I wasted my 20s

And how I’m making it up in my 30s

Greetings from Tokyo, Japan.

The cherry blossoms bloomed late this year just to wish me a happy birthday

Today, I turn 30 years old 🥳🎉

They say 20 is the new 30, but I think that’s a form of coping for people that didn’t take full advantage of their 20s.

Ageism is a real thing whether you want to admit it or not. There’s a lot of things you can get away with when you’re 20 that you can’t when you’re 30. It’s okay to be optimistic, but you also need to accept when you screw up.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a negative post. I’ve had a hell of a life already and I’m only getting started. My twenties have been incredible. I also intend to make the best of my thirties. But I made some decisions that set me back in a few areas.

So here’s the most important advice I’d give my 20-year-old self.

Sleep, exercise, and nutrition should be your #1 focus

There is a direct correlation between the times in my life where I felt the worst and made the least amount of progress towards my goals.

Every time that I took time off from working out or eating properly, the rest of my habits and routines would crumble. This would put me in a slump for half the year at times, losing significant gains, and forcing me to start all over again.

I have been much better about this in the past year and have been fairly consistent with working out. When traveling, I’ll even book accommodations right next to good gyms just so I have no excuses. I also switched my training to calisthenics which has made it even harder to skip a workout.

If I were 20 again…

• I would make sleeping 8 hours a night a non-negotiable, save for some extremely rare circumstances.

• I would get on a calisthenics program as soon as possible and go to the gym every single day.

• I would try to avoid sugar and gluten as much as possible and eat 190g of animal protein every single day.

These three changes early on would have been all I needed to reach my physical prime around 24-25 and enjoy it for longer. Instead, I now have to wait until I’m 33-34 to be at my physical peak, unless I use performance enhancers and a lot of supplements.

A strong, aesthetic body is one of the clearest signals that passively says the most about you. It’s something you can’t buy, and something that no one else can do for you.

It shows that you’re disciplined and that you can push yourself for a long period of time without giving up.

I’m taking this very seriously moving forward.

Devote yourself to programming and content creation

When you go on YouTube and the algorithm shows you those “best business to start in 2024” videos, you can bet that I’ve tried whatever they’re talking about.

I got some small wins here and there but never stuck to anything. Can you imagine spending months/ years learning just to make a couple hundred/ thousand dollars? Then quitting that when things get hard and repeating for 10 years? That’s what I did. It’s no surprise that I don’t have the financial success that I’ve so desperately wanted.

I jumped from one thing to another trying to get rich quick, and all of a sudden, I’m 30.

If I were 20 again…

• I would go all-in on learning to build iOS apps way back in 2014. I would stick with this and only do this until making enough to justify doing something else.

• Learning iOS earlier would have made me enjoy programming earlier to really stick with it and get good at it at a much younger age.

• I would also have gotten into content creation earlier. Even now I am terrible at social media. I have an interesting life but I hate taking out my phone to document things. Unfortunately that means I am losing out on connecting with people that could be business partners, customers, or great friends.

Now, I’ve been more consistent with programming, and I’m working on making it a daily habit.

I’ve also bought a few things to help me reduce the mental burden of content creation. So if you see me post more, that means I’m actually sticking to my goals.

Stay single until you get rich

I spent pretty much all of my 20s in a relationship. While I am grateful for the experiences and learnings from those relationships, I become complacent when I’m not single.

It turns out that you spend a lot of time texting/ calling, going on dates, and spending time with your partner.

Trying to develop yourself and grow your income is difficult enough already. When you add a relationship to the mix, you end up spending a lot of time working on the relationship. That’s time you’re not spending on your business and tapping into the compounding effects of putting in a lot of work early on.

If I were 20 again…

• I wouldn’t even bother with a relationship until generating at least $50,000 per month of income.

• I would also stay away from casual relationships since they are just as, if not even more, of a time sink. Most guys will find that this isn’t too hard to do when you quit porn and practice sexual discipline.

• I would nurture my relationships with friends by including them in things I am doing anyway, like going to the gym or coworking in a cafe.

I also would have probably started traveling more much earlier if I didn’t have a relationship to think about. I know a couple of guys that change the trajectory of their life by disappearing to Chiang Mai or Bali in their early twenties, hyper focusing, and coming back millionaires.

In hindsight, I should have done the same thing! And this just isn’t realistic unless you’re single.

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There’s a lot more I’d say to my younger self, but I think this is evergreen advice that would have served me the best. This advice isn’t for everyone. For example, I know guys that changed for the better by being in long-term relationships.

This was more of a reflection exercise after a few days thinking back on the past decade. The solar eclipse today is a perfect symbolic representation welcoming me to a new stage of my life.

I have a lot to look forward to now in my thirties. Seeds that I’ve been tirelessly tending to are finally starting to bear fruit.

I can’t wait to share more of what I’ve been up to.

Until next time,

Jonathan