Thirty-three was a big one. Mostly because I became a dad. Our daughter was born on New Year’s Eve — a fitting arrival for a kid destined to reset everything. It’s been a beautiful, if slightly sleep-deprived blur ever since.

I’ve only been “Dad” for less than ten months, but if I’m being honest, I’ve been preparing for the role for over a decade. Not in the “read every parenting manual and memorize developmental milestones” kind of way — more in the “try to become a decent human being who won’t screw up the next one” kind of way.

My twenties were a long experiment in self-improvement — or, depending on the day, self-obsession disguised as growth. I devoured books, podcasts, and ideas like they were breadcrumbs leading somewhere better. All that note-taking, underlining, and philosophizing wasn’t just for me; it was rehearsal. One day, I hope these fragments of hard-earned wisdom will form a kind of guidebook for my daughter — a user manual for life, written by someone still learning to use it.

The best part of parenthood so far is watching her discover the world. Everything is astonishing — the grass, the faucet, the Bluetooth speaker. But while kids get the privilege of assuming wonder in everything, adults have to earn it. Somewhere along the way, we traded curiosity for competence. We learned how things work and, in doing so, forgot why they’re worth marveling at. The magic is still there; it just takes more squinting to see it.

So in the spirit of squinting, here are 33 lessons I’ve learned this year:

Check out my previous birthday posts from 29, 30, 31, and 32.

33 Life Lessons on My 33rd Birthday

1. Remember living it

My camera roll is filled with incredible moments and memories. But somewhere along the ride, I realized something uncomfortable: The more time I spent filming these moments, the less I actually remembered being in it. As the so-called “Instagram Generation,” we’ve subtly gone from capturing memories to designing them for public consumption.

So now I follow a simple rule: If it’s a moment worth capturing, I make sure I spend at least half of it without the camera. I have less pictures, but much better memories.

2. Freedom over fortune

Jack Butcher said it best, “If more money wouldn’t change how you spend your time, you’re already rich.”

The real flex isn’t a yacht, it’s autonomy.

3. Stay on target

In a recent interview, Bono was asked if he had any tattoos. He said no — but if he ever got one, it would be a line from Nietzsche:

The essential thing… is that there should be long obedience in the same direction.

Success is rarely the result of raw talent or endless hustle. It’s about staying pointed toward something — one idea, one craft, one mission — for years, even decades. David Senra, host of the Founders podcast, has spent nearly a decade studying history’s greatest entrepreneurs. After reading 400 biographies, he distilled everything he’s learned into a single word: focus.

4. Thank your villains

Some people aren’t here to grow — they’re here to show you what happens when you don’t. Not everyone is meant to evolve. Some exist as cautionary tales — mirrors reflecting what complacency, bitterness, or fear can turn into. The best teachers aren’t always the wise ones ahead of you. Sometimes they’re the ones standing still, reminding you why you can’t.

5. The ageless bounce

One of the less glamorous parts of your 30s is realizing your body doesn’t bounce back quite like it used to. The knees click, the hips ache, and good luck getting off the couch without letting out a groan. So how do you stay nimble — not just strong, but quick — when aging starts to slow you down?

Skipping!

Yes, — the thing you probably haven’t done since grade school. Turns out, it’s the ultimate cheat code for staying quick on your feet. Performance coach Stuart McMillan calls skipping “sprinting in disguise.” It trains rhythm, coordination, elasticity, and power — all without the injury risk of going full send down a track. It’s low-impact, endlessly adaptable, and weirdly fun once you get past feeling like a kid again. If you’re curious, there’s a great 25-minute YouTube tutorial that’ll show you how to work it into your routine.

6. ‘Later’ is the graveyard for ideas

Writing these articles ain’t easy. It’s a messy process of collecting quotes, ideas, and half-formed thoughts — then somehow turning them into something coherent. Most of my ideas hit while I’m walking around the neighborhood. I’ll think, “Oh, that’s a good one. I’ll write about it later.” But nine times out of ten, I forget what it was and end up forcing some watered-down version onto the page.

