I turn 27 today.
For the first time I have absolutely no idea where life is going to take me in the next 365 days, and that’s…mostly okay.
Here is 27 things for 27 in terms of what I want to get out of the new year, things I’ve learned, and things I’ll start doing.
I apologize: this post is rather unstructured — this one’s for me.
Trade money for time. I’ve always been fiscally responsible, opting to do the manual thing and buy things on sale. I thought living below my means gave me the chance to build up a little runway to do stupid stuff like quitting my job to do this new thing. However, I’d like to more consciously trade money for time because I now have so little of it. As much as I’d like to lower my monthly burn rate, saving an extra $300-500 a month has little to no definitive detriment to my 1-2 year plan, but will significantly reduce time for new connections, building, and learning about my new full-time job in the fitness industry. So yes, I will force myself to call an Uber to save time going home, and yes, pay for that tech that saves me a week building it myself.
Remember my life with photos and videos. In the few years post college, I became someone who barely takes quality photos. In some ways, that’s because I didn’t think I was doing things worth capturing. In other ways, I don’t like photos of myself unless they look spiffy. I regret that. I would love to remember my twenties, both what I’m doing and who I’m doing them with. So I’ll start doing that more in the new year, maybe I’ll hop on the disposable camera trend so they retain a cool-ish feel and gets me a bit more excited about it.
Continue making mini-adventures. I started to plan bi-monthly mini-adventures after I left my job as a way to build fun adventures into life. They can be anything I normally would not do. In May, Jenny and I went to Grace Farms upstate (a non-profit community raising awareness for humanitarianism and known for its architectural design). In July, we’re doing a quick trip to Newport, RI. These can be a hassle to plan, but I’ve been liking them so far because it reminds me of the little joys in life.
Stop “pre-scaling” things. One of the more deeply rooted habits I’m trying get out from working in corporate is making things “scalable” from the outset — scalable framework for engaging users, building a “platform”, “flexible” architecture, etc. I find myself constantly walking these back over the past month building my prototype, because my ideas and roadmaps change on the daily. 27 is the age of simplification — let’s do what’s absolutely necessary, and no more. If we need more, we’ll do it when we need to.
Thank you texts shall continue. As a way to stay connected to friends and connections, I started sending out 3 thank you / gratitude texts weekly to people I haven’t talked to in a while. This has been absolutely game-changing — I’ve reconnected with past coworkers, got invited to gatherings, or just a genuine appreciation from a friend. I love it because it’s a reminder to myself that being a giver for something as simple as a verbal thank you can make someone’s day and rekindle a past friendship.
Get unbelievably fit. Honestly, I love the feeling of being strong physically and also have something to show for it. I also could benefit from being an example of my product if it is to work. I’m a strong believer that the process to transform someone’s body into the top 0.1% is in itself a great indicator of future success — you can’t be a bum, be jacked, and run a sub 3-hour marathon simultaneously. It’s a two-birds-with-one-stone situation for me here.
Find the sweet spot for deep work. I want this because I need it. A mix of getting older, back pain, possible ADHD, and mental health issues prevents me from quickly getting into a zone of deep work currently. I miss those days where I can sit down and pull all-nighters to crank out a final project (the focus part more so than the poor planning foresight part). Getting back to this will mean investments in my work setup (#1) and taking care of myself. How quickly I get into this zone could be a make-or-break for the upcoming year.
It’s okay to be scared. One thing I found in common from everyone I’ve met this year operating a company or “winning” in life is that literally everybody is winging it. No matter if they exited a startup for 8-9 figures or just got promoted to be a manager, there are so many things we all have zero clue on. Feeling scared is 100% normal, and the difference in those who are exceptional operators is that they are much quicker to return to action. Emotions makes me human, but I can and should learn to overcome them quickly.
Read more. My GoodReads shelf for 2024 is currently at 13 books (7 finished and 6 reading). This year I’ve steadily increased the volume and read in a few different formats: paperback, ebooks, and audibles. I read about 30 minutes to an hour before going to bed and listen to a book when I’m commuting. Reading multiple books in parallel is new yet enjoyable: I started to find parallels between different topics like history, military strategy, personal development, and lately fiction. I’m hoping to get to 30 by the end of the year.
7-10am is me time. I started loosely blocking out 6-9am during the pandemic, where I would workout, sauna, and make myself breakfast. As work got busier I’ve let Slack and meetings invade that space. Recently, I shifted my schedule back a touch to make time for myself and my relationship. Since waking up at 6am is basically a non-starter with Jenny, I decided to move things back by an hour or so and shorten my workouts so we can try to better align our waking hours together.
No alarms. I just started this in June but it’s awesome. This slightly bends #10 since I will sometimes wake up at 7:30-8am instead and have less time to myself, but waking up naturally have left me more energized and less grumpy in the morning.
Better work-life separation. My work and play are starting to blend together as I basically code for 10 hours and test it on my own workouts. I sort of enjoy it because it makes me feel productive, but I’ve also suffered from it. It does feel like I’m always working and I’ve been reluctant to take up evening activities because I’m supposed to be up at 7am to test my app.
