I was a deadbeat, good-for-nothing, and a worthless couch potato back in my college days.

In college, nothing much happened to me, or I didn’t make any effort to make anything happen… 

The biggest regret in my entire life is wasting four years of my prime time attending a college that adds no value to my life.

After college (FYI, I’m a mechanical engineer), I joined an IT firm and it was the best thing I’ve done in life so far, which led me to where I’m now.

But wait, I was still stupid while working at this firm, and after two years, I moved to a US-based MNC where I had more time to myself. From this point, I made a series of life-changing decisions that made me into a completely different person.

I’m now 26 years old, and I wish I had made these life-altering decisions sooner in life (at least in my 20s).

I’m going to tell you about them today.

Let’s dive deep into it.

01 Investing

I started to invest in Jan 2019, but I became serious about investing after the 2020 COVID market crash. This is the time when most of the Indians joined the bull run, including me. When I say investing, don’t include crypto in it.

Why I wish I had started sooner? One is for compounding, and the second is that I was trading in crypto until I entered the stock market with the little money I had in hand, thinking that would make me wealthy.

Luckily, I came across a YouTube channel called Freefincal, which changed my perspective on investing completely. If you want to be well educated in personal finance, then I would recommend you watch one channel, and this is it.

There is an ocean of information on personal finance. Of course, there are almost 1,200 videos (I’ve watched nearly 400 of them), and you must filter out what is relevant to you.

Freefincal changed my perspective on money, I gained a better understanding of my risk appetite and tolerance and began to invest more in the Indian stock market.

If YouTube had recommended freefincal in 2018 instead of 2020, I could have saved a few years from retiring. 

My take on investing: my stock portfolio is in blood red and why returns won’t make you wealthy?

02 Planting

In my 25 years of life, I haven’t even watered a plant, and then I came across a movie called “Kadisi Vivasayi” the life of an old farmer. This movie tapped the green panther inside me and made planting a hobby.

Planting has been an ongoing habit for the last three months, and I am already impressed! This is different.

I started with a money plant in a glass bottle, and now I have seven plants, and it has become the antidote to my digital life. Plants can surprise you suddenly, like growing an inch taller or gaining a new leaf. Their progress can’t be captured.

In my Fastlane life, I’ve taken plants as a slow and patient testing activity. It is something very meditative for me now. I wish to have this habit for life-long and regret not starting it sooner.

03 Waking up early

I was also a night crawler once, but early rising isn’t just for birds. After trying, I found that it had many perks and promised myself that I would not give up this habit.

The book “Deep Work” made a significant impact on my life. I was able to organize and prioritize each task in my day very well.

The biggest thing, however, was “deep work + waking up early.”

My energy level will be at its peak after waking up, so I can use it for the tasks that demand the most creative and concentrated deep work.

Waking up early left me with more time than before. In my morning rituals, I was able to squeeze in more deep work like writing for my blog, reading books, journaling, physical activity, etc.

I am just gonna stop here and jump on to the next one, as I’ve already talked more in this post – I tried waking up at 5 AM for 90 days. 

04 Reading books

For a long time, I had wished to read books. I even tried PDF and audible free credits, but nothing worked for me. After two years of postponement, I finally switched to physical books.

I was also watching book takeaways and summaries on YouTube, thinking that this would be sufficient to make me a knowledgeable person. However, it is completely incorrect and ineffective…

It’s as if you’re reading the book from someone else’s point of view; book reading should be based on your own understanding.

The two best things about books are,

• When you read, you imagine your own characters and situations, which stimulates your unemployed creativity.
• If you have the opportunity to write a book, you would like to share the best things you’ve come across in your life. The author does the same in his book, and you can obtain that valuable item for a few hundred rupees.
  
  

Before, I put off reading books because I thought I couldn’t afford them every month. Later, I realized that books are the cheapest mentorship program one can afford.

Try Flipkart instead of Amazon for books; you can get the best books for as little as 100 INR.
For example, think and grow rich and how to win friends and influence people.

When you read books, you witness significant changes in yourself. That is something I wish had happened sooner.

If you also want to get into the habit of reading, this post is a good place to start.

05 Note Taking

You can’t remember all the things in life, right?

Our brains are not designed to record information; they’re for making connections, like on a mind map.

If you agree with this statement, then you’ve also got to adapt to note-taking in your life.

Whatever I hear/watch/read, if I think it will be useful for me in the future, I’ll be capturing it in the notion app (my second brain), and I organize it in folder format for later use.

Let’s assume I’ve captured an idea in my notes and after a decade I’m reading it. When I reread, I’m rewiring the connection of how I felt when I read/heard/watched the idea for the first time. If I hadn’t taken notes, I wouldn’t even know that this idea existed.

This might sound like a time-consuming and childlike activity. Yes, it is, but believe me, you won’t regret doing it.

I have come across a lot of valuable content from blogs, books, podcasts, and videos, but they’re not made into notes. After adapting to notetaking in my system, I regret that I didn’t do this earlier in my life.

06 Writing

I began writing for Amazon affiliate marketing, but it led me here. I never imagined that I’d be able to pen down and share about  the things I enjoy. I don’t just write for blogs, though.

Dreams on paper

After waking up, I try to remember my dream and write it down before it fades from my memory. I am not a creative person. After this habit, I won’t say so.

Our dreams are not bound by the rules of our daily life, our unconscious does not see the world the same way our normal mind does. Writing your dreams can boost your creativity more, which helps my blog posts. If your job requires any kind of creativity, try this.

Personal journal

I’m a person who won’t express my emotions, thoughts, and feelings to others. I keep to myself most of the time. Then this thing came into my life—journaling.

I started to write down all the things that happened during my day in the “Day One” journaling app before going to sleep. Sometimes negative thoughts will run through my mind. Once I flush them out on paper, I feel a little better.

Journals will give you a chance to review yourself as if an outsider were reviewing you. I wish I had begun sooner to have the opportunity to observe how I grew up as a person.

07 Fitness

This is not a regret; I’ve been in fitness since my college senior years. This is for you, my readers, who haven’t considered it yet.

Where do you reside? Your answer will be home. But biologically, you reside in your body. So, you must take care of it, and no one will do it for you.

Fitness means not Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s level of fitness. One hour of physical activity, either at the gym or on the road (jogging), to keep you healthy and run for a longer time in life.

First, fitness comes more in the kitchen than in the gym. Abusing your body by eating junk in your twenties will bring all the issues in your thirties. Change it now at least.