Eventually, I learned the hard way: when inspiration hits, don’t wait. Don’t jot it on a Post-it. Don’t schedule it for later. Don’t tell yourself you’ll come back after dinner — you won’t. Curiosity has a half-life. The trick is to act immediately. Ideas are worthless without action.

7. “I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ — which is so much better.”  — @sjblakemore

8. Sometimes you just need a game

Eye contact and vulnerability don’t exactly come naturally to most men (I’m one of them). We tend to open up better side-by-side than face-to-face

Comedian Jimmy Carr wisely says if you want to talk to a male friend about something serious, don’t be overt. Play pool. Or darts. Or take a drive. There’s a quiet wisdom in giving the body something to do so the heart can speak.

9. The Geezer’s Paradox

You don’t become cooler with age, but you do care progressively less about being cool, which is the only true way to actually be cool. @warpaintjournal

10. Use the Difficulty

In an old interview, actor Michael Caine shared a fantastic story about acting advice he received early in his career:

I was rehearsing a play when I was a very young actor and I had to come in a scene. It was just stage play, I’m behind the flats waiting to open the door. There was an improvised scene between a husband and wife going on inside — he threw a chair and it lodged in the doorway.

And I went to get open the door and I just got my head round and I said, “I’m sorry sir I can’t get in…there’s a chair there.”

He said to me, “Use the difficulty!”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “Well if it’s a comedy, fall over it. If it’s a drama, pick it up and smash it. Use the difficulty!”

Now I took that into my own life. You ask my children, anything bad happens you’ve got to use the difficulty. There’s never anything so bad that you cannot use that difficulty.

If you can use it a quarter of 1% to your advantage, you’re ahead. You didn’t let it get you down. That’s my philosophy.

11. Fear forward

Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez — the mind behind Sin City, Desperado, and Spy Kids — has a philosophy he calls Fear Forward.

When he faces a project that feels too big or too ambitious, he doesn’t overthink it. He doesn’t wait until he’s “ready.” He just starts. As he puts it:

“I set the bridge on fire… and I run across it.”

Most of us wait for confidence before taking action. Rodriguez flips it: confidence comes after you act. It’s the byproduct of doing the scary thing, not the prerequisite. When you burn the bridge, there’s no turning back. Fear becomes fuel.

It’s the same logic behind launching a business, writing a book, or becoming a parent — no one ever feels ready. You just light the match, sprint into the unknown, and figure it out mid-run. The only way out is through.

12. If the news were a person

George Mack offers a great analogy on how toxic we’d realize news consumption was if we pretended it was a person we were conversing with:

News — “Hey, do you want to see this footage of a school shooting?”

You — “No.”

News — “Guess how many people have died in this recent earthquake?”

You — “No. Please stop.”

News — “Let me call 2 of the angriest people I know on the topic and give them 5 minutes to talk over each other.”

You — “Why don’t you pick 2 rational experts and we will hear both sides for 3 hours?”

News — “Nah. If we do that, I won’t have time to sell you these new pharmaceutical pills.”

Imagine? Get this person away from me and my family.

13. Useful internet hacks from Reddit

• Ctrl+Shift+t — Reopens the last browser tab that was closed. Really handy when you accidentally close the wrong tab.
• https://archive.ph/ gets me past just about any paywall
• wordhippo.com for synonyms
• Get a good password manager and use it as a browser extension.
• Discount code scanner — Capital One, Rakuten, Honey
• Put your phone on airplane mode to charge it faster

14. The psychology of correction

Chase Hughes is a leading expert in behavior, influence, and human behavior profiling. In a recent interview, Hughes explains how the key to getting valuable information out of someone is exploiting the principle that people love to correct people. It’s called using provocative statements.

For example, imagine we’re at a department store and I ask you to walk up to an employee and find out how much they make per hour. Most people would just ask directly. But the moment you do that, you put yourself in the “weirdo” column.

Instead, if you said to the employee, “I read an article online that said you guys all got bumped up to $29 an hour, that’s fantastic!”

They’d respond with something like: “What?! No, we only make $18 an hour.”

And at the end of the day, when they think back on that conversation, they’ll feel like they willingly gave you that information. This need to correct the record is built into our psychology.

