Kevin Kelly's Book of Advice

 

Kevin Kelly has been writing birthday advice for several years.  He collected them in Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier.  I collected 51 of them earlier in this blog post.  Here, I've selected an anthology of all my favorites:

1. Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
2. Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
3. Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
4. Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
5. Don’t be the best. Be the only.
6. Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
7. The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
8. To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
9. Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
10.  If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting
11. Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
12. You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
13. When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
14. Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
15. That thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult — if you don’t lose it.
16. Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand. For the rest of your life you’ll use this knot more times than you would ever believe.
17. The foundation of maturity: Just because it’s not your fault doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility.
18. A multitude of bad ideas is necessary for one good idea
19. Compliment people behind their back. It’ll come back to you
20. Your best response to an insult is “You’re probably right.” Often they are.
21. To be wealthy, accumulate all those things that money can’t buy.
22. If you borrow something, try to return it in better shape than you received it. Clean it, sharpen it, fill it up
23. It is much easier to change how you think by changing your behavior, than it is to change your behavior by changing how you think. Act out the change you seek.
24. Bad things can happen fast, but almost all good things happen slowly.
25. Don’t worry how or where you begin. As long as you keep moving, your success will be far from where you start.
26. I have never met a person I admired who did not read more books than I did
27. The greatest teacher is called “doing”.
28. Every person you meet knows an amazing lot about something you know virtually nothing about. Your job is to discover what it is, and it won’t be obvious.
29. Cultivate 12 people who love you, because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you
30. Don’t keep making the same mistakes; try to make new mistakes.
31. Anything you say before the word “but” does not count
32. Efficiency is highly overrated; Goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals, vacations, breaks, aimless walks and time off are essential for top performance of any kind. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic.
33. Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. Everything you need to master the lesson is within you. Once you have truly learned a lesson, you will be presented with the next one. If you are alive, that means you still have lessons to learn.
34. It is the duty of a student to get everything out of a teacher, and the duty of a teacher to get everything out of a student.
35. Ask funders for money, and they’ll give you advice; but ask for advice and they’ll give you money.
36. Your growth as a mature being is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have.
37. The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.
38. You’ll get 10x better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially in children and animals.
39. The advantage of a ridiculously ambitious goal is that it sets the bar very high so even in failure it may be a success measured by the ordinary.
40. Make stuff that is good for people to have
41. You cannot get smart people to work extremely hard just for money.
42. 90% of everything is crap. If you think you don’t like opera, romance novels, TikTok, country music, vegan food, NFTs, keep trying to see if you can find the 10% that is not crap.
43. You will be judged on how well you treat those who can do nothing for you.
44. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. Miraculous things can be accomplished if you give it ten years. A long game will compound small gains to overcome even big mistakes.
45. At a restaurant do you order what you know is great, or do you try something new? Do you make what you know will sell or try something new? Do you keep dating new folks or try to commit to someone you already met? The optimal balance for exploring new things vs exploiting them once found is: 1/3. Spend 1/3 of your time on exploring and 2/3 time on deepening. It is harder to devote time to exploring as you age because it seems unproductive, but aim for 1/3.
46. When introduced to someone make eye contact and count to 4. You’ll both remember each other.
47. Take note if you find yourself wondering “Where is my good knife? Or, where is my good pen?” That means you have bad ones. Get rid of those.
48. When you are stuck, explain your problem to others. Often simply laying out a problem will present a solution. Make “explaining the problem” part of your troubleshooting process.
49. When you are stuck, sleep on it. Give your subconscious an assignment while you sleep. You'll have an answer in the morning.
50. Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout.
51. If you repeated what you did today 365 more times will you be where you want to be next year?
52. The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.
53. Prototype your life.  Try stuff instead of making grand plans.
54. When you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves.
55. Collecting things benefits you only if you display your collection prominently and share it in joy with others. The opposite of this is hoarding.
56. Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
57. You can't reason someone out of a notion that they didn't reason themselves into.
58. A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.
59. Draw to discover what you see.  Write to discover what you think.
60. Recipe for greatness: Become just a teeny bit better than you were last year. Repeat every year.
61. You should demand extraordinary evidence in order to believe extraordinary claims.
62. Promptness is a sign of respect
63. Tend to the small things. More people are defeated by blisters than by mountains.
64. To make something good, just do it.  To make something great, just redo it, redo it, redo it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
65. Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can't write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and anlayze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don't select. While you sketch, don't inspect. While you write the first draft, don't reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment.
66. Keep showing up. 99% of success is just persistence.
67. Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways, a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
68. Forgiveness is accepting the apology you will never get.
69. When crises strike, don't waste them. No problems, no progress.
70. To earn bliss, just for a moment, send someone you don't know a compliment for something they did.
71. When someone is nasty, hateful, or mean toward you, treat their behavior like an affliction or illness they have. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them, which can soften the conflict.
72. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
73. Work to become, not to acquire.
74. Writing down one thing you are grateful for each day is the cheapest possible therapy ever.
75. To transcend the influence of your heroes, copy them shamelessly like a student until you get them out of your system. That is the way of all masters.
76. You can eat any dessert you want if you take only three bites.
77. Children totally accept -- and crave -- family rules. "In our family we have a rule for X" is the only excuse a parent needs for setting a family policy. In fact, "I have a rule for X" is the only excuse you need for your own personal policies.
78. Finite games are played to win or lose. Infinite games are played to keep the game going. Seek out infinite games because they yield unlimited rewards.
79. To combat an adversary, become their friend.
80. Criticize in private, praise in public.
81. Learn how to be alone without being lonely. Solitude is essential for creativity.
82. When you feel like quitting, just do five more: 5 more minutes, 5 more pages, 5 more steps. Then repeat.  Sometimes you can break through and keep going., but even if you can't, you ended five ahead. Tell yourself that you will quit tomorrow, but not today.
83. When you don't know how much to pay soeone for a particular task, ask them, "what would be fair?" and their answer usually is.
84. Your best job will be one that you were unqualified for, because it stretches you. In fact, only apply to jobs you are unqualified for.
85. Let someone know you remembered their name and they won't ever forget yours. To help remember their name, repeat it on first hearing it.
86. The only productive way to answer "What should I do now?" is to first tackle the question of "Who should I become."
87. A wise man siad: Before you speak, let your words pass thorugh three gates.  At the first gate, as yourself, "Is it true?" At the second gate ask, "Is it necessary?" At the third gate ask, "Is it kind?"
88. For every good thing you love, ask yourself what your proper dose is.
89. The main reason to produce something every day is that you must throw away a lot of good work to reach the great stuff.  To let it all go easily, you need ot be convinced that there is "more where that came from."  You get that in steady production.
90. You will thrive more -- and so will others -- when you promote what you love rather than bash what you hate. Life is short; focus on the good stuff.
91. You can't change your past, but you can change your story about it. What is important is not what happened to you but what you did about what happened to you.
92. To have a great trip, head toward an interest rather than to a place. Travel to passions rather than destinations.
93. Make one to throw away. The only way to write a great book is to first write an awful book. Ditto for a movie, song, piece of furniture, or anything.
94. The end is almost always the beginning of something better.
95. As long as an idea stays in your head it is perfect. But perfecdt things are never real. Immediately put an idea down into words, or in a sketch, or as a cardboard prototype. Now your idea is much closer to reality because it is imperfect.
96. First, always ask for what you want. Works in relationships, business, life.
97. Instead of asking your child what they learned today, ask them who they helped today.
98. Spending as little as 15 minutes (1% of your day) on improving how you do your thing, is the most powerful way to amplify and advance your thing.
99.  Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed.  Everything you need to master the lesson is within you.  Once you have truly learned a lesson, you will be presented with the next one.  If you are alive, that means you still ahve lessons to learn.
100.  Commit to doing no work, no business, no income one day a week. Call it a sabbath (or not). Use that day for resting, recharging, and cultivating the most important things in life. Counterintuitively, this sabbath will prove to be your most productive act all week.
101. Embrace pronoia, which is the opposite of paranoia. Choose to believe that the entire universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success.