This letter is going to piss some people off because it's for a specific type of person.
I'm going to sound like an inconsiderate asshole to most people but that's the only way I can get the severity of this situation across.
With that said, consider nuance turned off as of right now.
The people who get angry at the brutal honesty here are often those who have pretty terrible lives. They haven't grown as a person past the age of 20 to 25.
They are the people who never realized this:
The best way to make the most of your 20s is to make them your worst.
You see, you have two options:
- Use your 20s to become who you were meant to be.
- Repeat the same 6 months for the entirety of your life.
If you don't nearly max out your potential in your 20s, you can simply observe society and see that you become like everyone else.
You get stuck in a loop of anxiety, overwhelm, and attempting to live your last peak experience. You go to the same bars and raves. You play the same video games. You have the best experience of your life because you're old enough to do new things, but not wise enough to realize that those are the lowest peaks one can experience, so you fill your life with those shallow activities.
Most people plateau around 23 years old.
When you ask them what they're doing with their life, in an honest way, they don't have anything to tell you, so they confidently say they're "just living life."
The thing is, you don't realize the ramifications of staying the same.
If you did, you'd have no option but to change.
Most people turn 30 years old with the emotional maturity of a 15-year-old. The world rapidly pushes forward while your mind, body, spirit, and finances stay in place. But that's the problem. Staying the same is an illusion. Without trying, you slowly dig yourself into a mediocre hole that only becomes more difficult to climb out of.
Your 20s are the tutorial, not the game.
The preparation, not the main event.
So, here are 3 traps to avoid, and 3 ways to turn it all around.
If you can set yourself up in your 20s, your quality of life will only continue to increase, even when your youth is no longer on your side.
Don't listen to anyone who doesn't have the life you want.
People who have the life you want are rare.
1% of the population.
Possibly less.
The other 99% are people who love to blabber about how you should live your life when they wasted their own. They didn't achieve anything great, so they are adamant on convincing you that the greatest things to do in life are the greatest things they did, which aren't great at all.
They will tell you to be more realistic. Aim lower. Be like them. Enjoy your 20s! Get the job. Create a budget. Invest your measly savings. Live a boring and mechanical life doing work you hate until you turn 50, as if it's some twisted rite of passage. Many people say they want the best for you, but in reality, they don't want to feel inferior to you.
The people who have the life you want are often quiet.
They are difficult to find.
Keep an eye out for them.
For most people, taking your parents, teachers, or peers' advice to heart is a death sentence.
Get your taste of distractions, fast.
Most people treat their youth as a currency instead of investment capital.
They party. They smoke. And while those things aren't the end of the world in and of themselves, they destroy the immense benefits of being young: time, energy, focus.
I was a dumb college kid too, but I always had something to work on that would someday "buy my freedom."
I'm not telling you to avoid those things altogether. In fact, you would benefit from getting a taste of them quickly so you can recognize them as mistakes. Instead, I'm telling you to have a life-altering goal that demands you at your best so you notice the impact of your degeneracy.
The average person doesn't see the problem with drinking and smoking because their life doesn't demand a high level of performance. They work a desk job they'd rather not be at, so the hangover and laziness don't really matter.
However, those aren't the only social distractions.
I understand that you're a young person who wants to experience the world and has their hormones obliterated from birth control and environmental toxins, but no, you aren't going to meet the love of your life when you're the worst version of yourself.
If you are pursuing a non-average life, you will quickly become unrelatable to your friends and partners unless you keep putting a dampener on your potential to avoid the thought of losing them in the pursuit of the highest version of yourself.
You don't need to avoid socializing or dating, but if you don't want to relate with 99% of people, and you probably don't, get used to loving the time you have with yourself.
Do everything in your power to never get a job.
When I was around 15 years old, I had an intense burst of insight.
If I got a typical job like most people, I would end up like most people. A third of my time would disappear as soon as I accepted the offer. Another third of my time would be spent asleep. And the last third would be spent doing nothing worthwhile, because work you hate – no matter how simple – is the most draining thing in the world.
For the people who have read this far and agreed with most things I've said, I know what type of person you are, and this next statement won't be a shocker to you:
You need to start a business.
Immediately.
You're not the person who's going to furiously type out how "not everyone should start a business" in the comments.
You are the person who wants control over your time, energy, and money. You understand that the good life stems from an increasing level of challenge, as that's how you develop yourself, and that in 99% of jobs, the level of challenge comes to a halt 1-2 years in. It psychologically castrates you.
It really doesn't matter what kind of business you start because what you do 2-3 years from now will be completely different.
You won't get it right the first time.
So keep it simple at the start.
Do something low-cost, beginner level, and popular (because saturation is a sign that people need it, and 95% of people suck at it, so if you have a shred of ambition, you can make it work.)
This is the current beginner to advanced business meta with minimal risk involved:
- Sell a service (freelancing or agency)
- Build an audience while doing manual outreach
- Launch an information product or community
- Now you have a skillset and cash flow
- Hire a team, or start a software or e-commerce business
Don't worry about what skills to learn, because we'll talk about that soon.
Set goals that f*cking scare you.
As I begin writing this section of the letter, my chest is getting tense and eyes are getting full, as I can't help but hope that you all have a chance to feel what it's like to reflect on your life and think, "I can't believe how far I've come."