15. Fun fact on nouns vs. verbs

If it is a noun, we stress the first syllable. If it is a verb, we stress the second. For example:

• “Present”: (noun) — stress on first syllable: “PRE-sent”
• “Present”: (verb) — stress on the second syllable: “pre-SENT”
• ComBINE vs. COMbine

Caution: This rule does not apply to all words that can be used as either a noun or verb.

16. Be curious, not judgmental 

I have a bad tendency to snub anything that gets too popular too fast (i.e., pickleball). But I’ve found that my dislikes are often just laziness in disguise. It’s easier to hate than to explore.

Yet, somehow, my curiosity always drags me into the very things I swore I’d never touch. Every time I’ve pushed past my hostility, I’ve found myself pleasantly surprised.

Guess what? I tried pickleball… and god dammit, I loved it.

As Derek Sivers says, if you hate something, get to know it better.

17. You’re always five minutes away

My wife and I have an inside joke: whenever one of us feels miserable, the other says, “You NEEEEEVER regret it,” in the most obnoxious voice possible.

And annoyingly, it’s true every time. Go for a walk, stretch, lift something heavy — look at that, you feel like a million bucks. As James Clear puts it, we’re always five minutes away from feeling better. A better day is closer than you think.

18. First thought, best thought

Ever notice how your first instinct is usually right? Well, according to science… it is.

In studies with expert golfers and handball players, they found that the brain serves up options in order of quality: first thought = best thought.

In one study, golfers who had only three seconds to line up their putt ended up sinking more putts than the ones who had unlimited time.

Translation: thinking too much makes you worse.

19. Solve Mike’s problems

George Mack came up with one of my favorite mental hacks for dealing with your own nonsense: make up a friend named Mike. Or George. Or Cleo. The name doesn’t matter. What does matter is this: whenever life feels like a mess, pretend it’s your friend Mike’s problem, not yours. “Mike’s stressed about work.” “Mike can’t stop watching Tik Toks.” “Mike’s overthinking that text he sent three days ago.”

Then give Mike the advice you’d normally ignore yourself: “Relax, dude. Go for a walk. You’re fine.”

It’s ridiculous, but it works. Btw, I call mine Kenji. Don’t ask…

20. The power of labels

Discipline is when your identity is so clear, you stop negotiating with your feelings.

My whole life, people have told me how ‘disciplined’ I am. I always shrugged it off. I never saw myself as some drill sergeant with incredible self-control. I’m actually pretty unrestrained when it comes to things like dessert.

But what I am good at is creating an identity for myself and basing all my decisions on that. I don’t train like an athlete. I am an athlete. With that as my filter, all the micro-decisions become automatic. When I wake up, I don’t think, “How do I feel today?” I think, “What does an athlete do?” and I do that. I stretch, I eat right, and I get good sleep.

That’s not ‘discipline,’ it’s a clear identity. Behavior follows identity.

This ties in nicely with Lesson #25 👇

21. What the Irish get right about emotions

In the Irish language, we are not our emotions. We are not sad or anxious. We have sadness or anxiety on us.

• To say I am sad, we say tá brón orm — there is sadness on me.
• I am anxious, tá imní orm — there is anxiety on me.

The language recognizes these as passing states, not permanent fixtures of who we are. h/t Briana Ní Loingsigh

22. Lemony Snicket’s advice on how to write a nice thank-you note

1. Do not start with the thank you.
2. Start with any other sentence. If you say, “Thank you for the nice sweater,” you can’t imagine what to write next. Say, “It was so wonderful to come home from school to find this nice sweater. Thank you for thinking of me on Arbor Day.”
3. Then you’re done.

Also applies for weddings, Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Congrats, etc.

23. Why AI is like a talking dog

“If you meet a talking dog and its grammar isn’t very good, don’t forget that it’s still a talking dog. It’s still a miracle. But… just because a talking dog said it doesn’t mean it’s important.”

— Seth Godin

a.k.a. just because Chat wrote a paragraph doesn’t make it Shakespeare.

24. Familiarity is our first language

I’ve been the “new guy” more times than I can count — new teams, new jobs, new jiu-jitsu mats where everyone’s already rolling, and I’m just standing there like the new boyfriend meeting his girlfriend’s friends at a loud happy hour.

