaluate long term growth. You should write down what you're doing and keep records that your future self can use to evaluate his progress. Start logging your emotional state with the experience sampling method. As a heuristic if you wouldn't be in trouble losing the last six months of skill growth you have major problems.<p>- Stop focusing on being rich by making lots of money at a job and focus on being rich by investment and steady growth. There are people who make 300k a year in Silicon Valley that live paycheck to paycheck and people who make 90k a year but live like they make 40k while investing the rest. You would much rather be the latter than the former.
Since all the obvious things have been said, how about this.<p>All the awesome things you were promised that adulthood would be? Adulthood is only like that between 18 and 30 (or even only at university).<p>Staying up as long as you want to, waking up when you want to, drinking, partying, flirting, getting laid (with different partners), being at peak physical health without doing much for it, having time to study something deeply, taking a stab at changing the world and having the illusion that you will live to see your utopia, travelling the world, disconnect from everything, or go right into the middle of the action... That life that you couldn't wait to grow up into is over quicker than you think.<p>I don't want to sound too depressing. Life after 30 has it's own benefits. You finally really feel like an adult, and can say fuck it, I'm buying that grill, that car, because I earn enough and it's my decision now. I'm participating in grown-up politics and business without feeling like a pretender. And having a family is incredibly awesome and rewarding.<p>But you're never going spontaneously get wasted with your friends on a Wednesday night tequila party again. It has its good and bad sides...
-Your metabolism is going to slow down, so stop eating so much
-Don't smoke, it negatively affects your desire to workout (you will get fat)
-Don't waste (too much) time at the bar
-You're going to drift apart from your friends
-Cultivate experiences that you can talk about (ie. not chess)
-Understand cities, live somewhere walkable
-Understand money. (ie. Tax on labor vs tax on capital gains.)
1. DON'T MARRY HER.<p>2. DEFINITELY DON'T HAVE A CHILD WITH HER.[1]<p>---<p>[1] I <i>love</i> my daughter to the end of the universe and back, but my ex-wife...? Um, not so much.
- the industry connections that your college has matters as much or more than the curriculum.<p>- live while you're young. All of the talk about saving while you're young and let compounding work for you is mathematically true, but you'll probably make enough more later on so it won't matter. Once you have kids, mortgage, and responsibilities you'll regret not spending your youth having fun.<p>- on the other hand live below your means. Don't obligate yourself to high fixed costs - like an expensive car, house, apartment. Have enough disposable income to gain experiences.<p>I enjoyed my younger, single years and now that I'm older and settled, I don't go through life questioning what would have happened if I took more risks.
- read "starting strength" and get a weightlifting routine
- meditate everyday
- dont be normal, be you
- dont study what everybody is studying, study what you really like doing
- dont believe in fairness, but karma may be true
- read "the gervais principle" before stepping into a cubicle
- if you force yourself to never be an employee, in the long run you will make it on your own, just follow that rule
- learn about investing, yes you may lose money, but is not that hard to make money on it, and it turns out the way the world works is that you can be very rich without ever producing anything or working just sitting in a good investment
Don't be afraid of hard work - when you're overburdened, work hard and get it done. It will payoff later, you'll learn how to do the same amount of work in less time.<p>Don't stay in one place too long, changing jobs every 1-2 years worked out pretty well for you!<p>Trust your gut feeling about people. If someone feels shady, they probably are. You got burned a few times not trusting your gut.<p>Call and hang out with your friends and family more. The days when people will reach out to you first will start to end and all the days will start to feel the same.
Keep programming and don't be afraid of corporate I.T. You don't have to be a musician or make a huge impact on the world but if you keep programming you'll be happy.<p>That was back in 1994. Back then I felt pulled in multiple directions because I was in a band, hanging out with hippies, writing music, but I also loved hacking and all things computer related. I was raised to believe we all must do our best to have the maximum positive impact on the world, and anything less would be selling yourself short.<p>I also wanted to be a programmer, maybe eventually a game developer, but back then the only programming jobs required a CS degree. I went through some books and wrote a few apps, but it all seemed out of reach back then.<p>I eventually settled on I.T. but stayed in the SMB space due to bad experiences in the corporate world early on. I hit rock bottom after failing to run my own business during the late 00's. I was ready for a career change when I stumbled on an enterprise I.T. gig. About 2 years ago I discovered DevOps and now I'm a full time developer focused on simplifying, automating, and abstracting complex infrastructure tasks. It's so fun! Python, HTML, and JS all day!<p>So yeah, I should have stuck with programming, I had no idea how fun it would be. Maybe back then I didn't have the focus or perspective to really engineer complex projects. I was also intimidated by all the maths.
