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Here are the top 20 things I learned in my twenties:Marry your ideas with execution - Ideas are good. An idea married with execution is better. So you came up with 100 good ideas. That's great. Can you actually make any of them a success?Being able to focus is a skill - When I was in my 20s, I wanted to be a writer, a producer, an actor, a financial analyst, a salesperson and an entrepreneur. And that was just in the category of careers. Imagine what that list looked like for multitasking my daily activities. As I got older, I realized that our time and energy is incredibly limited each day. Being able to focus is absolutely critical if you want to make a big impact.Perseverance is the most important skill you can learn - You will fail, sometimes over and over again. It's human. No one's perfect. It's not about you fall, but how you get up each time. Did you learn? Did you quit when it made sense? Did you try again? Learn to persevere. I wanted to quit after writing my first book because it was such a flop. Guess what? I continued writing for years and eventually I got published in Forbes, Time, Fortune, Inc and Business Insider. #StayTheCourseWorking hard doesn't guarantee success, but it makes it more likely - Working hard does ensure a few things: you'll learn a lot, you'll develop discipline and you'll typically see more opportunities. Combine working hard with working smart, and you've got a recipe for success.Work is very personal - You spend about 24% of your time at work your entire life. Bring your whole, authentic self every single day. (This is Sheryl Sandberg's idea). Do you think people say, "Gosh, I love working with Nelson because he's so robotic and shows no emotion or personality." Nope, didn't think so.You don't know everything, learn from others - "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." - Socrates - Okay, I think Socrates is kind of right here. Just kind of. I think you know something. But none of us know everything. Leverage the intellectual power of your network and always be insanely curious to learn from others. You never know what incredible knowledge they can share with you. For example, the other day I saw down with a friend for a coffee and learned how he built a business that generated tens of thousands of dollars in sales in a few months with only a few hours of work a week. #MindBlownAn important part of business is setting proper expectations - Learn to let people known in advance what to expect when they work with you. This is half the battle.15 minute meetings can be ultra productive - 1 hour meetings are almost always too long. Seriously, when's the last time you really had to have a meeting that long to be productive? Try aiming for 15 minutes. It forces you to be concise.You can lead, with or without a title - When I worked at a huge technology company in Silicon Valley, I was an individual contributor. I came up with an innovative idea for generating sales and new customers on my own and soon the word spread about its success. Before you knew it, I was asked by the executive leadership team to present it nationally to the entire team. That's when I realized, leaders lead by inspiring, coaching and empowering people to be great. You can lead with or without the title.First impressions make a difference - I flew to over 70 cities in 2 years for business. When I wore a hoodie and fell asleep once, the stewardess woke me up and said "It's time to wake up teddy bear." I was 29 years old at the time. When I wore a suit (because I had business meetings that same day), people would treat me differently and call me "sir." First impressions make a difference.Time is the most valuable currency - In college I spent an ordinate amount of time playing Mario Kart and partying. Yes, it was fun, but as I've gotten older I realize now how valuable that time was. If I could go back in time, I would spend that time pushing myself to learn, to grow as a person, to spend more quality time with my friend and family, and to even start a business. Also, when I was in my early 20's, I often thought about how to make more money. Money is important. We need it for food, shelter and clothing. It's absolutely necessary in life. But the most valuable currency is time. Time with our loved ones. Time to live a life we can be proud of. Time is finite. Spend it wisely.Most arguments don't matter - Choose your battles wisely. Most people have a limited amount of social currency.Sometimes only you can motivate yourself to be great - Sometimes one of your idols can inspire you. Sometimes a family member can get you amped up. Sometimes a love interest can drive you. And sometimes, only you can motivate yourself. Figure out your why - Your purpose will fuel your drive. This is the strongest motivator of all.Strong opinion, weakly held - I love hearing people talk about their ideas and opinions in a passionate way. It shows they care. I also love it when people realize that there's a better way to do things (even when it's different from their own opinion). Be passionate and be open to changing if there's a better way.Data driven decision are powerful - "I think the "subscribe" button on the site should be blue," said the executive. "Why?" replied the marketing manager. "Because, I just think blue will do better." Instead of simply making decisions based opinion, consider leveraging data to arrive at an answer. For example, an A/B test is a common and great way to find out which variations perform better on a webpage. Embrace testing.Intuition can be just as powerful - Sometimes though, intuition can be really powerful. When Steve Jobs created the iPhone, he had incredibly sense of what he thought people would want. It reminds me of the quote from Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”Your most important investment is in your health - Treat your body well and it will thank you many years later. Eat more fruits and vegetables and exercise regularly. Your energy, focus and general happiness will improve. My secret to how I got on track with my health? Eating a green smoothie daily for 30 days.Integrity is what you do when no one is looking - But no one will ever know, you think to yourself. Yes, but you always will. And you'll have to live with it. Do the right thing.Love is what really matters - At the end of the day, love is what matters. Love more.More of my top posts:Self-Improvement: How can I motivate myself to work hard?What are some of the best life tips?What are the top ten things I should experience in life?