After years of awkward introductions, I’ve learned the fastest way to connect is just to share something oddly specific about yourself. Forget “So what do you do?” Try, “Last week I cried watching Cool Runnings (the slow clap part).” Instant connection.

25. Live like an athlete (briefly)

I think everyone should try to live like an elite athlete at least once in their life. Even if it’s just for 30–90 days. Eat on time, no junk food, train every day, rest, no distractions, no parties. Just a dedicated life.

It’s hard as shit, but 100% worth it. Even if you immediately go back to your old habits, it will forever change how you see performance in whatever profession you care about.

26. Mood lighting for the mind

There’s something about dim light that changes the way we think.

When everything’s lit up — screens, LEDs, tasks stacking up — we stay stuck in “get shit done” mode. It’s all logistics, no imagination.But strip away artificial brightness, sit with only the flicker of a candle or the deep hues of dusk, and a different part of the mind wakes up. The inner life comes forward.

Ideas take shape not as bullet points but as feelings, as something less rigid, more fluid. Conversation slows. People listen. Instead of debating, they reflect.

Dim light does something primal — it shuts off the part of you that performs and turns on the part that wonders. That’s why the best ideas hit right before sleep or at 5 a.m., when the world hasn’t woken up yet and your thoughts are still half-dream.

Maybe the real secret to creativity isn’t another optimized morning routine, but something simpler: Turn off the lights. Sit in the quiet. See what shows up.

27. Same circus, different clowns

Between politics, AI panic, and an economy that feels held together by duct tape, it’s easy to think we’re in the MOST chaotic chapter of human history. However, reading The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant eased a ton of my worries.

They point out how human nature doesn’t really change — just the costumes. In literally every era, people have been dishonest, power has been abused, and governments have been corrupt. Same shit, different day. It’s not a glitch in the system; it is the system.

So relax! People are gonna people.

28. Someone built that, you know

As you become an adult, you realize that the things around you weren’t always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity everything requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.

— John Collison

In short? The world bends to effort.

That shiny new park downtown isn’t just a park; it’s someone’s years of fighting through meetings, budgets, design iterations, and red tape. The world isn’t some immovable, pre-assembled structure. It’s more like a giant sandbox — and we’re invited to build.

29. But if I could…

The Inner Game of Tennis isn’t just a book for tennis players — it’s a guidebook for unlocking your full potential. Timothy Gallwey’s core message is simple: our greatest opponent isn’t across the net; it’s within our own minds.

The best piece of advice I picked up from this book (that’s translated into big improvements in my golf game) was this:

• Use the phrase “But if I could…” to shift perspective and open up possibilities. For example: “If I could hit a cross-court backhand, it would look like this.” Voilà

30. “A boy’s question of the world is ‘What do you got for me?’ A man’s question of the world is ‘What’s needed here?’” — Terry Real

Buying a house and having a child really makes this quote hit like a gut punch.

31. Language shapes reality

This year, I learned how simple shifts in vocabulary can alter how I perceive reality. As George Mack says, “We’re just prompt engineering our brain all day.” Try shuffling out these 5 words:

1. Decision → Experiment
2. Problem → Puzzle
3. Relax → Energise
4. Failure → Data point
5. Should → Could

32. Why humans will always be better than machines

My favourite line from the movie Interstellar is, “A machine doesn’t improvise well, because you can’t program a fear of death.”

The reason humans can innovate and push boundaries is that we know that our time is finite. At the heart of almost every major human innovation is the desire to outlast ourselves. It gets me thinking that maybe death isn’t a flaw. Maybe it’s a gift.

33. Earn the sunset

John Cena is a man of many talents. Somewhere along his roller coaster career, he realized he didn’t need to fit himself into some neatly labeled box.

“I just want to be useful.”

It’s such a simple reminder for those days when your to-do list is laughing at you. Just focus on being useful, even if that’s as basic as holding the door for someone or watering a dying plant.

“So when the sun goes down, I look at what I did for the day…

Did I earn the sunset?

Some days I don’t, and I motivate myself to try to do it again but most days I do. And that’s my sense of purpose.”

So when the sun goes down today, let it set on a day you’re proud of.

’Til next year

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— #33