My favorite essays of life advice
I start each of my weekly reviews by re-reading one of my favorite essays of life advice—a different one each week. It’s useful for a few different reasons:
It helps me get into the right reflective frame of mind.
The best essays are dense enough with useful advice that I find new interesting bits every time I read them.
Much good advice is easy to understand, but hard to implement . So to get the most benefit from it, you should find whatever version of it most resonates you and then re-read it frequently to keep yourself on track.
I’ve collected my favorite essays for re-reading below. I’ll keep this updated as I find more great essays, and I’d welcome other contributions—please suggest your own favorites in the comments!
There's a lot of essays here! If you'd like, I can email you one essay every weekend, so you can read it before your weekly review:
Paul Graham, Life is Short . Inspire yourself never to waste time on bullshit again:
Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it’s impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was. Ok, so life actually is short. Does it make any difference to know that? It has for me. It means arguments of the form “Life is too short for x” have great force. It’s not just a figure of speech to say that life is too short for something. It’s not just a synonym for annoying. If you find yourself thinking that life is too short for something, you should try to eliminate it if you can. When I ask myself what I’ve found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is “bullshit.” I realize that answer is somewhat tautological. It’s almost the definition of bullshit that it’s the stuff that life is too short for. And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character. There’s something fake about it. It’s the junk food of experience. [1] If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that’s bullshit, you probably already know the answer. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people’s mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes.
I’ve found that unless I’m vigilant, the amount of bullshit in my life only ever increases. Rereading Life is Short every so often gives me a kick in the pants to figure out what really matters and how to get the bullshit levels back down.
Derek Sivers, There is no speed limit , in which he learns a semester’s worth of music theory in an afternoon:
Within a minute, he started quizzing me. “If the 5-chord with the flat-7 has that tri-tone, then so does another flat-7 chord. Which one?” “Uh… the flat-2 chord?” “Right! So that’s a substitute chord. Any flat-7 chord can be substituted with the other flat-7 that shares the same tri-tone. So reharmonize all the chords you can in this chart. Go.” The pace was intense, and I loved it. Finally, someone was challenging me — keeping me in over my head — encouraging and expecting me to pull myself up quickly. I was learning so fast, it felt like the adrenaline rush you get while playing a video game. He tossed every fact at me and made me prove that I got it. In our three-hour lesson that morning, he taught me a full semester of Berklee’s harmony courses.
This was one of the major inspirations for Be impatient . Every time I reread it, I think of at least one thing where I’m setting myself a speed limit for no reason!
Sam Altman, How To Be Successful . Sam might have observed more successful people more closely than anyone else on the planet, and the advice is as good as you’d expect.
Focus is a force multiplier on work. Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter. Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.
Almost always, the people who say “I am going to keep going until this works, and no matter what the challenges are I’m going to figure them out”, and mean it, go on to succeed. They are persistent long enough to give themselves a chance for luck to go their way. … To be willful, you have to be optimistic—hopefully this is a personality trait that can be improved with practice. I have never met a very successful pessimistic person.
There are lots of different points here, so this one especially bears rereading!
R. W. Hamming, You and your research . Hamming observed almost as many great scientists as Sam Altman did founders. He had some interesting conclusions:
At first I asked what were the important problems in chemistry, then what important problems they were working on, or problems that might lead to important results. One day I asked, “if what they were working on was not important, and was not likely to lead to important things, they why were they working on them?” After that I had to eat with the engineers! About four months later, my friend stopped me in the hall and remarked that my question had bothered him. He had spent the summer thinking about the important problems in his area, and while had had not changed his research he thought it was well worth the effort. I thanked him and kept walking. A few weeks later I noticed that he was made head of the department. Many years later he became a member of the National Academy of Engineering. The one person who could hear the question went on to do important things and all the others—so far as I know—did not do anything worth public attention. … Some people work with their doors open in clear view of those who pass by, while others carefully protect themselves from interruptions. Those with the door open get less work done each day, but those with their door closed tend not know what to work on, nor are they apt to hear the clues to the missing piece to one of their “list” problems. I cannot prove that the open door produces the open mind, or the other way around. I only can observe the correlation. I suspect that each reinforces the other, that an open door will more likely lead you and important problems than will a closed door.
