List of advice from Kevin Kelly

Choose your favourite and put it to use

Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine. Since I love advice and lists, I loved his list of advice that he published for his 73rd birthday. Let me follow ‘Advice is like a cap, you can choose what fits you’ and list 11 of my favorites below.

Generated using Meta AI with Llama 3 in WhatsApp

1. Try to define yourself by what you love and embrace, rather than what you hate and refuse.

   1. Paul Graham wrote one about keeping your identity small.

   2. Yay, for ‘I am a loving husband, loving father, kind and funny guy’. Nay for ‘I do not take shit from anybody’.

2. Read a lot of history so you can understand how weird the past was; that way you will be comfortable with how weird the future will be.

   1. History never repeats but it rhymes

3. Interview your parents while they are still alive. Keep asking questions while you record. You’ll learn amazing things. Or hire someone to make their story into an oral history, or documentary, or book. This will be a tremendous gift to them and to your family.

4. Think in terms of decades, and act in terms of days.

   1. Strategically patient, tactically impatient.

5. The most selfish thing in the world you can do is to be generous. Your generosity will return you ten fold.

6. Discover people whom you love doing “nothing” with, and do nothing with them on a regular basis. The longer you can maintain those relationships, the longer you will live.¹

7. Write your own obituary, the one you’d like to have, and then everyday work towards making it true.

   1. This is my go-to birthday present for my friends. Isn’t wisdom and perspective the most valuable gift?²

8. Always be radically honest, but use your honesty as a gift not as a weapon. Your honesty should benefit others.

   1. Like most advice, very simple. But very hard.

9. A good sign that you are doing the kind of work you should be doing is that you enjoy the tedious parts that other people find tortuous. 

   1. Ikigai!

10. To tell a good story, you must reveal a surprise; otherwise it is just a report.

    1. Good leaders are good storytellers

11. Humility is mostly about being very honest about how much you owe to luck.

1. Note to self - Do more of this.

2. Isn’t it?