It’s recently been 6 months since I started my first full-time job as a software engineer after graduating from university last year. A lot has changed in my life, and I thought I’d write about the things I’ve learned about myself, career, and life in the past half a year.

Some of these are amalgamations of things I’ve read about before but have only recently begun to appreciate. It’s also things that I believe to be generally true at the time of writing this, but I suspect some of these will not apply to all situations (see learning #6) or will need to be updated with more nuance in the future. As a disclaimer, I’m like, uh, 23, so take them with a pinch of salt.

I nevertheless think these are generally good statements to live by. I myself try to incorporate these learnings into my life, but as with most things, it’s a process!

1. The process of becoming something gives your life a whole lot of meaning. Much of life is becoming a better version of yourself.
2. The best people learn to work with the constraints they have and turn them into an advantage.
3. Sometimes you really do need to eat a shit sandwich. Resigning yourself to this makes eating it easier.
4. Immersing yourself in something and living with a sort of intensity that comes with that can be a good antidote to meaninglessness.
5. If you don’t know what you want to do right now, try to do small things that bring incremental improvements to your life.
6. Few things are completely black or white; most truths lie somewhere in the nuanced shades of gray. You should generally be wary of any worldview that presents a binary picture of the world.
7. If you’re lost, trying something, even if it doesn’t immediately appeal to you, is better than doing nothing. If at the end of it you realize you don’t like doing it, that’s a valuable lesson learned.
8. It’s important to take a long-term view of things . Life is pretty long.
9. Life is also pretty short. Prioritize ruthlessly.
10. A reliable way to figure out what you like is by trying out a lot of things.
11. If life feels like eating one frog after another , you’re probably doing something wrong.
12. Saying “no” can be important, but when you’re young, it’s often a good strategy to lean towards a “yes” if you’re unsure. This is because most people are in the divergent phases of their lives when they’re young.
13. The kind of life you lead currently, in whatever capacity, is only a small droplet in a sea of possibilities of how to live one’s life.
14. Exercise is important!
15. Sometimes you need to fall into mud to really know how to get out of it, so don’t beat yourself up for having fallen into one.