Are you in your 20s?
Confused about life?
I’m all jaded with the wait for the light-bulb moment, so here I’m writing my goal list to do in my twenties.
Hop in, because I’m trying to figure it out as well.
Even since my 20th birthday, I have been beating my brains out trying to figure out my life. Three years of the ‘defining decade’ passed and I’m still at sea, floating around pointlessly.
This list aims to give me some direction to proceed and identify what to optimize for in life. In short, to make the most out of the time I got. I’m trying to make it generic so that you can also benefit from the list.
Table of content
Enough preamble, Let’s begin.
What should we focus on in our 20s?
Rather than making arbitrary goals, I intend to focus on what matters the most in your 20s. These are the objectives that I found most useful.
1, Financial literacy
I wish I could see your face as I bet you didn’t see this coming.
Whether or not you like it, we all need to deal with money and spend our time chasing after it. If we are to spend our life for it, we might as well try to get our head around it.
Your parents won’t teach you personal finance lessons, your colleges won’t, nor do your friends. This is something you need to learn yourself.
We are all taught to spend our money. We need to learn how to save it, how to invest it, and how to make the best with what we have.
So let’s start my goal list with this one.
I have been investing in mutual funds for nearly a year, and I want to invest in the stock market slowly. As Albert Einstein famously said, “Compound Interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”
Don’t miss out on the power of compounding. Start investing early to give your money as much as time to grow.
Goal list item: Study and Invest in Stock market.
Goal list item: Learn as much as about personal finance.
If you are completely new to personal finance, I suggest you read a book, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki. Click on it if you are interested in buying one.
2, Travel around the world
When we say we are clueless about life, it is not our fault. We lack the experience to make well-informed decisions.
The first step in figure out your life is to understand what life is. Traveling is how you understand life.
Never be a tourist, always be a traveler.
If you just go to a place, visit some tourist spots, take some photos, and come back, there is no point in doing it other than the entertainment value.
Always look to learn something new from that place. Maybe their culture, or geography, or people, their lifestyle.
Always try to have a rich experience.
Coming back to my goal list, I have two plans in my mind.
The first one is regarding my fascination with North India and its rich heritage and culture. I always wanted to take my time and explore it.
Going to a different country was a dream for me since childhood and that is the second one. To see and learn from people who look different from you, who talk differently from you, who eat differently from you, whose lifestyle differs from you.
Goal list item: Travel around the north and north-east India
Goal list item: Travel to Europe
3, Make lots of friends
I know I sound like a five-year-old boy by saying that. But this is something I think I have been terrible at.
I think I didn’t value friendships properly in school and that is something I regret in my life and I want to fix that.
Let me tell you why I want to do something so cheesy.
I have always been surprised by how much I learn from talking to different people. Different people provide unique insights, perspectives, and stories. There is a reason we are social beings, we are so much better as a team than as an individual.
Let me tell you the easiest way to become successful. All you need to do is to surround yourself with successful people. The people with whom you associate in your life will determine the course of your life.
For me, I will focus on maintaining my friendships and make as many friends as possible
Goal list item: Stay at 30 different friend’s homes.
4, Caring about Career
Have you heard about mulitpotentialite?
Click on it to find out more about it.
Simply putting it, multipotentialites are people who have multiple passions.
We have been taught this ‘one life, one job’ philosophy since birth. We now live in a time when people, rather than specializing in one particular skill, develop multiple skills which can benefit each other.
I have been dreaded by the thought of doing the same thing every day. I’m a person who needs to focus on doing different things that interest me then.
Whether you are a specialist or generalist, you need to make sure that you are on the right career path at least by 30.
So 20s is the time to experiment and try out different things and finally identify your focal point/points.
Goal list item: Get masters from a reputed university
Goal list item: Try out three different job profiles
5, Never stop learning
Traveling, interacting with people are all different ways to learn new things, but they are not the only way.
In this day and age, learning something new is just a click away. We need to take advantage of all these opportunities available to us.
Our biggest excuse for learning something new will be, how will this help us in life?
You can only find answers to that after you learned it.
The answer will always leave you surprised.
I found the value of doing art only after realizing the aesthetic sense it gave me, which I now use throughout my life both professional and personal. When I tried to write and speak effectively in college, I had no idea it could help me perform very well professionally. While learning the DIY friendship bracelets, I never would have predicted the priceless reaction I got when I gifted the bracelet I made.
I know if I tried to gauge everything on ‘how much it will benefit me?’, I wouldn’t learn anything and I would have missed out on so many things.
Learning something new can also become helpful because learning is also a skill and the more you do, the better you are at it.
Always try to upskill yourself whenever possible. You will be grateful later on.
Goal list item: Learn German
Goal list item: Learn to play Ukulele
Goal list item: Reach 150 wpm
6, Health is also a wealth
When you are in your 20s, you focus on having fun and what is beneficial in the short run.
We eat what we love, stay up using social media, never taking the time to exercise.
When you are young, your body will tolerate everything, but you will have to pay the price at some point and you definitely won’t like it.
Health is something you shouldn’t overlook because everything feels fine now.
Just as good habits compound to produce colossal benefits over the long run, bad habits compound to produce colossal losses as well.
There are two reasons I think focusing on health is important:
- Your body and mind are the same
For your mind to be in its sharpest shape, your body needs to be fit as well. Physical well-being is very critical for mental well-being.
In simple words, if you want to have a good mind, then you need to put it inside a good body.
- Don’t let pills fill your bills
Unless you fancy roaming around in hospitals, and enjoy having colorful pills along with the breakfast, you shouldn’t bother about this.
Goal list item: Daily morning exercise for 30 minutes
Goal list item: Practicing mindfulness daily for 15 minutes
7, Time management
Until this point in time, we have been given ample time. The twenties are when you feel that time is flying and before you knew it, a year will pass.
This is the reason we need to focus on time management so that we don’t end up in our thirties after a blink.
There is so much to do and so little time. You will at some point learn to priorities tasks and work on important ones. You will need to define clear goals and objectives and learn to finish them in time.
Time management is a professional quality that we need to adopt in our daily life.
Goal list item: Have a full-fledged workflow management system
8, Developing Good habits
‘Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement‘
This is a line from the book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. Click on it if you want to read the whole book summary.
If I suggested investing for compounding wealth, I suggest good habits for compounding self-improvement.
You need to develop good habits as early as possible because of these reasons:
- You can reap the benefits of the good habits longer
- You could master the skill at an earlier point in time.
- When you are young, you will be more effective.
The twenties are a time where you need to develop good habits because it is a time when you need the benefits of good habits.
Fight your procrastination and start developing good habits.
Goal list item: Reading a book before going to bed
Goal list item: Finish 400 blog post
Final goal list in my 20s
- Study and Invest in the Stock market.
- Learn as much as about personal finance.
- Travel around the north and north-east India
- Travel to Europe
- Stay at 30 different friend’s homes.
- Get masters from a reputed university
- Try out three different job profiles
- Learn German
- Learn to play Ukulele
- Reach 150 wpm
- Daily morning exercise for 30 minutes
- Practicing mindfulness daily for 15 minutes
- Have a full-fledged workflow management system
- Reading a book before going to bed
- Finish 400 blog post