Advice from 25-year-old me to 35-year-old me
Dear Future Herbert,
I never understood why people wrote advice backwards, to their younger selves. If you tried to advise me, you would be talking to nobody. I will be long dead by the time you read this on your holographic VR headset. (You’re probably listening to Kanye on 2026’s version of EZ Rock in a self-driving car. Some things never change…)
Birthdays are a wistful time for most people but I promise you, I’m not sad when I write this. Each birthday is a death and new life. No matter how old, wistful, or hungover you feel, you are new life. And whatever is left of me, if there’s anything, will be in your heart — you lucky bastard.
You have ten years experience on me. So why do I write this letter? Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.” I wanted to capture lightning in a bottle and remind you of the boldness and lightness of being a young man, but like past years I’m still feeling the Ira Glass taste gap. A little less now:
Stay in your lane
At this point, if not much earlier, some of your friends will have become very rich. (Names redacted to keep their potential blackmailers away.) Stay in your lane. Pay no attention to what other people excel at, or when they advise you to be like them. You are you, you are not them.
Kanye West wrote at his classic blog KanyeUniversecity, “So many people talk about their investments or how much money they have but there’s so many rich people who spend a lot of that trying to buy a piece of happiness.” In other words, fulfillment is more important than achievement. Happiness is more important than enviability.
Only your opinion of you matters
Not mine. Not anybody else’s. Not futuristic Instagram’s. Yours. Your bank account, your likes, whatever — none of it determines your self-worth. You’ve survived longer than me, you’ll have learned a lot more than me, and you will be stronger, smarter, and much more resourceful than me. Your opinion of you is really the only things that matters. Jay Z (again) on Most Kingz: “Everybody look at you strange, say you changed / Like you work that hard to stay the same.” Gosh, people write entire articles and books about this but it’s really quite simple.
Keep persisting
20-year-old me naively thought I would be building the next VICE by now. That’s why we got into this game in the first place. It’ll only get more difficult. Publishers will reject your inquires. Editors will doubt you. People will shit on your ideas. Sometimes they’ll even be right. Lil’ Wayne announced he was defeated as I was writing this.
You will suffer through setbacks, failures, and losses. (If you don’t, you must aim higher.) You can let up or change up, but never give up. Try 1,000 times when even the best people are only willing to go 999. Stay chisel. Keep writing. From Musashi:
“Just a little more.” How easy to say, but how difficult to achieve! For “just a little more” is what distinguishes the victorious sword from the vanquished.
Hopefully by your time, Wayne will have pulled a Conor McGregor and be back — free of Birdman — and dominating music again. If you’re lucky, autotune will make just enough of a comeback for you to hear a Wayne and T-Pain joint album (T-Wayne. Unrelated to autotune: Watch the Throne 3, Kanye x Drake, etc… Don’t get me started).
Remember The Carter Documentary. “TWO WORDS YOU NEVER HEAR — WAYNE QUIT!!!!”
We’re not geniuses
We didn’t go to any gifted programs growing up, we didn’t win awards, we didn’t have a pimped out résumé. Anything we have was attained through hard work, critical thinking, patience, persistence, and a bit of fortunate timing. Musashi said, “I know myself better than anyone else does. I’m neither a genius nor a great man.”
This lack of prodigy might sound like a setback, but as Tyler Perry said to Tristan Walker, the “trials we go through and the blessings we receive are the same thing.” Or Kanye, “I feel like everything that anybody ever said in life would be a disadvantage to me, I’ma make it my advantage. When I was playing basketball, and everybody said I was too short, I’m killing them with the scoops.”
If only I did x…
But I didn’t. The past is gone, and I’m gone. Only you and the present can influence 45-year-old you. Boy, I tell you, I would whoop 15-year-old Herbert if I could go back. What an idiot! He chose to play Starcraft, watch TV, and find hundreds of other equally mindless ways to kill time. I really wish he hadn’t. What a waste of energy. Because of him, I perpetually feel like I’m catching up, and I’m sure you’ll feel like that too. But to his credit, a year later, he also tried making money writing, which laid the foundation for what I do now.
It’s still early in the learning journey
This year, I talked to Ryan Holiday, Shane Parrish, Andrew Tuck, and some other people I haven’t published yet. I plan on talking to more authors, media entrepreneurs, and writers that I admire. I have learned an incredible amount during these conversations, but talking to them makes me realize how far the gap is from where I want to be. Build on the knowledge, finesse it, and close the gap.
I’m independent right now. I make my money building Wonder Shuttle, and I’m working hard to get better at writing. I don’t know what will happen to Wonder Shuttle by the time you’re around. Just remember the original intent behind it: 23-year-old us had conceived of it as Kanye West’s Konman Productions, or Walt Disney’s Laugh-O-Gram Studio — a beta business designed to maximize learning. Err on the side of experimentation.
If you’re reading this, you’re alive. I hope you’re doing well. I hope you didn’t throw out my velour sweatsuit. You’ll have learned so much — I’m envious! I know I used Star Trek photos, but I always been more of a Wars fan.
May the force be with you,
And may you eventually stop signing emails like this,
Past Herbert
Herbert Lui is a former staff writer for Lifehacker. His work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Quartz, and The Globe and Mail. He writes a monthly newsletter where he shares books and quotes to make you happier, more creative, and more productive.
