Advice for Young People – Part 1

Ersin Pamuksuzer
2 days ago
4 min read

Dear Friends,

Last week, I had a conversation with my dear friend Türker Oğuz on the Venture Science Deep Dive podcast. Türker asked me what advice I would give to young people today, in a world where the advent of AI and other factors are making careers increasingly unpredictable and uncertain. That conversation inspired me to dedicate this issue to sharing some thoughts for the younger generation.

How Can We Succeed in a World of Uncertainties?

The greatest challenge young people face today is not just physical but mental. Uncertainty, along with the fears and anxieties it creates, eats away at us all, young and old alike, like rust corroding iron from within.

In previous issues, I’ve written about the importance of daily practices that strengthen the mind such as breathwork, ways of thinking, attention management as tools to protect ourselves from these negative emotions.

Steps on the Path to Success

All of us live our lives through repeated patterns, practices, routines, algorithms. We wake up, have some coffee, maybe olives and cheese for breakfast (yes I’m in Turkey as I write this, though my breakfast routine is a little different!), do our favourite sport, take our supplements. In reality, we live inside a loop of set habits.

When it comes to reshaping those routines so they steer us to success, we use a simple method at TheLifeCo called KISS: Keep, Improve, Start, Stop.

It’s an easy tool anyone can apply in daily life and in weekly or monthly planning.

Write down your routines (and your thoughts).
Keep doing the ‘good’ ones, the ones that are beneficial and effective.
Boost the good ones you don’t do enough of.
Start good ones you haven’t yet tried.
Stop the bad ones.

In this way, you gradually design your own life.

Of course, this exercise will bring up a long list of things to start, boost, reduce, or stop. My advice is: don’t try to tackle everything all at once. People struggle when they attempt too many changes simultaneously. Focus on two or three at most. Ideally, even just one. To be “single-minded”, focused on a single change, is powerful. But since most people resist limiting themselves to just one, I usually say two or three is fine.

The Key to Lasting Change: Surrender

Change is not a single act, but a four-step process: Be Aware, Surrender, Execute, Maintain.

The first step is being aware: realizing that change is needed and feeling the desire to change. But awareness alone is not enough. Take smoking, for example. Every day I meet people who want to quit. The desire is there, yet it doesn’t mean they will succeed.

This is where surrender comes in. It means embracing the change with no conditions, no bargaining, no excuses. And this is where most people stumble, because they start negotiating with themselves:

“I’ll quit tomorrow, not today.”
“Maybe I’ll just smoke one a day.”
“At least I’ll keep smoking at work.”
“Just one more with my coffee.”
“I’m distressed, I deserve a cigarette.”

As long as you’re bargaining, you’re not changing.

That’s why surrender is the non-negotiable stage of transformation. If you don’t throw yourself wholeheartedly into it, you won’t succeed. My advice is clear: if you truly want to change something, stop negotiating. Do what it takes. Endure the discomfort, walk through the pain, and step into your new self.

What Matters Most When Starting Something New?

The most important thing is understanding why you are doing it.

The biggest problem I see among young people today is that many turn into “task shredders”, churning through assignments like robots without asking why. Tick, tick, tick—done, done, done. But what’s the point? What does it add to your life, to others, to the world?

In other words, “getting things done” isn’t the main goal. What matters is the meaning those things bring. Without that, you risk working endlessly without really going anywhere.

If young people learned the art of doing meaningful work, they would often reach their goals in four steps instead of thirty-eight. And those four steps might even take them three times further than the thirty-eight meaningless ones.

That’s why my first piece of advice to young people is: be a little philosophical. Reflect on the meaning behind what you do, and feel how it connects to your own existence.

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

The business thinker Seth Godin put it well: without a clear Why, there can be no How, and without a How, there can be no What. Sadly, most young people today are stuck on the What, what they are doing, and sometimes on the How. Almost nobody is asking Why. But in truth, that abstract question of Why am I doing this, and what will it lead to? lies at the core of success in life and at work.

Of course, not every young person falls into this trap; it is unfair to generalize. But looking around in today’s world, I often see this pattern, and the anxiety that ensues.

In the next issue, I’ll discuss: