What Wisdom Is Worth Passing On?
It is not easy to impart wisdom gained from lived experience to the next generation.
Some things in life cannot be taught. You can explain them, warn about them, tell stories about them—but ultimately, you have to live through them yourself.
And there is another problem.
Technology is changing the world so fast that some of what we considered wisdom in our lifetime may not be right—or even relevant—for the next generation.
So you have to make a judgment call.
Which parts of your lived experience are worth passing on? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you make the next generation pay attention?
I’ll try to address both.
1. Curiosity
In real world, there are noacademic fences, you have learn about everything from everywhere.
“Reality is messy, complex, and interconnected. It cannot be understood through a single lens. The world is not divided into academic departments.
If you stay inside one discipline, you will suffer man-made disasters.
Real problems demand cross-pollination — psychology, economics, engineering, biology, statistics, history. The more models you borrow, the fewer mistakes you make.” - Munger
Stay curious. Read outside your profession. Learn things that appear completely unrelated to your day job.
2. Accelerated learning
Until about 33, optimise for learning rather than comfort.
Change locations. Change industries. Change functions. Work for different kinds of people. Work with different kinds of people.
And fail.
Fail in as many different ways as possible—early and cheaply.
Your twenties and early thirties are a unique period when you can experiment, take risks and recover relatively easily.
Don’t optimise too early for the perfect job, the perfect title or the perfect salary.
Build a library of experiences.
They compound later.
3. Learn human behaviour
Technology changes. Human behaviour doesn’t change nearly as fast.
We have smartphones, AI, social media and algorithms, but people are still driven by the same ancient forces: ambition, fear, greed, jealousy, status, love, belonging and the need for recognition.
If you understand people, you will understand organisations.
If you understand organisations, you will understand much of how the world works.
Study human behaviour as seriously as you study technology.
4. Resilience
Life is not fair.
Full stop.
Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to people who don’t deserve them. Hard work doesn’t always get rewarded. Sometimes you lose despite doing everything right.
Get used to it.
Envy, resentment, revenge and self-pity are particularly destructive ways of dealing with an unfair world.
Self-pity can slowly turn into paranoia: Why me? Why is everyone against me? Why does everyone else get the breaks?
Don’t go there.
You cannot control what happens to you.
You can control how you respond.
5. Choose your partner carefully
The most important decision you will make in life may be who you marry.
Perfect matches exist mostly on the internet.
Real relationships are messy.
The most successful marriages aren’t necessarily between two perfect people. They are between two people with shared values, mutual respect and a willingness to accept each other’s imperfections.
Choose character over chemistry.
And remember: you are not just choosing a spouse.
You are choosing the person with whom you will navigate everything else.
6. Success is also about what you don’t do
We spend enormous amounts of time discussing what we should do to become successful.
Perhaps we should spend more time discussing what we should not do.
A surprisingly large part of success can come from avoiding self-inflicted damage.
My simple framework borrowed from Munger:
Liquor. Ladies. Leverage.
In other words: avoid addictions, avoid unnecessary relationship drama and be extremely careful with borrowed money.
You don’t need to be brilliant to do well in life.
Sometimes, just avoid doing stupid things repeatedly.
7. Develop an “enough” mentality
You don’t need much to be happy.
The problem is that as income increases, lifestyle tends to increase with it.
A bigger house. A better car. More expensive holidays. More possessions.
And suddenly, you are working harder to maintain a life you didn’t actually need.
Learn to live with less.
There is a wonderful paradox here:
The things you own will end up owning you.
Develop an enough mentality.
There is nothing wrong with ambition.
Just don’t let ambition become an endless hunger.
8. Look after your body—and your independence
As you grow older, eat less but eat better.
Exercise.
Maintain your mobility.
Financial independence is important. But physical independence is equally important.
Being able to walk, climb stairs, travel, carry your own bags and get out of a chair without assistance is a form of wealth.
Protect it.
And as you grow older, be deliberate about the people you allow into your life.
Eliminate toxic relationships where you can.
Life is too short to spend your limited energy managing people who consistently drain it.
9. Keep in touch with your childhood friends
Stay in touch with the friends who knew you before you became whatever it is you eventually became.
They remember the version of you that existed before the job title, house, salary and professional accomplishments.
Friends made later in life can sometimes become entangled with status, networks and social signalling.
There is something wonderfully refreshing about people who knew you when none of that mattered.
Keep those friendships alive.
They connect you to who you used to be. Deep down, you are still the same.
10. Understand compounding
Almost everything important in life compounds.
Money compounds.
Knowledge compounds.
Relationships compound.
Health compounds.
Reputation compounds.
So does neglect.
There is no secret formula for a good life.
It is surprisingly simple:
Eat well.
Exercise.
Read extensively.
Invest consistently.
Build relationships.
Sleep well.
Repeat.
Simple things, done consistently for decades, produce extraordinary results.
The difficult part isn’t knowing what to do.
It’s doing the boring things long enough for compounding to work.
And then there is parenting
Parenting is an art, not a science.
And technology has made it even harder.
Nature doesn’t publish a user manual when a child is born.
You don’t get a 20-year operating guide explaining exactly what to do when they refuse to study, fall in love, fail an exam, lose a job or make a terrible decision.
So perhaps the answer is not to preach.
Tell stories instead.
Stories travel further than lectures.
Kids will not learn that fire burns simply because you tell them it does. At some point, they have to experience consequences for themselves.
Our job as parents is not to fight every battle for them.
It is to make sure they are capable of fighting their own battles when we are no longer around.
Let them fail.
Not every fall needs a rescue.
Which brings me to a story I once read about Mongolian parenting.
“Get Back on the Horse”
In Mongolian nomadic culture, children learn to ride horses at a very young age. Falling off a horse is an inevitable part of learning.
There is a story—often repeated in discussions of Mongolian parenting—about a young child falling from a horse and beginning to cry.
The mother doesn’t immediately rush over.
She waits.
The child eventually stops crying, brushes themselves off and gets back on the horse.
The lesson isn’t cruelty.
It is resilience.
The child learns:
Falling is normal.
Pain is temporary.
You are capable of getting yourself back up.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest things we can teach the next generation.
Not how to avoid falling.
How to get back on the horse.
Because no matter how much wisdom we pass on, they will still have to live their own lives.
And perhaps that’s the final lesson:
We cannot give them our answers.
We can only give them better questions, better tools—and the confidence to find their own answers.
Blogging is something I enjoy, and I share my thoughts on my blog most weekends.
Read all my “Notes to Self” at view all blogs.