What 2020 Taught Me

A list of the most important lessons that I learned this year

Some of my best moments this year

Before June of this year, I decided to start compounding lessons. Having the chance to live and experience new things, to fail and to learn, I would feel like I was wasting my day if I hadn’t learned something new by the evening.

Therefore, I created this list of lessons that I learned from pure experience. They are divided in random things that I found to be useful, the growth section is about mindsets that are important for me, people is about how to have good relationships with others (at least according to my experience), and success is about making things happen.
The goal would have been to have 366 points, but since I started a little bit late, these are around half of those.

So what’s the purpose of sharing this in a Medium article? Well, I just thought that it would be a great reminder for myself in 2021, I can now say that I’ve written 26 articles, and share some thoughts that will hopefully be inspiring or useful for you.

I gotta say that this won’t be very explanatory. I think that the point of inspirational quotes, or just thoughts that you read or hear from other people is that you discover their meaning by yourself, by experience.

Impact Level #1

Random useful stuff

1. Don’t do more than one important thing at the same moment. Focus in one, and do it well
2. Talk about three things: 3, 3, and 3
3. Know the info you’re looking for (what type it is) so you know where to look for it
4. Use comand+F function and Grammarily
5. Twitter: follow all the accounts that you think will show you something useful and positive. There’s not minimum or maximum. Just meet new awesome people
6. Twitter: just as you’re looking for accounts that show you something valuable, the rest of the community is doing that too. So do your best to show them things that matter
7. Set goals for thee day not only according to your plans, but to other factors that may influence your day. Family is one
8. Planning is sometimes exciting. It makes you see how you can achieve your goals, and how you can go through an exciting month
9. Having goals for the day, week, month and year is a great way to realize how much you’ve accomplished. This will also get rid of the feeling that the year/month/day lasted for very short
10. College admissions are a huge deal for a lot of people. Interestingly though, the stories of people who get into really really good schools, are unconventional and somehow simple

Growth

1. You can waste your time in anyway. You can spend your time wisely in anyway. YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook only show you what they know you’ll like. If you look for prank videos, that’s what you’ll see in your feed. If you look for science videos, that’s what you’ll get
2. Sleep well and early to wake up early, do more and be more productive
3. Learn how to enter into your “flow moments” when you’re most productive. Control the environment that you’re in (if possible) but most importantly, control what’s happening in your head
4. Ask for help when you need it. A lot of people are supportive and if you don’t receive an answer, at least you tried
5. See opportunities abroad as well as in your own community and country
6. Some rules of evolution are still going on in our daily lives. However, that doesn’t mean they’re all good indicators in today’s world. The guy who has more followers on Instagram, won’t necessarily be the guy who becomes the most successful (personally and professionally)
7. Take initiative
8. Be intentional
9. Own what you say
10. Speak your mind when necessary. It’s better to do so in the moment than later when things are already planned :/
11. Books can be a great source of knowledge or entertainment. You prefer knowledge. So give yourself the chance to learn something new every day and read 1 hour a day at least
12. I don’t think analogies are used to understand a concept better. I think they’re more useful for the person explaining, so they can teach the concept better
13. Often times, because of evolutionary reasons, we want people to do well in life. But we don’t want them to do better than us. Thus, shutting the monkey mind off, also involves understanding that wealth can be created: have an abundance mindset!
14. Create tangible things (not just talk about what you’re doing: make it true, make it happen)
15. Get your hands dirty
16. Look for mentors in different areas of your life

Have you followed @2045Podcast on Twitter and IG?

People

1. Reach out to people. Learn from them
2. Value people’s time and use a calendar!
3. Don’t ask people what Google can answer. Ask them things they can only answer (like their opinion on a certain topic or the precise way they develop a certain task)
4. Talk to people from their point of view if you want to convince them
5. Don’t talk about people’s defects or criticize them. Always talk good about people’s virtues
6. Give honest appreciation to people. Flattering doesn’t work
7. If someone tells you to meet/talk to another person that may be helpful to your career, read something about them before doing anything else. The same applies to challenges/competitions, etc. This way, you’ll be more prepared and maybe even more excited
8. People aren’t gonna laugh at you if you say “hi”. Maybe they do wanna talk and being first in starting a conversation comes in more friendly
9. If it’s the first time you meet someone, introduce yourself so you both know where to start the conversation
10. There’s no perfect family

