To shape a worldview.

Here are a couple of points which have resonated with me. They are an amalgamation of hundreds of things I did right and a million things which I did wrong. I am just 22 years old, so take everything here with a pinch of salt.

1. Initiative> Talent
   Most people appear to have a knack of something, whereas, in reality, they just made the thing they are good at a habit early. If you decided to pick and are 5-months into technical writing, you would appear a professional to a guy who never picked up a pen.
2. Agreeable in the front; disagreeable at the back.
   This idea does not advocate bitching about someone. People with radical ideas will always be opposed by a section. When your thoughts are too different, choose not to tell people about it, but implement them in ways which won’t let them disagree with you.
3. Learning philosophy should be mandatory.
   The connotation associated with philosophy is about white-bearded men arguing about deities and what’s right. But the most fundamental thing about philosophy is that it has no clearly defined answer. Use it to expand your ideas and enhance your worldviews.
4. Don’t be a corporate slave.
   If you ever feel that it is something to be proud of, working like a dog for an entity which can replace you easily, putting the majority of your time for one company, then congratulations, you have hit rock bottom. Now you can only go up. Work, but don’t be a slave.
5. Current success has a higher perceived value.
   Consider the ‘cool’ kids in school. Rarely do you ever find about them doing anything valuable later. Since school, college and universities present a fish in the pond scenario, the yardstick of success is defined by a minimal value of the total population. Pursue what gives back again and again, rather than what is expedient.
6. See both sides
   Confirmation bias is the reason why most people are stuck in bottlenecks. Pick an opinion only when you have seen both the sides, otherwise never form an opinion.
7. Invest in assets, not validation.
   This will get you more mental peace than before. Knowledge is the best asset, and this does not limit itself to one area — knowledge about communication, knowledge about economic affairs, knowledge about how to dress etc.
8. Make your investment portfolio diverse.
   Continuing from the above point. To mingle with more people, learn about subjects out of your field. This will allow you to build more connections which will improve your domain in ways you did not think about before.
9. You don’t show a CV of your failures.
   No one genuinely cares about whether you achieved that particular thing or not apart from you. In case there is someone, consider it lucky that someone out there is wasting her/his time on you.
10. Make people feel good instead of educating them.
    When discussing new points, most people don’t want to learn new things, since it uses energy and people like to conserve it. When you make a person feel nice, they will want to listen to you more.
11. Go out of your way to help people.
    Even if you are not reciprocated in kind every time, you will be rewarded handsomely by genuine people, which will establish rock-solid relationships.
12. Build from simple ideas
    Most complex systems fail since they are built from scratch. If you develop your system based on established ideas which are robust, you will have a much stable project in your hand with the utility of it being instantly apparent.
13. Being content is excellent. Being too content is a recipe for disaster.
    It is perfectly alright to be content and not worry about anything. The issue arises when a person has no goal to achieve or is not looking for things which will help her/him.
14. All advice is situational. All.
    Major English sayings are contradictory. For e.g., Time and tide wait for none vs Patience Pays. Assess the situation first, then look into which solution will fit well.
15. Have an aim which you feel is hard to accomplish while setting realistic targets.
    Doesn’t sound intuitive, but hear me out. If you aim for the stars, even if you don’t reach there, you will still land on the clouds. But before that, check if you can build a rocket which can at least take off.
16. Know politics.
    The “haha it doesn’t affect me” attitude is not going to help. The rights you don’t defend are the rights you won’t have. Find out who is the right candidate to vote for. Read how the bill affects you and your future.
17. Nuance, not headlines.
    If a news piece catches your attention, take 5 minutes to find out what exactly is happening, rather than embarrass yourself later carrying the wrong information and deliberating with people about it.
18. Do one thing which creates value for others.
    Rest of the things which you do can be things which create value for just yourself. But the very least you should do is something which creates substantial value for others. Work at a charity, dispense the right information or design a product which brings new innovation. Anything.
19. Read and write.
    Guess what’s the very foundation of our society. Develop ideas by reading and tell people who you are by writing.
20. Everyone sucks in the beginning.
    Say if you pick up writing as a hobby, you aren’t going to produce historical essays in your very first go. If you are too embarrassed to start anything because you feel you are going to be bad at it, do it anyway.
21. First impressions are situational.
    The first time you see someone, they are reacting to a particular event at that moment of time. This is not their entire personality. Don’t be hasty to judge.
22. Put effort, don’t force it.
    Especially for relationships. Keep the good and positive flow which you shared before and rectify things from your side. If the other side is not responding or being collaborative, learn to let go. If the other side genuinely cares and was not just looking for attention, they will message you back. If not, you lost some dead weight in your life.
23. Explain, don’t assume or expect.
    People perceive things differently; if you don’t articulate what you mean, don’t expect anyone to understand.
24. Note down.
    You will forget it. Jot it down. Bookmark it. Get a tattoo of it on your butt. Or maybe not.
25. Meditate.
    It takes 10 minutes to keep your mind calm. Life is full of happening things, and the more you grow, the more things play on your mind. To learn how to be mindful is very necessary.
26. Focus on three things in a day.
    One in which you are really good at, one in which you are decent but needs progress, and one in which you are weak. Keep too much focus on any one particular aspect, and you lose out.
27. Provide solutions more than questions
    People like those who present a solution. Easy questions are dismissed. Ask questions which require some kind of thinking, avoid redundancy. Don’t bother with questions which can be easily Google searched.
28. Avoid emotional attachment with people whom you just met recently.
    Being emotionally attached means you react instead of act. The things which they do will bother you more than the same things other people do. Focus more on knowing the person before building emotional bridges
29. You need to approach.
    There are people who still believe in “build it and it will come” misnomer. The boss you want to work under doesn't know that you want to work under her/him. Write and send the application mail. The worst thing which can happen is that you get rejected, which was happening anyway.
30. Effectiveness over likeability.
    Not insinuating that being likeable is not a strength. It is a massive one. But it creates a dependency, whereas being effective will help you be self-sustainable. Building a few solid and useful relationships rewards more than being likeable by everyone.
31. Learn how to self learn.
    The idea of a classroom was to get children learning and teaching them fundamentals they needed to know to self learn later. Resources are plenty. Don’t wait for someone to come and teach you but try learning by and for yourself. There are virtual classrooms available anyway, so attend them if you still need a classroom, which you mostly shouldn’t, as being stuck in one form of learning won’t let you explore things.