Give your 21y/o self advice:
If you could go back and give your 20 something self advice…what would you tell them? Could be professional, personal etc..
Trending Content
| +33 | 2024 UK Election - Tories finished? | 21 | 1d | |
| +29 | ADHD ! | 14 | 5h | |
| +29 | Non-Competes Banned | 34 | 6h | |
| +29 | Being Christian in investment banking | 14 | 2d | |
| How do I become Sigma | 15 | 1d | ||
| +19 | Moelis has the cutest Analysts? | 4 | 2d | |
| +18 | Best NYC neighborhood for single 30M | 12 | 4d | |
| +16 | Underage intern, drinking? | 7 | 2d | |
| +13 | Secretive vs Universal Prestige? | 7 | 2d | |
| +10 | What are divorce rates in IB? | 13 | 4d |
Career Resources
1. Don’t give up on the sports. It’s a lot harder to pick them back up in the 40s if you have a long break.
2. Know when to stick it out in a challenging situation, and know when to quit and move on. And think very hard before the latter. My career has benefited from doing the latter, but I do wonder whether once or twice I should have chosen to stay.
3. You will have friends that always want more out of life, and friends that only feel comfortable in their comfort zone. Thrive on the former, be very wary of the latter.
4. You can’t travel too much
5. Your parents and loved ones will get older some day. Make a lot of time for them. Same with your kids.
6. Be wary of anyone who says your colleagues can’t be your friends. Of course they can
7. Plan your career based on where you want to be ten years from now, not on where you are now. At lease once, when I was doing great and enjoying my job and getting paid well, I was enjoying the moment and didn’t keep my eye on where the puck was going
8. It gets really competitive getting to the very top. Start playing the game very early, watch the top performers and learn from them.
9. Don’t blame your inability to have a family life or social life or hobbies on your job. It’s all about discipline and time management. Never use your job as an excuse.
10. Influence is free. Always help people when you can without expectation
11. In any job, the top 10% create 90% of the value. Learn who the stars are and learn from them
Great insights, thank you. 2, 7, and 11 stand out most to me…What traits/characteristics have you seen amongst MDs and other leaders that have proven most valuable throughout one’s career?
On points 8 and 11, what's the best way to follow these people and which sorts of people do you mean? I enjoy watching videos/reading articles from top finance guys
I always found it way too abstract to think about people I don’t know well (although I highly enjoyed The Last Tycoons and Steve Schwarzman’s book).
But in an organization, you need to seek out the people who a) get things done and b) are highly efficient with their time and the time of others. They will invariably be the superstars and the ones you want to learn from. In banking, the person that can brief their clients and leverage their resources efficiently will be the rainmaker in the end. Same in private equity where the person who can create an investment case to their committee and LPs efficiently.
in banking or PE, it’s also a matter of survival. Your life is so much better when you work for someone who values the time of others.
So find those people, learn from them, work for them, make them your clients. I always tell my associates and even analysts - “whenever you see someone on the client side at your level who is a future star, note it down, take them out for lunch and be helpful to them over the course of their careers”
NB: you can be efficient with peoples time and still generous with your own time. In fact, I think generosity of time is important. But you should never waste your time or those of others.
Solid advice
Thank you for these. Very helpful
Why can't you travel too much? Can you elaborate?
He’s probably alluding to the idea that he has never regretted traveling. Immersing yourself in other cultures can help you put everything into perspective and grow as a person. Life is short, see and try new things, you’ll never know what you’ll find out about yourself and the world around you.
ask that girl out. Might sound cliche but I have had a thought that if I made the move at the right time I could have been happier. But what is better is I would have given her better life than what she got now. It's sad to see someone I loved one sided didn't do well in life plagued by toxic relationships. This will sting long term
Number 10 is amazing advice, thank you.
To add to the points above, I wish I knew how competitive the world is when I was 21. Now I’m the head of a banking group and do probably better than 90% of MDs but I just took for granted at 21 that I would get here. I feel like I should have worked much harder in my 20s (I was well regarded but also the archetypical “smart but lazy” banker). I made it up in the 30s but I feel like if I worked harder and had my act together, my path would have been derisked and I could make it to the real top (now I still can get there but it’ would have been easier)
"The higher we climb in life, the more we realize just how hard everyone has worked to achieve anything"
no idea to whom belongs, but it's accurate
Just turned 22 but I would tell my 21 year old self to just chill out and learn adulting one step at a time. Quit gaming because it really is a waste of time.
This
Start NoFap
Lay off the weights
Be careful who you spend time with
Lay off the weights?
Russian propaganda detected
Why?
I mean I spent too much time lifting weights, It was kind of a waste of time
following
Go on some awesome trips with friends while in college. Particularly, international if you can afford. Your future self will gladly pay.
For my 18-19 yo self (since I started dating my now wife at 19), pay for a hotel to shag, if you have no other place (like your car). Your future self will gladly pay. The amount of money would seem trivial in the future.