There is another trait that took me many years to notice, and that is the ability to tolerate ambiguity. Most people want to believe what they learn is the truth: there are a few people who doubt everything. If you believe too much then you are not likely to find the essentially new view that transforms a field, and if you doubt too much you will not be able to do much at all. It is a fine balance between believing what you learn and at the same time doubting things. Great steps forward usually involve a change of viewpoint to outside the standard ones in the field. While you are leaning things you need to think about them and examine them from many sides. By connecting them in many ways with what you already know…. you can later retrieve them in unusual situations. It took me a long time to realize that each time I learned something I should put “hooks” on it. This is another face of the extra effort, the studying more deeply, the going the extra mile, that seems to be characteristic of great scientists.
Hamming is an unusual combination of (a) a great scientist himself, (b) curious and thoughtful about what makes others great, and (c) honest and open about his observations (it seems).
Anonymous, Becoming a Magician —on how to become a person that your current self would perceive as magical:
The description was about five or six handwritten pages long, and at the time, it was a manifestation of desperate longing to be somewhere other than where I was, someone who felt free and cared for. At the time I saw that description as basically an impossibility; my life could never be so amazing in reality. Fast forward about seven or ten years and I rediscovered the description when I was moving old notebooks and journals from one dusty storage spot to another. As I read through it, I discovered that 90% of the statements I had made in that description were true (or true in spirit). … It was incredible to me, despite all the changes that had happened in my life since when I wrote the passage, that I had basically become the person whose life I had dreamed of living as a teenager. That’s pretty fucking cool.
And then came Sanatan Dinda. An Indian visual artist from Kolkata, he didn’t even make the finals the first year he competed, and the next year he placed second with a style that broke half a dozen of the implicit rules of ‘good artwork’ at the competition. … [T]he third year he came he won the entire competition by something like ten percent of the total awarded points over the next artist in second place. … The thing that confused me though was this – I could not work out how he did it. Like, I had zero mental model of how he created that piece in the same timeframe we all had; how he came up with it, designed it, practiced it. Even though he placed first and I placed fifth and logically we both existed on a scale of ‘competence at bodypainting’ it seemed like the skills required were completely different.
The exercise they suggest is a really useful activity for weekly (or monthly or yearly) reviews. Highly recommended!
Dan Luu, 95th percentile isn’t that good . Great for cultivating self-improvement mindset by reminding you how easy (in some sense) it is to make huge improvements at something:
Reaching 95%-ile isn’t very impressive because it’s not that hard to do. I think this is one of my most ridiculable ideas. It doesn’t help that, when stated nakedly, that sounds elitist. But I think it’s just the opposite: most people can become (relatively) good at most things. Note that when I say 95%-ile, I mean 95%-ile among people who participate, not all people (for many activities, just doing it at all makes you 99%-ile or above across all people). I’m also not referring to 95%-ile among people who practice regularly. The “one weird trick” is that, for a lot of activities, being something like 10%-ile among people who practice can make you something like 90%-ile or 99%-ile among people who participate.
It’s not weekly review material, but I also appreciate the bonus section on Dan’s other most ridiculable ideas.
Nate Soares, Rest in Motion :
Many people seem to think the ‘good’ state of being, the ‘ground’ state, is a relaxed state, a state with lots of rest and very little action. Because they think the ground state is the relaxed state, they act like maintaining any other state requires effort, requires suffering. This is a failure mode that I used to fall into pretty regularly. I would model my work as a finite stream of tasks that needed doing. I’d think “once I’ve done the laundry and bought new shoes and finished the grocery shopping and fixed the bugs in my code and finished the big refactor, everything will be in order, and I’ll be able to rest.” And in that state of mind, every new email that hit my inbox, every new bug discovered in my code, every tool of mine that wore down and needed repair, would deal me damage. I was modeling my work as finite, with the rest state being the state where all tasks were completed, and so every new task would push me further from that precious rest state and wear me down. But the work that needs to be done is not a finite list of tasks, it is a neverending stream. Clothes are always getting worn down, food is always getting eaten, code is always in motion. The goal is not to finish all the work before you; for that is impossible. The goal is simply to move through the work. Instead of struggling to reach the end of the stream, simply focus on moving along it.
A really helpful reminder of the right way to think about time management!
Again, to get one of these every weekend, sign up here:
And suggest your own favorite life advice essays in the comments!
Liked this post? Subscribe: Also send the best posts from the archives
Why and how to write things on the Internet
Staring into the abyss as a core life skill, be less scared of overconfidence.
format comments in markdown .
Great list, you included some of my favorites and some I didn’t know about but have now read and will return to. A few books I’ve reread parts/all of to help me think about improving are The score takes care of itself (details on practices/mindsets that led to football success) and Peak (details of deliberate practice).
Violence and the Sacred: College as an incubator of Girardian terror —Because I’m in college, to not compete in meaningless ways
Hume the humane —To be inspired by Hume, who wrote the Treatise by 26 and was still a pretty happy philosopher
The Mundanity of Excellence (a paper but as readable as an essay) , The String Theory —Excellence isn’t special just hard
Even if you beat me —By Sally Rooney, on her college debate career— this especially stood out to me because I do college debate, and I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to get out of this essay. On one hand it makes me more competitive and want to work harder and win more, on the other hand it makes me want to quit and take a larger perspective. I think the point is that I don’t know which is correct.
What Does Any of This Have To Do with Physics? , That Eternal Question , Stargazing Before the Apocalypse —These three the same, to remind me not to chase things because they’re hard, like you’ve said before; there are things that matter more
Even artichokes have doubts —Don’t sell out when getting a job
Here is a fave life advice essay from Shane Parrish via Gallwey. I use the inner Game analogy particularly in narrative painting but it works with anything. Self 2 knows.
https://fs.blog/2020/01/inner-game-of-tennis/
Wow, these were some great suggestions and I had not heard of most of them before (only had seen the PG and Sam Altman essays before, essays that I keep bookmarked and make sure to frequent).
Here’s are some interesting life advice essays I’ve come across:
- https://www.spakhm.com/p/productivity-advice
- https://keaganstokoe.wixsite.com/website-2/post/13-ways-to-live-a-life-of-purpose-in-your-20-s
- http://paulgraham.com/hs.html
- https://kk.org/thetechnium/you-are-not-late/
Do the work. A simple sentiment that can move mountains when internalized.
Thanks for this blog and this post. I’ve been a reader of it for some time now. Fifteen years ago or so a friend sent me the following article and I turn to it every year. I don’t think it’s quite in line with the rest of the articles here - more philosophical and perhaps less practical - but I felt inspired to share it nevertheless. Perhaps you will like it.
https://freedomcenter.arizona.edu/sites/freedomcenter.arizona.edu/files/Meaning%202015.pdf
Kind regards and happy new year.
Here is a new article that I fits the genre: https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2021/04/30/favorable-conditions-never-come/
Cal Newport beautifully revisits the old idea of finding time for the important / not-urgent work.
Has the newsletter stopped?
It sends you one of these essays each week and stops after the last one, so 6 weeks after you sign up!
My apologies. I missed the “I’ll keep this updated as I find more great essays” part. Looking forward to receiving a new one!
Solid recommendations. Here’s mine: Play in Hard Mode . I also read my full list of favorite essays once a month and reflect on them. Definitely a useful habit!
Super valuable!!!
- Share full article
The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received (and Are Willing to Pass On)
Credit... Graham Roumieu
Supported by
By David Pogue
- April 30, 2019
A few years ago, I crowdsourced an entire book, called “ The World According to Twitter. ” Every night for 100 nights, I tweeted a provocative question; I published the best responses. (Sample question: “Supply the subject line of an email you really, really don’t want to open.” Sample answer, from @pumpkinshirt: “To my former sexual partners, as required by law.”)
