Skip Navigation
71 comments

  • 99% of what sucks now won't bother you later in life.

    • Just the collapse of society and climate change.

      • True, but that's only two of exactly two hundred recognized problems in our time. That's why I left that last percentage open.

    • Workout. Doesn't have to be a lot but be consistent
    • No matter what everyone says, keep on learning.
    • Try to be in contact with your close friends
    • Don't compare yourself to someone else. There will always be someone better.
    • Develop some hobbies which doesn't involve a mobile phone or other people
    • Read books. Even two books a year is great.
    • Don't do drugs or smoke. It's not worth it.

    • Don't do drugs or smoke. It's not worth it.

      Fully agree abiut nitocine and tobacco.

      Hard disagree about a lot of other drugs. I'm not encouraging their use, but harm reduction is a big deal, it saves lives.

      If you're gonna take drugs, do your research ahead of time, and please test your drugs. If your friends are gonna take drugs, be the friend that makes sure they get their drugs tested too. Don't just take your dealer's word for it if they say their stuff was tested - even if they're telling the truth, building the habit to always test, no matter what, is gonna rub off on other folks to do the same. And know what narcan is and try to have some around.

      tripsafe.org and erowid.org are excellent resources for this.

      • I agree with practicing harm reduction if you're going to do drugs, but it's still not worth it imo. I spent much of my twenties experimenting with all kinds of drugs and experienced a lot because of them. From party drugs to wild psychedelic experiences, none of it was actually worth a damn. With psychedelics especially it can feel profound and spiritual at the time, but it's really not. It's just your brain chemistry reacting to the drugs. Nothing special or worthwhile about it and you're better off going outside and experiencing real things and forming relationships with people.

      • I’m not encouraging their use, but harm reduction is a big deal, it saves lives

        Can you tell me which kind of drugs are these? I promise i'm not a fed :P

        PS: I am excluding medical marijuana. I know they are useful in certain scenarios.

    • Expanding on your first point, be aware of the difference between "workout" and "work out".

      "Workout" is a noun. "Work out" is a verb. You can tell because you can conjugate the verb without having to split it apart.

      "He works out", and not "He workouts" or "He worksout". That's how you know it needs a space.

      You can tell the one without a space is a noun because you can pluralize it. "Arm workouts for women".

      As a bonus: "Every day" means "each and every day". "Everyday" means "typical", like for clothing.

      You could have "everyday clothes". But you don't "work out everyday" -- you work out every day.

      It's funny when someone says "i workout everyday" thinking they wrote three words, yet they made three spelling/grammar mistakes. Even monolingual English speakers make these kinds of mistakes.

      • I know the difference instinctively but i think i may have written it wrong in many places. "I'll add this exercise to my workout" vs "We should work out more".

        Thanks for the detailed explanation.

    • The workout part 😅

      Edit: okay, I'll man up

  • Don't too much about grades or college admissions. It's really not worth it, especially with how it's pushed as the only important thing. Make sure you pass all your classes but don't worry about getting all A's or getting into the ivy leagues

    Don't take out student loans. Ever. It's a scam

    Community college rocks. Don't be afraid to.go, but it's not a silver bullet

    Read books. Especially the ones that they're banning and pulling from libraries. Get a good eBook reader for your phone, use Anna's archive.

    Self education is more useful than school, make sure to do a lot of it. Teach yourself stuff, learn skills

    Learn how to tell which adults are full of crap and which ones are worth listening to

    Don't let the fascists take away your rights, including whatever "protect the children" moral panic is going on, that's just a scam to control you

    Speaking of scams to control you, question the religion you were raised in

    Learn the signs of abusive relationships, it's super important and no one ever emphasizes it. Don't tolerate abusive treatment from anyone

    Don't gamble

    High school is like prison, the social scene is totally artificial. The only people you'll even talk to afterwards are the friends you made, and even then only if the friendship was deeper than "we had the same class together"

    Internet friends are just as good as IRL friends, especially if you are having trouble making IRL friends because your school/neighborhood sucks.

    Traditional life paths don't work anymore, our time is one of radical transformation. Feel free to experiment and see what works for you

  • Take the fun electives in school, there's no guarantee it'll still be there next year and graduation requirements may change in your last year.

  • Let yourself be cringe sometimes. Understand that learning how to be yourself is an active skill, as is learning how and when to wear a more socially appropriate mask (because "just be yourself" is overly idealistic advice that can end up being demoralising).

    It's okay to struggle. Adults will often tell teenagers that whatever they're struggling with doesn't matter in the grand scheme of it all, and that's incredibly isolating to hear, even if it's true. Certainly, the problems that I grapple with now are objectively far larger and weightier than what felt world-ending to me as a teenager, but what's the point in emphasising objectivity when we experience everything through our own subjective experience?

    My life is objectively more difficult than it was when I was younger, but despite this, I would never choose to go back and re-experience my teenage years. I was miserable back then, and as an adult, I relish the power that I have to make my own choices, even if that power comes with a whole host of responsibilities. I know it's cheesy and trite to say "it gets better" (especially because that frames improvement as inevitable, which feels hollow), but for some people, it does get better — it did for me.

    So let yourself be messy sometimes, and recognise that your struggles are valid, no matter what they are. It's a lot of pressure to be your age — society seems to expect teenagers to know what they want from life, which is silly to me, given that many adults don't know what they want. No matter how thoroughly you plan, there will be things you simply can't plan for — some good, some bad. Give yourself space to grow, and you'll make it easier for life's surprises to be good ones.

    And finally, the big secret about adulthood is that no-one really knows what they're doing. Realising this is terrifying, but liberating. I might not always know how to best support you, and you might not know what help to ask for when you're struggling, but we can figure that out together. Just try to hang in there — as a fellow human who feels overwhelmed by the world, I'm here with you.

  • Know Your Numbers - This is my most important key advice I'll ever give to anyone. You need to know your numbers, in anything. You need to know how much you'll earn, you need to know your total expenses, you need to apply mathematics to make sure you are in the clear. You never, ever, want to guesswork numbers because not everything is going to fall into place as you'd like. You could be off a few hundred and you've been spending your money gleefully and now you suddenly are in a jam of choosing between rent, car payment, food or whatever.

    You never want to be in that situation. Do not spend more than you earn. Budgeting is important. Knowing what you're comfortable living with and live by your means.

    Thrift and Thrift Away! - Thrifting can sound like a dirty word to those who prefer to buy everything new and I totally understand. But you can't entirely ignore it either because it is a money-saver in the long run. 85% of the things in my apartment are thrifted items and I've saved so much money and still do to this day whenever I go out.

    You just need to set yourself up some rules as to what you're comfortable getting used from what you're comfortable getting new.

    Ignore the Rat Race - Getting too caught up in what people have more of than you and how luxurious and seemingly enjoyable their life is compared to yours is a trap of itself. It makes you not appreciate what is around you and enjoy what you've gained, you'll be wanting what they have and thus will almost do anything to get it.

    Don't get the impression that you should be happy being rock bottom or twist it that way. The point is, the Rat Race lifestyle is a destructive lifestyle. It just destroys your meaning of life by pasting over an idealistic life of another's.

    Do Not Get Children in your Teens/20s - Just don't. It is not worth it and I'm proud to not ever have done this but damn did I get close to. A child, on average, costs $250k to raise from birth to age of 18, maybe more depending on how much is spent on them. Not a lot of people are that ready as they tell themselves when it comes to getting a kid in this stage, it is all just peer pressure.

    Plus, the economy is like not at its best anyways, do you think it is now a good time to have a kid? People underestimate so much about children and what it takes to raise one. They are not pets, they are not things you can just simply sit and forget about (people have gone to jail and gotten charged for child neglect this way).

    And no, it is not easy to retain your previous lifestyle, it becomes more impossible if you even bother getting more kids. But people do try and they don't look real good in doing it.

    Case and point, you have a young life ahead of you, full of ambition, potential and capability. It would be much wiser to build a foundation that is a career, net a secure and high-earning job and then see where you are before wanting kids.

    Stay out of Jail One of the last things you want to have on any record of yours is that you've been charged with something and went to jail over it. A criminal record could likely but will destroy your life and it is not worth screwing around to find out how bad for experimental purposes. If people think finding a job in a competitive job market is bad, they won't know how hard it really is if they've got a criminal history on their record and trying to find a job.

    And in worse cases, the more crimes you rack up, you mind as well as declare your life being over. Because you lose time while incarcerated, you're probably going to be chipping at a mountain of debt that are in the forms of bonds and legal fees. Not to mention how much of your reputation is going to be dragged through the mud during all of this because you're just going to simply be a name tossed around in a state system.

    By the time you're eventually released from prison, you are going to be lost, you're going to be out of touch with who you formerly were in contact with and you're going to be tied down with whatever bond/probation conditions you're tied down with.

    Do a 'Smart Quit' A Smart Quit is when you've lined up a job underneath where you're currently working and you hop ships. It is never a good idea to quit a job cold, especially if you're out on your own. Because that euphoric feeling of qutting a job you absolutely hated working at, is going to wash away and be replaced with worry about how you're going to have to uphold your expenses. Then you'll be fumbling and have to tap into your savings, the same savings you probably been working to stash for big plans or whatever.

    You can only afford to quit jobs cold if you live with parents or a very caring roommate/friend that you live with that acknowledges that you're going to try something else. By the way, it is more wise to quit jobs if you've been with them after 1 ~ 2 years. If you keep quitting jobs after a few months or weeks, you're going to have people interviewing you who're going to think yo

    1. The worst thing you can do in life is to cause irreparably damage to your or someone else' body. It can diminish your or someone else's life for at least decades, cost a fortune to repair if it's repairable at all or worse, it causes you to damage yourself even further later in life because it made you more clumsy, leaving you or the other person with even more irreparable damage or even death.
    2. If you suspect you might have a mental illness like autism, get it checked!
      Without it you might not figure out what's holding you back, and reread point #1.
    3. The second worst thing you can do is lose a lot of money. That's never going to come back.
    4. The only thing you should be gambling your money on are investments that you think would improve the world or what everyone would consider an established safe bet. That way, you either can't blame yourself for being stupid or that you've at least put money into a good thing. For the former put in small and only add more when it grows. If the value of your investment went down last time you checked, then there's usually something very wrong with whatever you put money into. And you can be scammed even if they have a great product to show for.
    5. For teen boys, when it comes to girls, if it seems like they're at an advantage somehow,
      it's because they are.
      Around 103 boys are born versus 100 girls.
      This means that finding a relationship is first and foremost a game of musical chairs,
      with slightly different rules, where the more permanent couples form,
      the more likely the boys left out will have to deal with even more competition,
      but where the same truths apply:
      5.1 "The less chairs/'hetero opposite sex partners' there are in this game, the more difficult the game will be."
      5.2 "If there's an abundance of chairs/'hetero opposite sex partners' in this game, your competition experience drops from an almost empty store retail riot to walking into a peddler convention."
      This situation will last as long as no technology offers any alternatives.
    6. Technology kills social norms.
      What you thought was completely normal can go the way of the dodo tomorrow
      and it's always due to some technology.
      You'll be surprised how hardcore someone can rail against or for some issue
      and then one year later... it's gone!
    7. We are moving into an age of full automation.
      All jobs will be lost and it's why it seems to get harder to find one every year.
      Why your parents and grandparents might not understand this yet is beyond me.
    8. Socialism is still winning and going to be right, front and center for decades to come.
    9. For the rise and fall of great powers,
      the abundance of energy and especially electrical power,
      is more important than any ideology, including socialism.
      The Soviet Union only lost because of a lack of coal, which was important in the 20th century.
      It did have lots of oil and so for most of its existence it grew faster than capitalist nations,
      but oil is too easily transportable and therefore too easy to sell instead of invest and too easy to steal.
      The irony was that the US did not exploit the situation until their conventional oil production peaked in 1970,
      causing their economy to spin out of control in debt.
      In 1973 the US started to rope Middle East countries into its petrodollar scheme
      and as a result of that by 1975 the Soviet Union's economy froze until it collapsed.

    • The second worst thing you can do is lose a lot of money. That's never going to come back.

      Disagree. Between time and money, you will get money back. It is the time you are thinking of, that you won't get back ever.

  • If you're in the USA and you don't need to go to college for something like being a doctor, lawyer, architect, or credentialed engineer, don't bother with college if you have to go into debt for it. It's not worth it, and student loans generally can't be dealt with by bankruptcy.

    Nevermind that higher education in the USA is a racket. Between textbook revisions done purely for profit, courses requiring paying licensing fees to textbook companies just to submit required coursework, universities wasting money on sports or military investments, it's just not worth it.

    At least, consider community colleges.

  • My advice would be to ask a variety of adults (who you know) what they wish they knew when they were in the time period of being your age through their early 20s.

    Not everything they say will be applicable to you, or will be impactful, but you're bound to pick up a few valuable insights that might give you head starts in several areas, if you implement them while very young.

    The toughest part of youth is that you can't know what you don't yet know, and any strong life lesson shared with you by someone else who endured the pain to get it, so that you don't have to, is worth its weight in gold.

  • Enjoy life, friends, the world. You have no real obligations apart from school, you have no real worries. YOLO.

  • -Get off social media, comparison is the thief of joy. People post their best moments and they make them look better than they are in reality. It’ll make you feel bad or FOMO and subconsciously damage your confidence and happiness. The insidious thing is even though we all know social media is fake, our lizard brain deep down doesn’t so even though you know it’s all bullshit your subconscious reads it as real. Best thing to do is to get off it completely but that can be impossible socially so limit your time and exposure to it. Use it to make real world plans with friends and then call it quits for the day.

    -You’re young, now is the best time to increase your bone density! Work out, lift weights, train with a weighted vest. Do so safely and your bones will thank you, that way when you’re in your 80s you won’t be so brittle. A broken hip is a life changing event- and not for the better!

    -Start to play a team sport, football, netball, hockey, baseball whatever. If you git gud now as teen you’ll have the confidence to join your chosen sports amateur club in whatever city or town you end up in though your life, it’s a cheat code. You get to move to a new place and immediately have 5+ mates who are local. That’s SO good. If you can’t find a team sport, try getting into running, and join a running club, same reason, but team sports are better for bonding.

71 comments