Call your mom and dad often. Likely their health, energy will be the most it’ll ever be while you are in your 20’s (assuming they would be in their late 50’s to early to mid 60’s). Now’s the time to do some cool, more rigorous, bucket list travel with them (Machu Picchu, safari, Mount Fuji, etc).
I also think it'd be helpful to share things I'm glad I did, but May not have known it at the time
happy Sunday ladies and gents
1. Exercise at least twice a week. Ideally, both weightlifting and cardio (although you could do any sports). Also carve out some time to stretch or do yoga for 20mn+ at least twice a week.
2. Read non fiction
3. Keep your foreign languages up to par and don’t drop them after uni
4. As somebody said above, you can’t travel too much
5. Keep in contact with your previous coworkers and uni mates. Keep your social circle and make time for friends.
6. Prioritise sleep over partying. You do need to party sometimes when you’re young though and when you do, do it well.
7. Take care of your health. If you go to music festivals without earplugs, you won’t get your ears back later on.
Why can't you travel too much? Can you elaborate?
For me it’s one of the best investment you can make 1) in yourself 2) for your mental health 3) to pile up memories and feel like I’m achieving what I want in life. Also, there’s nothing quite like being in awe in front of nice Italian architecture, or the joy of staring in nature after a 3 day trekk
It’s also good to step away from your natural habitat to expand your perspective and get unstuck
it’s also just so fun to travel and 20 years from now, you’re not gonna remember the Netflix show or 5th brunch you had this month, but you will remember your trip to Egypt when you looked at the pyramids.
I do believe that traveling is good, it gets you away from what you do and it refreshes you when you're back. You also get to see different cultures and I think that helps in a lot of ways.
I'd also add, counter point though, I have a lot of friends who travel. A big portion to me seem to be using it as an escape from their life, when actually they should be focusing more on the day to day. Not to go all Jordan Peterson, if you travel 30/40 days of the year, you have 330/320 days at home; focus on ways you can make those better as opposed to just the trip days. For example, my fiance has a friend who is all about traveling, but she hates her job and her family life is somewhat out of whack.
Maybe the 21 year old life advice is focus on making sure regular days are good too.
Learn asap how to perform a backflip with proper form
Why?
For mating purposes
Swallow your pride and don’t go for attractive girls, the ugly ones are nicer
I'd tell my 21yo self "It's all gonna be alright."
Simple, but 10 years later it all worked out.
Don’t trade options
Lmao. Great advise tbh. Only a junior in college, but some kids I used to know from my hometown who are interested in finance and investing reached out to me to learn how to trade options. So hard to tell them that trading options just gambling, and they always think they can make it from the influencers they see on tiktok
You're a junior in college and can't spell "advice"? Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
I was going to say, can I just start listing investments?
Stop playing WOW and go to the gym.
You have to hit the ball head-on, not try to get under it.
Stop and smell the roses. By now if you don’t have an offer somewhere, enjoy the time and have a bit of fun.
At 22 I’m working 100+ hour weeks in IB with the threat of being fired at least once a week from BB. It’s changed and the spark isn’t all the glam and talk of the town.
Thanks for the insight, 22 y.o. Good to see how far you’ve come in the last 2 months
1.) Cut losers early and double down on winners (regarding habits and ideas). Emphasis on the former. Learn from your mistakes, and then move the fuck on.
2.) Positivity precedes momentum which precedes success. Don't wait for success to get motivated. Act first.
3.) People that coast will try to persuade/enable you to coast. Be wary of them.
4.) Try new things just to try them. If you are never humble enough to admit you're a novice, you will never become an expert. A failure has failed once, an expert has failed hundreds of times.
5.) It's better to admit you don't know something than to prove it.
6.) EQ is more valuable than IQ in 99% of roles.
7.) If you are the dumbest person (read: new hire) in the room, shut up and listen to the smart people talk.
8.) Constantly try to be the dumbest person in the room. And if questioned on why you're there, be honest. You're there to learn from people that have "been there and done that" because the blind can't lead the blind. They will respect you more for it than some BS answer.
9.) Learn to speak slowly in the workplace. (There are a number of reasons for this - google them).
10.) Get enough sodium and the weights will move easier.
12.) Optimistic people on average live 10 years longer. (Google it.)
13.) Pessimists fucking suck. Cut them out.
14.) Text/call people when you think of them. It's easy to reach out to someone on their birthday (everyone does). Special friendships require special attention.
15.) Humans are judgmental and appearance matters significantly. Being in shape is the sign of someone that can sacrifice in the short-term for a positive long-term outcome.
16.) People support what they helped build. If you're garnering internal support for something, include others. Forsake positive credit and bear all negative feedback.
17.) Study behavioral science and psychology. (You don't need a fucking degree in this, just read a few books on why people are the way they are. You will be ahead of 99% of society if you can apply the concepts.)
18.) The homeless person addicted to drugs on the street never intended to be there. Don't start. (Personally, I never have and never will, but I have seen a lot of friends go through issues.)
I'm sure a few of these will trigger people but honestly I don't care. I've learned most of these from people way more successful than I am and the young people here deserve the truth. Best of luck young guns.
Wow this is under-ratedly good advice.