But one response changed my life. I asked: “What’s your greatest regret?” And @susanchamplin replied that regret was her only regret. “Wise advice: You made the best decision you could with the information you had at the time.”
@Pogue I regret all the time I wasted regretting. Wise advice: "You made the best decision you could w/the information you had at the time." — Susan Champlin (@susanchamplin) May 7, 2009
I found that idea profoundly liberating. When you’re contemplating your own mistakes and failures, it lets you off the hook. It says, “You did your best, didn’t you? Now quit beating yourself up and be glad you learned something.”
Lately I’ve been thinking: How many other people have life-changing words of advice to share? And wouldn’t “Crowdwise” be a perfect place to publish them?
[Want even more great advice? Sign up here for the Smarter Living newsletter to get stories like this (and much more!) delivered straight to your inbox every Monday morning.]
And so, dear readers, I invited you to submit the best advice you’ve ever received. Here’s some of what you shared, conveniently categorized.
Life Advice
The first kind of counsel for your consideration: words of wisdom for almost any life situation.
“ You’ve never seen a cat skeleton in a tree, have you?” When Alexandra Aulisi’s cat couldn’t get down from a tree, her grandmother reassured her with those words, predicting (correctly) that the cat would come down on his own. “This advice made me realize that, sometimes, you need to shift your perception of a problem to see a solution,” Ms. Aulisi noted.
“Don’t pickle things.” That line, brought to you by reader Sam Singer’s mother, means: If you have something special, use it now. “Serve daily meals on your good china. Wash your hands with the luxurious soap you received as a housewarming gift. Drink that bottle of amazing wine right away. Don’t save things for future use — because who knows what the future looks like?”
“Exercise adds 20 degrees.” For example, “if it’s 28 degrees out and it seems too cold to go running,” Rory Evans wrote, “once you get moving, it’ll feel like it’s 48 degrees. And that, you can handle.”
“Touch it once.” According to Christine H., this household hint involves putting something away the first time you pick it up. That way, “you don’t have to waste energy looking at it (and feeling guilty), or letting it get dusty so you have to clean it before putting it away.”
“Sleep on his side of the bed.” Mattie Scott heard this advice at her husband’s funeral. “It’s truly the best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten,” she notes. “The effect was profoundly comforting, and it greatly lessened the ache of missing his physical presence.”
“Things don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful.” Gail Dekker first heard her friend, a wedding coordinator, offer these words to young couples whose emotions were running high. But it works in all kinds of situations, including Ms. Dekker’s house hunt. “My initial reaction was that there was something wrong with every condo I saw. My friend reminded me: A place didn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful. She was right.”
“Take a breath.” Melissa Fanning heard this from a yoga teacher (“at a corporate retreat about which I remember nothing else”). It wasn’t a yoga instruction; it was a suggestion to pause at stressful moments, to avoid saying or doing something regrettable. “I use this advice every day,” Ms. Fanning wrote. “It has preserved peace, calmed me, and made me appear smarter than I am.”
“You can’t control other people’s actions, but you can control your reaction to them.” Kim Radich uses this advice daily. “For example, when a family member reacted negatively to a situation, I remembered I can’t control their behavior, and I let it roll off my back.”
“Just be a gentleman.” Harry Kelly admits that this advice “may sound corny.” But that guidance came from his mother at a heightened emotional moment: as she dropped him off at college shortly after his father had died. “It means not taking advantage of other people and trying to adhere to your moral values,” he wrote. “Her advice has kept me from doing some bad things and encouraged me to do what is right. Best advice ever.”
Parenting Guidance
Raising children may be the most complicated, unpredictable, difficult job on earth. No wonder, then, that people are so quick to seek — and offer — counsel.
“Teach your children to swing from the trees — not to keep them from falling, but to see that they never hit the sidewalk.” That, of course, is “figurative and not specific,” wrote Caroline Reynolds, “but you can fit it to the situation. The results are very satisfying when they are in their early 20s and using their thinking skills to choose wisely among the paths of life.”