This is a common problem for people who are especially intelligent. Unfortunately, "keeping one's options open" tends to lead to "not being successful in anything."I put these in quotation marks because they are common things people say, but do not realize they are connected.The way to live a fulfilling and successful life, is to wield one's strengths in a fairly narrow focus. This does not mean a person must only do one thing, in order to do it well. “Jack of all trades, master of none” is a common phrase to warn people off of being a generalist. But there are some extremely talented and successful generalists, as well as talented and successful people who focus on a handful of pursuits, not just one.Stanford University is well known for its scholar athletes: students who are stunningly successful in both academic and athletic pursuits, even to the point of being publicly successful in both. There are people who have made stunning careers doing two or even three completely different things, for example investors who also succeed in the arts, actors who also accomplish great deeds in the nonprofit world, business owners who also publish.The problem is we all have nothing more than the hours in a day, each and every day, without exception.No matter how talented and energetic a person might be in a broad variety of potential endeavors or projects, we are each limited by our resources: time, need for sleep, desire for social life, etc.When we consider what we want to do with our lives, and we are unfortunately "blessed" with too many potential goals, too many ideas, the surest way to be unsuccessful at everything, is to not limit which goals and ideas we actually pursue. But the thought of giving up on so much potential is painful, even heartbreaking.Why would that be?Because our ideas for what goals to pursue in life are our babies. We created them, they come from us, we want to nurture each of them, and watch them grow and mature and fulfill their destiny.But a single parent cannot raise 10 newborn babies at the same time, let alone 100.Imagine being a single parent of newborn babies. How many could you raise well? They must be fed, held, changed, sung to; the parent must insure they have a home, food, clothing, and all at the same time the parent must also take care of themselves.It is hard to do this alone for just a single baby. Taking care of twins or triplets is likely to rally the neighbors to come help.When we examine our talents, and consider how we want our future career to play out by narrowing our focus, we are looking at all our babies, and deciding to give up most of them.If we kept all the babies we could, the outcome would be predictable: we would run ourselves ragged, none of the babies would do well, some would die, and those who lived would never get enough attention.A person's potential is exactly like that. We can manage a limited number of significant goals at a time, and we are likely to be most successful at pursuing just one or two major goals at a time.Choosing which talents to pursue means giving up on many options. To successfully raise one or two babies, we have to give up on many.How do we give them up?By mourning the losses.There are more than 7 billion people in this world, and most of our ideas for projects, businesses, or goals, will not be entirely orphaned--other people will do them. There will be other doctors, writers, actors, professors, inventors...When a parent is unable to take care of their baby, they give the baby up for adoption, and mourn the loss deeply. But they do it because they know they were not equipped to raise that baby.Each of us is well-equipped to be successful in more than one endeavor, but none of us can manage to be successful in every potential endeavor. We must choose what to pursue and what to give up, and to get over the loss of what we give up, we must mourn.Mourning is how humans recognize a loss, process it, and continue with life. Some losses seem insurmountable, and yet most people do overcome loss. They do it by fully acknowledging the loss, while maintaining the belief that life is completely worthwhile even when it has been diminished by true loss.And that is how you begin to decide what to do when you are multitalented and want to have all of it: You realize that you are choosing which baby or babies you will keep, and you are giving the rest away to the Universe to take care of, and mourning their loss.Which one(s) do you keep? The ones you can give your all to, even when times get hard, boring, tedious, overwhelming, even when you face challenge after challenge after challenge. There might be ten out of a hundred that you could do that for, and in the end, you may have to