1. Study hard! You can’t predict the future, let alone the effects of one choice but you should always act in ways that preserve as many options down the road as possible. This is one of them
2. Related to the former, study STEM. At least in West, it’s fast becoming the only realm in which you are repeatedly confronted with how little you know and how often your beliefs are wrong. This training is more invaluable in personal relationships - let alone professional life - than you can imagine. By all means, pair it with a humanities / social science subject if you feel it makes you more well-rounded but having STEM training is imperative if you are to develop the intellectual humility we all could use much more of. Note: I have actually studied STEM subjects for both undergrad and grad school
3. Learn a foreign language (something other than English, in my case) to a level that allows you to conduct business like a native speaker. It should be a language that allows you to work in a large geographical area, hopefully with several dynamic economies. Arabic and Mandarin Chinese qualify but require you to learn a new script. French, German and Spanish are good candidates for a more manageable slog
4. Try to secure a serious professional qualification before you graduate from university (ACCA, CPA, FCAS, FSA, CFA or equivalent). No, it will not necessarily secure you a job upon graduation but, over the course of your career, you’ll find that it helps to dramatically reduce your competition for opportunities
5. Go on as many dates with as many people as you can. You may be a romantic but seeing lots of people is the best way to (eventually) land on the person who is right for you. Also, the sole yardstick for deciding whether to see someone again (in a dating context) is how they made you feel. While advice for women on dating and dealing with terrible dating / relationship experiences for women seems to be quite mainstream, there is comparatively little for men (at least that was the case until c. 2018). I’ll make my small and belated contribution to correct that phenomenon here. Ruthlessly, and quickly, discard those who don’t make you feel good. Since this is obviously on your single 21 yo mind, you categorically should NOT interpret dating many people as synonymous with engaging in sexual activity with them. Putting aside the (significant) health risks of doing so, by engaging in sexual activity with a woman, particularly in a dating (ie not hookup) scenario, you are signalling a commitment without engaging in a negotiation of boundaries that will give that commitment the best chance of success (read: you are putting yourself in a situation where someone else justifiably thinks they can set the rules of the road and that you agree with them even though they haven’t actually verified this). Note: Happily (though my 21-28 yo self would disagree), my pre-marriage dating life was quite sparse despite considerable effort, with opportunities for sexual gratification somewhat more so. Still, within the 21-28 period, I did have varying levels of dating / sexual contact with ~ 15 women and emotionally hurt a couple. I wish I could take that back. Of the remainder, most fell away after 1-2 dates and the ones that did go further didn’t leave me feeling good
6. Don’t obsess over or idealise one country or region, especially so soon. Of the ~200 countries and territories around the world, you can find lucrative and fulfilling opportunities in at least 100. Emotional connections to a place are natural and understandable but they should not blind you to opportunities elsewhere, especially if pursuing opportunities in those countries does not foreclose returning to places you are attached to in future. Indeed, in the vast majority of cases, that will be true for you and people like you
7. Don’t fight the timing of providence. So many of things that you want depend on phenomena and events entirely out of your control. You can’t make them happen earlier than the universe will allow so being miserable in the lead up to it is just dumb
This is great advice, thank you
1. 80/20 Rule.
2. Law of Large Numbers.
3. Become excellent at reading a room. The most succesful people know where they are supposed to be at all times.
4. Study the greats, no matter what it is you do. Learn from their failures.
5. NoFap, lay off social media.
6. Meet as many people as you can.
7. Don't mistake activity for productivity, but do understand the importance of how it can bridge the gap (fake it till you make it).
8. Learn to separate risk and uncertainty.
9. Take an online class from an Ivy in Negotiations. (If you're not at one already).
10. Learn another language. Study abroad if you're able.
11. Obtain a relevant certification before graduation. It will tack on your starting salary and put you ahead of your competition.
Enjoy your good health while it lasts. Stay healthy.
Work a couple years then go to an M7 MBA program. Forget about the CFA exams unless you specifically want to go into asset management or equity research.
Magni dolore sit possimus sed quia. Unde omnis omnis voluptatem dolor voluptates quia consequatur illo.
Adipisci labore est excepturi quibusdam necessitatibus cum. Facere est eum non omnis. Praesentium corrupti eos et ut soluta. Atque dicta omnis voluptates voluptatum harum ullam non. Molestiae porro voluptas omnis voluptate illum.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Delectus ut eveniet totam numquam non dolore quibusdam eos. Consectetur aut consequatur amet laudantium. Ratione quidem dolores dignissimos est. Sunt aliquid eos omnis similique quis suscipit. Deleniti eius eos doloribus.
Suscipit dolores in eaque. Doloremque qui quia et. Consequuntur doloribus id nam. Ipsum ex iure recusandae dolores qui debitis illum.
Totam fugit aut ducimus. Enim incidunt aspernatur voluptas esse aspernatur deserunt. Omnis nobis adipisci modi optio saepe tempore est.
Accusamus facilis eos ullam. Voluptatem quidem ut dolorem voluptatem sed est. Rerum qui praesentium illum earum ut velit expedita.