Have more fun. I set out in my first 100 days to shift from a scarcity to abundance mindset, and objectively I would say I’m at a solid 4 out of 10. On a good day I end it with a major insight or engineering upgrade, and on a bad one I question why I decided to do this in the first place. In either case, I have a lingering feeling that life is still not yet interesting enough. I feel my root problem is I’m so accustomed to chasing the proverbial carrot that I haven’t taken the time to fully enjoy or appreciate activities that bring joy in little ways: a good sweat, a nice day trip, or even just a picnic. Focusing on achieving this will bring both peace and ironically better progress, I think.
Say no without over-explaining. I got into a habit of making stupid excuses to get out of things. I’d say I need to work, when in reality I either don’t want to spend the time or the money or don’t find too much joy in them. That’s silly of me and I should stop doing that, just offer to meet up with them another time. Sorry to my concert friends — I actually prefer to listen to music in my headphones unless I really dig the artist.
Marie Kondo my life. Moving apartments reminded me just how much stuff I have and how much of it I don’t need. I wear the same 5 shirts and 2 jackets in most weeks anyway, and the extra things make life difficult for myself.
I want a pet. I now have a pet near me almost wherever I am: I live with a cat and Jenny has one too. I really enjoy the idea of caring for an animal, even if you have to scoop their poop and come home for them. They are more forgiving than us — they forget they were upset at you ten minutes later and come up for snuggles in the mornings. I still think I’m a dog person though — deciding between a german shepherd or golden in the coming years.
Passion might not be required, but real curiosity is. Ever since pivoting to my fitness idea, I noticed shifts in my mentality towards user interviews, testing and product excellence. Genuine curiosity (and also genuine frustration) helps you build a better product for others. I ask better questions, research more deeply, and am more resilient because the end goal is clear — I’m out here to figure out how to build the best running coach. Regardless if this works out or not, I think I’ve found the “feeling” I need to get to for anything I work on in the future.
Actually do the research please. I turn to ChatGPT more than I turn to Google, but it’s a habit I’m trying to cut down on more. Scrappy technical setups can’t always be found online so it actually takes longer to jam AI-generated code into my editor and figure out why it doesn’t work. I’ve started to use AI more as a jumping board, and rely on the “old” tech of Google and forums to research.
Quitting drinking is awesome. I cut out alcohol and reserve them only for events worthy of celebration, and the newfound mental clarity is fantastic. My wallet also thanks me.
Pass on fancy dinners. After egregious amounts of dollars spent in overpriced NYC restaurants and even hosting my own fine dining dinner parties for a year, I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t actually enjoy them. I recall activities by their social moments, which is what makes the dinners fun — I almost never remember the food itself. I actually freaking love Chipotle and would have it any day of the week instead.
More social gatherings. Hanging out with a group of cool people makes time fly by like nothing else to me, so I want to do more of those. More park hangs, more boys nights, more run clubs.
The “okay” opportunity is probably fine. In more times than one this year I regretted taking longer to decide something because I wanted a slightly better option. So much time wasted to be more productive, invest in myself, and form new relationships. Taking the okay option often ended up the better one because it would’ve saved hours of agony, stress and coordination to get that marginal improvement. Not worth.
I want to work in fitness / health / nutrition. Growing up I spent countless hours obsessing over them for myself, and only recently realized I would love my life if I get to spend it working on them. Eye-opening experience because there actually are countless possibilities once I looked: I can work with elite athletes, longevity research, groundbreaking science, performance tech, CPG companies and many more. I would love nothing more than to try and push the boundary of human performance (wouldn’t this be a fun one to revisit in 20 years).
Send that cold email or DM. I recently said screw it and messaged some high profile people to try to get them on my beta user list, no takers so far but did get a few responses which made my day. Being an extrovert, one of the things I’m not great at is being comfortable sticking my foot into a complete stranger’s door. In reality, I lose nothing by doing it. For all intents and purposes I do not yet matter to most people in the world. So what the hell, send those emails.
Stretch every day. My back is a huge pain in the a**. I can’t sit for that long, it hurts after an hour of walking, and as I write this I feel my body get tense. I’m adding a new habit each quarter and this is the one for Q3 (Q2 I started to meditate 3+ times a week). To a less broken midsection.
Write more. I enjoy flushing my unstructured thoughts into slightly more polished phrases. I’m not great at it so I find excuses pushing them off, and I’d like to stick to a bi-weekly routine for this substack.
I made a lot of progress. To wrap it up, a gentle reminder for my future self — I actually made a lot of progress both personally and professionally in the past 2 months. I have: built an iOS app from complete scratch, deployed a real backend, built a wearable-integrated AI agent, met 20ish founders, reconnected with 20-30 friends, quit multiple longstanding crappy habits, ran a 7 min/mile pace race, pulled off my first front lever hold in calisthenics, and started this blog. Is there more to come? You bet.
Thanks for reading! I won’t be offended if you skimmed this one.
JZ, June 26, 2024