Little Dan had dreams, but I never thought I'd actually write two books, build such a wide influence, be the CEO of a small yet growing startup, and live such a simple yet fulfilling life.
The pursuit of greatness can be shot down as materialistic in an instant by those who don't understand.
But there's something there.
Something deep.
A feeling so powerful that it can't be replicated in any other way.
A source of energy so potent that big pharma's strongest stimulant can't compare.
A cosmic pull demanding you to become the highest version of yourself.
To replicate this, I want you to pull out a sheet of paper.
Title it "10 Goals, 10 Years."
Write down 10 goals that make you feel uncomfortable.
Spread them out over the course of 10 years.
Focus solely on one massive goal per year.
Why?
Your mind expands to fill the goals set for achievement.
Building a $1 million company and a $100 million company requires the same amount of effort, but with different actions.
One could even argue that the owner of a local coffee shop works significantly harder than the owner of some online business, yet makes significantly less. Lots of context missing here, but don't miss the point.
It's common sense by now that hard work doesn't lead to much in isolation.
You need to identify the actions that lead to the most outsized results, and if you don't have large enough goals, you can't identify large enough actions.
The greatest risk is no risk at all, and delusional goals change your brain.
I'll save the explanation of that for another letter.
Make as much money as you can.
Money is tricky.
It's such a large part of everyone's lives that it has become intertwined with self-worth, morality, and survival, so people rarely see it for what it truly is.
Your parents tell you to save it.
Your pastor tells you to shun it.
Your culture tells you it's not important.
So you don't make it a priority, and a plethora of problems that can only be solved by money start to flood your life while you're stuck making very little.
Very few people actually decide to see beyond the virtue signaling of others and form their own opinion, because in order to do so, they have to dedicate the time and brain power to getting rich. They would become the person they hate, even when they've never met that person. They're living in a head filled with lies that influence their opportunity in the world.
Money is deeply ingrained into your mental, physical, spiritual, and obviously financial development. We don't live in pre-industrial times. No, you can't live like your ancestors, and I doubt you even want to, aside from the fact that you're scared of money and refuse to accept your responsibility to make it.
"But Dan, what if I want to just make as much as I need?"
That's perfectly fine, but again, you are limiting the level of challenge you can take on in multiple domains of your life. You can be mostly happy and satisfied, but I am talking specifically to those who cannot stand the thought of hitting a point in life where you repeat the same 6 months over and over again.
As dangerous and evil as money can be, you can't build rockets or feed the world without it. Money is a globally accepted form of value, and very few people would work in such a motivated fashion without it. It's an incredible construct. And whatever greater problems and innovations spring up throughout the course of evolution will probably require some kind of money, be it paper dollars or whatever currency that represents the exchange of value emerges.
The fact is, making money is a skill that can be developed like any other.
You aren't good at making it because your identity is so latched onto unrealistic ideologies that skew your perception of everything related to money.
It's pretty damn clear how you learn an instrument or get good at a video game.
You pick up the instrument. You learn the fundamentals. You attempt to play a song. You suck at it. Your brain starts to develop the pathways that lead to you playing the song. You choose a harder song. You suck again. You repeat the process.
With instruments and video games, there's no risk.
It doesn't matter if you fail.
But if you fail at making money, you can't stop worrying about what everyone will think of you, how you wasted your time, how superficial you're being, and whether it's ever going to replace your current source of income.
Most people go about skill acquisition the completely wrong way.
It's not about studying every source of information you can get your hands on.
It's about actually playing the fucking game and improving based on what you did wrong the last time.
When you play a guitar, you choose a song you want to learn to play.
You try to play it, you fail, and then you learn a little technique that was used in that song. Once you learn that technique, then another, then another, you can now play many songs without needing to study anything.
If you want to make more money, then play a game that results in money until you win.
Self-actualize.
If the overarching aim that encompasses all other aims for your life is not to self-actualize, then it is to self-sabotage.
Every single action you take must align with the purpose of self-actualization.
If they don't, then I would assume that you don't have a deep reason behind why you do what you do.
It is difficult to explain the gravity of this.
Most people do not think about the life their actions will lead to.
They have a myopic focus on short-term pleasure that slowly beats them into a pulp without them realizing it until decades down the road. That is the worst possible place you could imagine yourself. Health issues that caught up with you. A mind that can't adapt to the changing technological landscape. The actions you took were never a fully conscious choice, so they never led to anything great.
I shouldn't have to show you the decades of psychological research that have amply dissected human needs and development. I shouldn't have to explain that if you don't self-actualize, you will drown in unnecessary pain.
For your own good, you need to train your mind to zoom out.
To adopt the perspective of the highest version of yourself and consult with them in real time.
It needs to become more than second nature to consider these 2 things before any small or large decision:
- Who do I not want to become?
Then, allow your decisions to be shaped by them both.
You don't need to be perfect, but realize that most people never make a conscious decision in their lives.
If you can make the right choice even 30% of the time, those actions will be the ones that radically shape your future for the better.
Thank you for reading.
I hope it didn't make too many people mad.
– Dan
P.S. as a thank you for reading this post in its entirety, here is a link to get 25% off the premium version of this substack (with prompts, marketing strategies, and a full one-person business launchpad course).