Reflecting on 24 Years

Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Long Run. Just got back from a week-long trip to Colombia with some college friends, and as vacation tends to do, it reminded me of the importance of taking some time off every now and then to disconnect and relax.

It also reminded me of the value of travel as a method of forced discomfort (especially when things don’t go exactly as planned) — a time to slow down and just take in life as it comes.

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Let’s hop into it.

Last week, I turned 24 years old. 24 marks just one more year of the “early 20s” left, which is honestly a little terrifying.

When you’re young, they tell you time flies, but they don’t tell you that your perception of time makes it feel progressively faster each year that you age. It seems like just yesterday that I was starting college, and high school not long before that. Heck, two years ago I was getting ready to move across the country, and nearly 10% of my lived life has passed since then.

My birthday falls at the beginning of June every year (imagine that). One of the cool things about early June is the mentality and energy in the air this time of year.

Memorial Day and the coming Summer Solstice mark the beginning of summer. It’s around this time that we have a sense of optimism, of hope, for all the exciting things we’ll do in the coming months — the days are at their longest, the weather is at its warmest, and people are generally more focused on living (getting outside, socializing, etc.).

Summer is a time that, even if just for temporary moments, we kick to the side our mundane, repetitive routines, and we get out there and try new things, meet new people, and say “yes” to new opportunities.

Summer is a blank canvas for aspiration. It’s when we look at our progress halfway through the year to reflect, check in on those New Years’ resolutions, and casually set new intentions for the rest of the year.

This post will be a little different than usual. After returning from the trip to South America and turning 24 last week, with ample time to pause and think, I’m going to share a few broader ideas that have been on my mind.

This is not advice — there are people out there far better than me for that. It’s more of a list of “lessons learned,” or things that I think are true but I suppose can’t be factually proven.

Rather than list 24 unsolicited tidbits for 24 years, I’ll spare you the time and keep it to 6 — one learning for every 4 years I’ve been alive. Hope you enjoy.

1) The fastest way to build financial wealth is to do it slowly.

There are three ways to generate outsized financial returns:

1. Being smart

2. Being lucky

3. Having a long time horizon

Success caused by luck is dangerous because we often confuse being lucky with being smart. Since 1 and 2 are mostly out of our control, our best bet is to focus on number 3.

Let’s not forget that 99% of Warren Buffett’s net worth was accumulated after his 50th birthday (and ~98% came after his 65th birthday). He isn’t particularly smarter than other investors. He has just been good at playing the game for longer than anyone else.

Compounding is an incredible force that works in our favor if we’re consistent and patient enough.

2) The best measure of happiness (and wealth) is reality minus expectations.

In traveling to various parts of the world, I’ve met people who from the outside would appear to be financially poor, yet these same people are often incredibly generous and loving. Why? Growing up in difficult circumstances, their expectations of what they’re entitled to are probably low.

When we lower our expectations, it’s much easier for the world as we see it to glow.

By this same measure, many billionaires are broke. The endless pursuit of more is a never-ending increase in expectations that our reality can never catch up with.

Similarly, a great way to find happiness is to stop searching for it. By not seeking it, we lower our expectations, and it tends to find us when we least expect it.

Too many of us, especially the youngest generations, are expecting too much — we think we’re special and entitled to certain privileges simply by being alive (and social media definitely amplifies these unrealistic expectations).

In reality, no one owes us anything, and as soon as we accept that the world isn’t magically swayed in our favor, we can lower our expectations (what will happen to us externally) and focus on improving our reality (what we control internally).

3) Traveling makes us rich.

In his book Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey says, “Sometimes we have to leave what we know to find out what we know.”

We expand our perspective by breaking away from our daily routines, getting uncomfortable, and interacting with new people.

When we travel, we’re forced to meet people who are different from us. And what we often find is that, despite those differences, we’re all cut from the same DNA, and we’re far more similar than we are different.