“These are the ten life skills your kids will need.” Karen Rosen received, from her mother-in-law, a list of ten things children should know how to do to be self-sufficient: Say please and thank you, shake hands, swim, ride a bike, do laundry, cook, bank, type, drive, and clean their rooms. “And always smile at your children, so they will remember you that way,” Ms. Rosen adds.
“The greatest gift you can give to your children is your own emotional well-being.” That insight, provided by a couples therapist to Kellen Klein and his wife, “has helped us prioritize carving out time for ourselves (Sunday softball!) and each other (nine-day trip to Europe without the kid!) throughout the craziness of early parenthood, a time in life when it’s easy to lose sight of your own identity.” Mr. Klein has seen their daughter benefit. “She’s picking up on the self-confidence, camaraderie, and mutual respect that these words have encouraged my wife and me to cultivate.”
“If there were a right way to raise a child, everyone would do it the same way.” The co-worker who offered that advice to Kevin Bolduan went on to explain that, “All new parents need to figure out their own way to raise their own kid.” Or, in Mr. Bolduan’s words: “My best parenting advice is to not take parenting advice.”
The workplace involves interaction with other human beings — and, that, of course, can be a minefield. Here are some thoughts from grizzled veterans.
“When you go in to a job interview, have questions ready.” Inevitably, the interviewer asks: “Do you have any questions?” When you do, in fact, have questions, “you show that you’re inquisitive and curious and eager to learn,” noted Gregor Gilliom. “Having been on the interviewer side, I’m amazed by how many people simply say, ‘Not really. I’m good.’ I never hire those candidates.”
“Your job is to make your boss look good.” According to Kim Fitzsimons, “It’s amazing how well this works in guaranteeing a smooth and trusting working relationship.”
“Greet people with their first names. They’re delighted.” That advice came from Gail Steele’s father, “a much loved and deeply respected dentist. I try to practice this wisdom day to day, in my work as an occupational therapist and among my friends and acquaintances.”
“Never accept work where you’re not learning.” Catherine Kunicki, fresh out of art school, heard famed furniture designer Charles Eames on a local radio show, and called in to ask his advice. She wound up following it. “I never got rich, but I loved what I was doing most of the time.”
The Lightning Round
And finally, a grab bag of wise words that don’t need further explication. If the advice fits, wear it.
“Boyfriends come and boyfriends go, but SAT scores are forever.” — Margot Watson
“When you see a ball on the road, make a full stop. There’s usually a kid running right behind it.” — Paulina Gomez
“A dollar bill is a skosh longer than 6 inches; you’ve always got a small tape measure with you.” — Rory Evans
“In life there are two types of workers: ditch diggers, and those who tell them how to dig the ditch. Decide who you want to be, and do it 100 percent.” —@ cooneyd554
“You don’t always have to have the last word with your children. ” — Andrew Berkow
“Best advice at a rocky time: Walk slow and drink lots of water.” — Sandra Barnes
“The day of your wedding, have a good breakfast. Chances are, it’s going to get busy.” — David Rosen
“Never trust anyone wearing a lapel pin.” — R. Weintraub
For the next “Crowdwise:” Better Uber-ing! Whether you’re a driver or a passenger in services like Uber and Lyft, you’ve undoubtedly accumulated some great tips, shortcuts, answers, and techniques. What knowledge can you share about the app, the process, and the system to make the whole process better, smarter, more efficient, or more economical? Send your wisdom to [email protected] by May 10, 2019 and we’ll use them in a future feature.
Advertisement
Home / Essay Samples / Life / The Best Advice I’ve Ever Received
The Best Advice I've Ever Received
- Category: Life
- Topic: Gratitude
Pages: 1 (422 words)
- Downloads: -->
Embracing Change and Growth
Applying the wisdom.
--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.
Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?
are ready to help you with your essay
You won’t be charged yet!
Loneliness Essays
Adversity Essays
Passion Essays
Pride Essays
Compassion Essays
Related Essays
We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.
By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.
Your essay sample has been sent.
In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.
samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->