Impact Level #2

Growth

1. Live to learn. Learn to live
2. Stay curious. Ask lots of questions
3. Done>perfect
4. Learn how to learn
5. Boss mentality
6. Growth mindset
7. Unconventional thinking
8. Figure it out
9. Anti-complacency. Be courageous
10. The very best time to start something was yesterday. The second best time to do it is now
11. Time can pass by incredibly fast. You want to have something to say when you finish high school, a year or in your birthday. Build that story on a day-to-day, week-to-week. Have goals and compromise yourself by writing monthly newsletters
12. Use your time as if it was worth $1000 bucks per hour. You wouldn’t like to let that amount of money go away on watching Netflix
13. You never know how long something good could last. Be aware of this and enjoy every good moment
14. DO THINGS THAT MATTER: cliché but true. Life is too short to spend one hour ever day just scrolling down an instagram feed. Better spend that time with your loved ones
15. Sometimes we don’t realize how lucky we are, for the simple fact of living in a democratic country where we aren’t literally killed for speaking our minds (JK Rowling)
16. Credit comes with responsibility. It can’t happen without it (Tim Cook)
17. You can do anything you put our mind to, but you can’t put your mind to everything
18. Don’t lose your foucs. Use content creation as a media to let the world know you, not as your main thing
19. There’ll always be an opportunity to improve, even if the circumstances aren’t exactly thee same
20. In many cases, our insecurities are born from comparing ourselves to others
21. Really, sometimes a talk with people who “have more experience” than us, from our family can bring as much value to us, as these guys (Tony Robbins…) can do
22. All the undesired events in our lives, sometimes we won’t be able to change them. All we can do is to be proactive to those situations. How can we be part of the solution?
23. The more I try to find answers to my questions, the more obvious I think these could be. Life is just going with the flow, but not just one flow. Going with your flow. Going with your passion, and what makes sense.

This summarizes my small victories in 2020. Compound interest is a thing

People

1. Remember your loved ones. They remember you
2. Everyone has a different way to be happy and enjoy moments. Don’t be afraid to be happy your way
3. If you truly love and appreciate somebody, you demonstrate that with actions; not only with words
4. Don’t use good comments as a way to conformity. Use them as a way to improvement and keeping things up

Success

1. While you can know about something (like CRISPR) since an early age, the advantage isn’t really there. The advantage is in applying that knowledge to BUILD SOMETHING
2. Start small, but start
3. The idea of “needing a PhD to develop PhD-level projects” is completely false. The only 3 things you need to do that are: the willing to put in the work, skills, and knowledge. Those are free to get anywhere; they depend on you
4. It’s easy to let yourself go with the momentary motivation, and then not actually do things
5. Those who succeed sometimes are also ones who have failed a lot, ones who people have laughed at as well. You just need to be hungry enough to counterbalance the falls that you’ll have, and ignore what isn’t possible
6. I know how I can be successful, what to do to achieve my goals, and yet I keep doing the opposite
7. Impostor syndrome is pointless and it’s not going to take you anywhere. If there’s one thing that you should stop doing to be successful is stop thinking that you aren’t gonna make it
8. Just do stuff. If you start worrying about things too much, that won’t let you think on how to optimize for them. Just put in the work and things will happen

Impact Level #3

Growth

1. Apply for stuff. Worst thing that can happen is that you get rejected
2. Find your lion (that thing that scares you but pushes you to get stuff done)
3. Find your unfair advantage (something few people can have that will help you succeed at what you love) and use it. Turn your disadvantages into advantages
4. Being bored is foolishness. Remember: so much to do, so much to see… you probably can’t learn it and know it all, but you can always try
5. Take opportunities even if you consider that you’re not prepared enough for them. You never know if that could’ve been the last time that chance was in front of you
6. Throw yourself into the unknown
7. WAKE UP WITH PURPOSE: every day. no matter what. It’s better to stay in bed until you realize what you want to make of this day than going ahead and letting the world happen to you and not you happening to the world
8. Don’t overthink it. Do → get feedback → improve. If you’re not liking it, you don’t need to finish it. But struggle first.
9. You have so much potential if you focus and if that’s something you really want to be good at, improve on, and be the best at.
10. You can’t connect the dots forwards, only backwards, but you can have the confidence that everything will connect in the end, so you can trust something. Live everyday as if it was the last one, because someday, that is gonna be true (Steve Jobs)
11. If things don’t go as expected, see that as a challenge instead of an obstacle. Life’s never gonna place you under perfect circumstances to succeed in the short term
12. We’ve forgotten how to be humans. When we’re kids, we actually have the enough imagination to figure things out and succeed, we also have enough confidence, but we lose all of that as other people shape us
13. Set small goals so you can measure how much you can actually get done
14. Compound interest is probably the most important mental model that I’ve seen reflected in my growth this year
15. If you’re alive and most of your human rights are being respected, it means you have the chance to do something with your life. Take advantage of that