The other thing they don’t tell us about traveling (and doing anything new, for that matter) is that different experiences are best had at certain life stages. While the amount of money we have changes over time, our other most important resources — our time and health — also change.

Over time, preserving and allocating time, health, and money can impact the range of experiences we’re able to have at different periods. We dove deeper on this concept in the blog post below:

4) Time is our most valuable resource.

For most of human history, we spent nearly all of our time gathering resources to survive. But now, we live in an age of abundance, where most of us have enough food, water, shelter, and basic human needs covered. But what we lack (and now seek) are the intangibles further up on the hierarchy of needs — deep relationships, joy, meaning, purpose, a sense of belonging.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the monotonous routines of the daily grind and the quick pleasure hits from an endless number of things competing for our attention, so much so that we can forget about the vast beauty of the world around us.

Our time on Earth is far shorter than we can imagine. There’s an inner kid in all of us that is curious, completely present in the moment, and eager to explore the world and all that it has to offer. We shouldn’t neglect that kid — it’s who we really are deep down.

Time is our most scarce resource. We can save it, we can invest it, and we can spend it. What we do with it is the most important decision we can make.

5) Journaling is an investment in knowing ourselves.

Exactly 154 weeks ago (yes, I’ve been counting), I started a little habit of journaling every Sunday. I can confidently say that adopting this simple practice has been one of the most impactful decisions I’ve made in my life.

The more in-touch we are with ourselves, the better we’re able to connect with others.

It can be helpful to ask a few open-ended questions, but I like to give myself the liberty to just put whatever’s on my mind down on paper. Things like:

• Looking back — What went well? What went not-so-well? What did I learn? What were my goals? Did I accomplish them?

• Looking forward — What do I want to accomplish in the week ahead? What are my intentions? What areas need some extra attention?

I think the real value in journaling is that it forces us to think independently.

Learning to think independently without relying on outside influence is invaluable, and it’s a constantly evolving process. Advice from others can be useful in aggregate, but advice from single individuals is often useless, because most “advice” that people give is just a justification for their own past actions & decisions.

The great thing about journaling is it forces us to know ourselves, to consolidate different points of view from others, and to think on our own.

6) The only thing constant is change.

10 years ago, I was just starting high school and hoping to graduate. 6 years ago my top priority was getting into a good college. 3 years ago I wanted to be an investment banker. Now I work at a startup and type words on the internet.

It’s crazy how fast things change, and as a result, there’s often never really a “right time” to make any major change.

Our lives our full of “somedays” — things we hope to do when the time is right but never ultimately get to. Whether this be career decisions, meeting the love of our life, traveling somewhere new, or doing something that scares us, the best we can do is focus on minimizing our regret.

In my short time here, I’ve moved all around the country, made new friends and lost others, traveled to foreign lands, and experienced some crazy things. The one constant throughout it all has been change. People change. Our environments change. Our circumstances change. We change.

We can’t control what happens to us externally, but we can control how we perceive it and react to it.

24 years on this planet and I don’t know what the end goal is with this big thing we call life, but I think that’s okay. What fun would it be if there was a known finish line?

I’m in it for the ride, the thrills we’ve yearned for since childhood, taking on the big & challenging goals, the novel experiences. I don’t know what I’ll be doing or where I’ll be 10 years from now, heck, even 10 weeks from now.

But I can promise two things — it’ll be exciting, and it will be unique.

-Owen

Fresh Finds

No Mercy / No Malice: Yes (The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway)

Podcast | 12 minutes

Loved this thought-provoking short piece from Prof G on how, since the pandemic, we’ve been spending less and less time leaving our homes. It’s jaw-dropping how much loneliness has increased among today’s young people. Number of meaningful relationships is the top predictor of happiness, and at the same time, just being outside has measurably positive impacts on our health. All signs would point to saying “yes” to more opportunities (particularly for young people) and getting away from modern distractions to go outside of our homes more often.

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