Develop relationships with your college professors.<p>Going to office hours isn't just for suck-ups and people who can't keep up with the work. And professors aren't strange incomprehensible creatures from another plane - they're just human beings.<p>This will pay off when you need a thesis advisor, need references for entry-level jobs, apply to grad school, etc. Plus, yanno, new friends. Human relationships are kind of the point of being human.
You have more disposable time now than you will again for quite a while. Don't waste it all.<p>The marginal cost of an additional class in college is entirely in time (see above).<p>Study languages more. Do not stop with the minimum requirements for your degree, continue on to at least sound reading proficiency.<p>Take more math classes.<p>That VDT with a blinking cursor? Learn something about it. Computers are more usable when you can get away from punch cards.
-Chances are whatever you are currently stressing about at 18, you will forget about in 3 or 4 years. Then laugh about in 5 years and then in 10 year get mad that you stressed about it. ;)<p>-Work hard at being a good person and helping people.<p>-The only problems are the ones that money can't solve. (life,death, health, etc) Everything else is just figment of our fears or insecurities or lack of hard work.
If music in a club seems very loud, leave. Or at least, if you're going to stay, take frequent breaks out of the blast zone (maybe hang out in front of the club, or maybe around the bar if it's quieter there) as this will greatly reduce the chances of permanent hearing damage and tinnitus.
The question is sort of pointless, as my 18 year old self wouldn't take much advice; it would take another 18 years to become the man I am today, and it will take at least another 18 years before I can call myself the man I hope to be.<p>That said:<p>- Your drug and alcohol use is covering up a larger problem, so work on that.<p>- Similarly, your aversion to Christians is because you are scared they might be on to something.<p>- There is no substitute for hard work, either in results or life satisfaction.<p>- Women are neither a piece of meat, nor a Venus of Botticelli. They are not a goal to be attained, they are human beings with cares and concerns of their own. Seriously. If you want to work so hard on a personal goal, work on yourself.
The world at your age seems like one filled with marvel and wonder, and the age seems like it could only be getting better.<p>It won't. The world is small, and few people can keep up the glint and gleam. Technology becomes propped up by massified consumerized systems, only experts get to play, and creativity wanes. It's up to the very very few to band together tightly with the other hopeful would bes and to build, not a future, but an active boisterous present, one they are satisfied living in. Build your own means, and share, radiate out to the world, be a beacon for other individuals creating and being creative with the high tech they craft and fit.
Stop smoking pot. Learn more math, its actually really cool. Try not to be so damn edgy all the time, it's embarrassing. Learn to control your spending.<p>Oh, and switch your damn major to Comp Sci, music is a waste of time AND money.
Travel... sleep on the beach... drink the whole weekend and show Monday to work, straight from the bar... fight with the police... have all the fun you can get, do all the crazy stuff for the next few years, because once you get married and with kids, you won't be able to... There are no memories from money in the bank and from sleep... Enjoy!
> Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.
- Learn to save money and stop desiring things you do not yet own.<p>- Stop telling people that their problems are pragmatically easy to solve.<p>- Find a mentor in whatever currently interests you.<p>- Learn to collaborate.<p>- Hesitate to start intimate relationships; be a friend,
first and foremost.<p>- Stop believing you are alone in the world.
I have one single big advice: learn how to be an entrepreneur and go with this as early as possible and keep it running.<p>Don't wait 10 years to realize that no one will ever implement your ideas. In IT times, this is similar with an eternity.
build things, even small things, put them out there for the world to see.<p>You have more of an advantage when you are young as time is something you have less of when you get older.<p>the real learning begins now in the real world, not in a room where you take tests.
Don't take a gap year<p>Get enough exercise to maintain the excellent health you're in<p>Ask her out GODDAMMIT<p>Write diary daily<p>Call GGD more often
Study physics, statistics, and computer science. Meditate every day. Read Seth Speaks and Law of one. Go to South America and find a shaman to give you Ayahuasca tea. Don't get married until you're 50.
Go to college to get a degree with a return on investment, not because going to college is a thing everyone you know does. And you might find out that you actually like programming more than making art.
Therapy isn't just for crises. Take the time and seek the conversation to figure yourself out, because until you do, nothing's going to be enough.
If there's something that needs to be built but you don't know how, don't search for someone that can do it. Learn and build it yourself.