simply choose the one(s) you have most easily accessible.Do some research and find out how others who are successful in these areas got to where they are. Was it their degrees, their experience, their persistence, their contacts, their unique contributions...what lead to their success? Do you have what it takes to do what it takes?If you happen to have lots of money, this can make choosing even harder because money is often a convenient limiting factor. The cost in money, as well as the cost of the time it takes to pursue a goal, often will prove more expensive than the payoff it will provide. Even a brilliant person who would be an amazing doctor, but has a family to take care of and no money, will not be able to pursue medical training, simply for lack of resources.Sometimes, certain options will be easier to pursue due to family or social experience or connections. A person choosing between two highly competitive fields who happens to have family in one of them, might decide to choose the one where they have contacts—all else being equal—because their contacts can give them a leg up.But what does a person do when none of the options they are considering are arguably the better choice? When ten or a hundred options swim in our minds, and none of them easily rises to the top then we must find a way to process through and make a decision in a way that gets outside of just "thinking about" it.What process can a person use to decide between equally compelling options?If you can list out all the options you wish you could pursue, and write them down, here is a way to begin to sort them.For each talent, career, project, goal, idea, or any other way you form it in your mind, write a word or description on a small card. I've found small index cards, cut in half, work quite well, but any stack of small papers about the size of a playing card or a business card will work.It doesn't matter how many or how few you have, and you can always add more as you think of them.When you've written them all out, shuffle them. Then, put the stack in front of you, face down, and turn up the top two. Choose between those two, with no consideration for the rest of the pile. Writing or acting? Owning a business or investing? Starting a farm or designing cars?If they are exactly equal, randomly put one in front of you on the right, and one on the left. Label one pile "Keep" and the other pile "Mourn." If they are truly equal, you will feel equally as bad to put either one in the Mourn pile. But this is not an activity from which there is no going back! So, for now, just leave them in the two piles, and pick up the next two cards from the original stack.Then do the process again.Some pairs will really hurt to put one of them in the Mourn pile, some you will find hurt a bit less. Keep working at the stack until all of the original pile has been sorted. Then put the Mourn pile aside, out of sight, turn over the Keep pile, and go through the process again.Repeat this process until you are down to only two or three cards.Put aside the last surviving two or three cards. Then, and start over with the full stack, minus the original two or three you culled. If there was a card from an earlier pair that you had put into the Mourn pile, and you hated doing that, here’s your chance to put it in the Keep pile.When you’ve again processed the stack down to two or three, combine those with the first ones. You should be left with a small pile of 4 to 6 cards.With just that very short pile, do one final sorting into Keep and Mourn.The two or three cards you have left in your Keep pile is likely to represent your best choices of what to pursue.Write down the two to three "finalists" and put all the cards back into the one deck, then put away the deck.You can do this multi-step process all in one weekend, or you can work on it a bit at a time. I have found it works best to go through the entire first round of the process from full stack to the finalists in a single sitting. It could take 15 minutes, it could take three hours, depending on your personal decision-making style.When you’ve finished the full process, you can think about just those two or three final items for a while, and seriously consider how you would pursue them. Can you imagine yourself being successful at them? Could you imagine yourself being fulfilled by them? Could you imagine being proud of yourself for succeeding at them?Be sure your answers are yours. Do other people consider your goals pipe dreams? Do not take that into account. This is not the time to take other people’s ideas into consideration. People will become governors, great actors, life-changing doctors, inventors, Olympic athletes, and all the other “pipe dreams.” No