The benefit of having amazing mentors, colleagues, and conversation partners has been an absolute blessing in my life. Recently, I've taken the time to do some deep-dive reflection exercises and realized how much crazy good advice I received from these people so far in my journey.

I'm sharing some of the advice* to pay it forward, in hopes that it will contribute positively to your life, love, business, and other pursuits.

*For privacy reasons, the advice will be paraphrased and not specifically attributed.

Perspective

You know what money gets you in life? The ability to say no.

The multiple conversations I had with a mentor around this theme taught me a great deal about the various different goals people will pursue in life. Upon reflection, it became clear to me that the lifestyle I desire for myself and my family is entirely sustainable on a very realistic sum of money. Beyond that, money really just gives you the ability to say no to people who want your time/attention. 

If you aren't having fun, what's the point?

There's this stupid way of thinking in our society - which is especially prevalent in the technology, consulting, and startup spaces - that working immensely long hours and making heroic self-sacrifices to achieve some sort of goal is an honourable feat. This can also be said of parenting.

Business/Career

You need to be really known for two things. You can do a lot of other stuff, whatever, but you'd better be one of the best in your community at those 2 things.

Deep. 

Don't let perfect get in the way of good enough.

This advice (and lots of situation-specific coaching) was a really hard pill to swallow as a person who prided himself on attention to detail and pursuing ever greater levels of excellence. Oftentimes, what I failed to see was that 'good enough' was sufficient for most tasks. 'Good enough' took 10 minutes, 'Perfect' took an hour. So much more could be done if we let 'good enough' be the baseline.