Ten Lessons Learned Since 17
Notes on Experience
Deep Life Notes | Experience
Thirty years after turning seventeen, I share ten lessons that might help someone younger make sense of the road ahead.
This month I celebrate thirty years since turning seventeen. That was in 1992. A year when Bill Clinton was elected 42nd U.S. President, the first nicotine patch was introduced to help stop smoking, DNA fingerprinting was invented, Windows 3.1 was released by Microsoft, AT&T launched the VideoPhone 2500 for $1,499, and R.E.M. released their classic album, Automatic for the People.
Someone turning seventeen in 2022 would have been born in 2005, the year YouTube was founded. Only thirteen years would have passed since my seventeenth birthday, but the technological and digital leaps in that narrow slip of time feel more like decades. Generation Z, born since the mid-90s, are the first generation never to know the world without the internet.
Through my role with Dell Technologies, I spent time with local schools here in Dubai, talking and listening to teenage students at careers fairs and open days. These conversations didn’t just cover work, but also values and outlooks. I got a genuine sense of many looking to live a life of purpose that went beyond just a career.
Reaching the thirty-year milestone since turning seventeen, I look back on ten things I’ve learned during those three decades, which may be useful to someone that age today.
Perhaps one or two of them may be useful to someone younger in your own life: a son, daughter, niece, nephew, grandchild, student, or anyone trying to make sense of the road ahead.
1. There will be many different versions of you
When I was seventeen, I wanted to be a professional footballer. But that wasn’t a realistic career option, no matter how much passion I had. Instead, I went to university and picked a few subjects in the humanities that interested me. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. But I tried different things and found that passion in my career eventually came from getting good at something, building a set of skills at the different companies I worked for.
There is no single or correct path in life. The exact shape of your life in five or ten years will probably be harder to predict than you think. A better foundation may come from trying different things, building skills, and noticing what starts to fit. What you’re interested in now might not be the case later. And that’s fine. You’re growing and learning about yourself. There will be multiple versions of you over a lifetime.
2. Failure teaches, even when it stings
You’ll fail many times. Everybody does, and while it rarely feels good at the time, it can teach you something you didn’t know. One of the world’s greatest inventors, Thomas Edison, made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. But he learned something from each failed attempt.
Failure is not something to romanticise, but it is not always something to fear either. It can reveal new paths and teach you where the next attempt might need to be different.
3. Treat focus as a serious advantage
Everyone handles academic responsibilities differently. If you go to college or university, you’ll need to figure out what works best for you. I was prone to over-studying and putting too much pressure on myself. That continued when I studied for my postgraduate diploma several years later. I’ve since realised that having focus and a smart system is the way to go. For me, Mind Maps became vital during my later studies, helping me visualise my notes for more effective recall and application.
Today, there are far more digital distractions, but there’s also far more material on the best way to take notes, study, and stay focused. Cal Newport’s How To Become a Straight-A Student is a highly recommended read for anyone about to go into higher education. Despite the salesy title, Newport is a respected and grounded thinker on focus and attention.
4. Look after your body and mind
A sport or physical activity keeps your body healthy, amongst many other benefits, while mental activities like reading or a hobby provide a release from study or stress. It helps to give the body and mind some regular place in your life. Over time, you begin to see yourself as someone who takes care of both as part of who you are becoming. A healthy body and mind won’t prevent challenges or tough moments in your life, but they can play a big role in helping overcome them.
5. Give yourself more freedom of choice
Freedom of choice—control over doing what you want, when you want, with the people you want—is one of the most important indicators of happiness in life. People often point to Warren Buffett as the world’s greatest investor. His skill is investing, but his secret is time. Almost the entirety of Buffett’s financial success comes from the financial base he built as a teenager and the longevity he maintained in his later years. That’s the power of compound interest.
Saving regularly, even in small amounts, gives your future self more room to choose. It may not feel like much, but repeated over time, small decisions begin to gather force.
6. Be careful what social media takes from you
While there are positive effects of social media, the danger is that it’s built to consume as much of our time and attention as possible. For many people, the bad can easily outweigh the good, so it’s worth keeping a very careful eye on the role it plays in our lives.
Reducing time on social media may also help limit social comparison, especially when platforms draw us into status, appearance, popularity, and constant feedback. More recent evidence is nuanced, but the direction is still worth taking seriously. The 2024 National Academies report on Social Media and Adolescent Health found that social media can affect mental health directly and indirectly, including through sleep disturbance, while the U.S. Surgeon General has warned about risks around body image, sleep quality, social comparison, and low self-esteem.
7. Let interesting ideas find you
Let things catch your attention. Books, audiobooks, podcasts, conversations with people who interest you, events, and unexpected meetings can all open doors you didn’t know were there. Some of our most memorable or life-changing moments come from random or serendipitous happenings. I ended up moving to a new country based on a chance conversation from an event I volunteered for. It was one of the best things I did.
8. Pay attention to character
There is real value in studying people from the past and present, especially those who had to face serious difficulty. Biographies and documentaries can show how people deal with pressure, failure, duty, temptation, and consequence.
I keep a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations by my bed. The great Roman emperor was also a philosopher who wrote a powerful series of spiritual reflections and exercises as he struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. I also treasure Irving Stone’s biography of Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy, perhaps the greatest artist in human history and a wonderful story of beauty, fury, will, and a genius that has never been equalled.
9. Stay humble and open to different views
Leave some room for your deepest assumptions to be challenged. Certainty can be comforting, but it can also make us careless and dogmatic. Read, listen, and watch widely across intelligent, thoughtful, and credible sources. Try to understand before trying to respond. You do not need to change someone’s mind every time you disagree with them. Respectful disagreement is still possible, and more valuable than it often gets credit for.
10. Be useful to something beyond yourself
Charles Dickens once said, “no-one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.” It’s my favourite quote. Helping others is one of the most meaningful things we can do as human beings.
That might mean volunteering, joining a community group, offering your time, or simply being someone who lightens the burden for another person. There are few better things to be.
And have fun
Enjoy life. Travel, explore, spend time with your friends and do the things you love to do. You’ll make mistakes and have regrets, but that’s normal and part of life. We learn by living. Appreciate your family, your teachers, the adults in your life who want the best for you. They were your age once.
I made some of my best memories as a teenager. I’ll never forget my first trip abroad, to Rome and Venice, with my school friends when I was seventeen. We’re still friends.
And we haven’t forgotten the album we played to death on that long bus trip from Scotland to Italy. R.E.M.’s finest, Automatic for the People.
The title came from the motto of a local diner in the band’s hometown of Athens, Georgia. The owner used it instead of saying “you’re welcome.” I like that. It feels like a small act of generosity. Something given freely, with no need for fuss.
Thirty years on, perhaps that’s not a bad note to end on. Be useful. Be kind. Stay close to your friends. Enjoy the ride. And when you can, offer something back.
Automatic for the people.
Pass It On
If this note was worth your time, it may be worth someone else’s.
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