one becomes those things without a deep drive to become them, and the ability to persist when folks tell them they’ve set their sites too high.However, if after considering each of those finalists, you are not convinced they are the ones you can give your all, and stick with even when troubles come and challenges abound (because every worthwhile pursuit will encounter these), start the process over again.Review all the cards to make sure you’ve got a card for everything you want to decide between. Add anything you want, and start again.The outcome could be the same, done again, but more likely it will be different the second go around.When you’ve got 1–3 cards you know you want to pursue, think about the finalists, really work through to imagine the plans of action you would have to take to accomplish each of them—in great detail—and allow the idea of pursuing one or more of those finalists to be part of you for a few days.After some days, review the full stack again. You will find that the way you think about the cards has changed, just due to going through the process and having really spent time imagining your life if you pursued that small set of finalists.What also tends to happen, is that over time, processing the cards, imagining the details of a life lived with one or two of the finalists for a few days, and then processing them again, some cards will become more obvious that they do not need to stay in the deck at all any longer, and you might think of new ones to add. Some original cards might need to be broken down into separate bits (e.g. not "Doctor" but "Neurologist" and "Psychiatrist") to be useful.When our ideas for what we will do with our lives rumbles around in our minds, without being put down on actual, physical paper, to be manipulated with our hands, it can be nearly impossible to sort out which ones to choose.There is something magical about the physical sorting process, when combined with mentally going through a detailed fantasy of how your life and career would look if you really pursued that one, two, or three options.In other words, this process will not work the same as a thought experiment. To work, it needs to be physical, visual, concrete.If you are still in school, you might not get it down to a satisfying final decision, and new ideas of cards to add will come up over time. Doing this process will help guide you as you move toward a time when you need to decide.If you are at the place in life where a choice actually must be made in order to move forward (choosing a major in college, applying for a job) the answers this process reveals are likely to be more concrete.To make this system work, the possibilities represented by the cards in the Mourn pile will actually need to be mourned. To be able to move forward on those you do choose, you must say goodbye to those you do not. Give each of those babies your blessing, and trust the Universe to take care of them so that you can best take care of the one(s) you keep.The process is hard, arduous even. But it is one of the most important decisions you will make, so it shouldn't be surprising that it will take a lot of effort, research, time, and soul searching.The process of choosing your goals and mourning the loss of those you will not pursue is worth it—it leads to the ability to go all in on worthwhile goals.How do you decide what to do when you are multitalented and want to have all of it? By honoring all your options, focusing on them, picking the ones you want the most, and giving yourself the gift of mourning the rest so you can apply your strengths to worthwhile pursuits without watering them down so far you never have enough time and energy to become great at anything.Enjoy the process, and enjoy the results.

Elon Musk is very active on Twitter and it has shown, as in the past month alone he has posted more than 80 times. People have sent ideas to him via Twitter and it has been successful.One customer remembers:"I was recently driving to a meeting in Silicon Valley and had to charge my Tesla. I decided to stop at the San Carlos supercharger on my way to Palo Alto and there were five other Tesla cars waiting in line to get a charging space. Most drivers seemed to have gone somewhere else as their cars were charging. The San Carlos supercharger is located within walking distance from Whole Foods, Peet's Coffee, a gym, and some restaurants. Many drivers therefore keep their cars parked at the supercharger even once their cars have finished charging.Then…Also, a fifth grader wrote to Elon:Elon replied:“Thank you for the lovely letter. That sounds like a great idea. We'll do it!”Twitter is by far the best way to contact Elon Musk, as he is quite active there.CZ