Probably the quote that will be most impactful for me in 2021

Success

1. People who have done something in life are not much smarter than you (if they are). What makes the difference between successful and unsuccessful people is not intelligence but skills, experience and the knowledge thanks to those
2. Don’t tell people what you’ll do. Show them what you’ve done
3. The tools have already been discovered by millenials or Gen Y. It’s time for Gen Z to bring them to life
4. Learn the basics. It’ll be boring. It’ll be hard and definitely not fun. But it’ll probably be worth it
5. First step is dreaming. Next is doing. Then you can fail, learn and finally achieve
6. Have a burning desire to achieve your goals
7. If you don’t accomplish a goal, someone else will do it
8. NEVER LOSE THE SPARK, SPIRIT AND THE DRIVE you’re born with. It’s better than being born as a genius :)
9. Think and grow. Your thoughts are the most important factor that will determine your success. Learn how to control them and auto-suggest positive emotions and reject negative ones
10. Ideas aren’t worth anything unless they’re implemented, executed. No one gets paid for an idea before it is brought to life
11. Having the creativity to join previously discovered things, using already existing tech to create a unique something, is an amazing ability that not many people have but is totally worth learning and practicing everyday
12. If you’re trusting on the failure of others to be successful, you’re wrong
13. Don’t finish is no option → don’t make it happen is no option
14. If you ever feel lost, ask yourself what you’d do if there were no rules, if nothing was impossible, if there were no limits to your imagination and to the world, if money wasn’t ever a problem
15. You do you. Become the best version of yourself and success will come to you
16. The more you know, the more doubts you have
17. Is success a skill be developed? I’ll say yes!
18. If only 5% of the people are successful, it’s because they do what 95% of the others don’t like to do. One example is waking up early
19. You just need to increase your probabilities of success by trying
20. You don’t want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it (Paul Graham)
21. It’s hard to be a conformist if you don’t know what you’re supposed to conform to (Paul Graham)
22. When you hear someone say something, stop and ask yourself “Is that true?” Don’t say it out loud
23. Become comfortable with failing 90% of the time. Still, try 10 times before giving up on something.
24. Ask for what you want and not for what’s in the menu
25. What do you know that you wish you didn’t know?
26. Part of being a fool (stay hungry, stay foolish) is being crazy enough to think that from the billions of people in this planet, and the billions of possibilities that they have of changing the world, you are gonna be one of the best. You are gonna be that outlier. If you fool yourself into thinking that, you will keep the hunger of changing the world too, and maybe after some time, you’ll be that fool who somehow changed the world

Existence

1. Life has no meaning. Create it
2. Life is not a product. It is a process
3. We have limited time on this universe. If we managed to get more, we could learn lots of things
4. Know yourself better before an algorithm does
5. If this was just a “simulation” or reality was just not the way you see it, you’d probably do so much more because you wouldn’t care about failing, or other people’s opinions
6. Finding purpose is maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever done (followed by learning how to code, lol)

Conclusion

This has been the best and the worst year of my life at the same time, and the only thing that I know for sure is that if 2020 was about growing and learning, 2021 will be about building.
Also:

(Not the wisest person, I know. But this thought is actually pretty wise in my opinion)

Hey! I’m Sofi, a 16-year-old girl who’s extremely passionate about biotech, human longevity, and innovation itself 🦄. I’m learning a lot about exponential technologies to start a company that impacts the world positively 🚀. I love writing articles about scientific innovations to show you the amazing future that awaits us!
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