Codie A. Sanchez recently shared something that caught my attention:

"I’m 39."

"27 lessons I wish I learned in my 20s:"

In that viral list, she opens with a gut-punch: your 20s actually kind of suck, and that is exactly how it is supposed to feel. She follows with lines like, "Your first job is like the DMV" and "It is very hard to change the world when you are broke. So don’t apologize for chasing money."

Reading through her post, I realized how many of these lessons only make sense once you’re past that decade. So instead of just scrolling by, I want to slow down and unpack what she is really saying – and how you can use these ideas to build a better foundation for your 30s and beyond.

Your 20s Are Supposed to Feel Messy

One of Sanchez’s first points is that your 20s "actually suck" and that it gets better. That sounds harsh, but it is also freeing. You are not behind because you feel lost; feeling lost is the curriculum.

In your 20s, you are:

Working your first DMV-style jobs where nothing works and everyone seems mad.
Figuring out what you are good at beyond grades and standardized tests.
Comparing your messy reality to everyone else’s highlight reel.

The point is not to escape the suck immediately, but to recognize that you are in a training phase. When you expect it to feel polished, you judge yourself. When you expect it to feel like practice, you can experiment more boldly.

Money, Work, and Learning to Be Useful

Sanchez is blunt: "It is very hard to change the world when you are broke. So don’t apologize for chasing money." That is not a call to greed; it is a reminder that being resourced gives you options.

In your 20s, money should mostly mean three things:

Survival and runway. You need enough to cover your life, build a small emergency fund, and buy yourself time to make better career bets.
Education. As she says, the most lucrative things you can do are learn to invest and apprentice in fields like private equity, real estate, or venture. Even if you never become an investor, thinking like one makes you sharper about risk, return, and leverage.
Option value. Money is a buffer that lets you leave bad jobs, move cities, or start something on the side.

That is why her advice to work for companies that "reward outcomes not hours" matters. In your 20s you want to be as close as possible to the scoreboard: revenue, deals closed, projects shipped, customers helped. That is how you become genuinely useful – and useful people rarely stay underpaid for long.

She also draws a clear line between saving and getting rich. Learn to save now so you do not drown in debt, but understand that high-earning skills, ownership, and investing are what actually move the needle over time.

People, Place, and the Environment That Shapes You

"Meet everyone. Say yes to everything. You narrow the field later." In your 20s, your network is less about strategic optimization and more about surface area. The more people you meet and the more environments you try, the more data you have on what energizes you.

Two of her strongest points are about environment:

"Seed is only as good as its soil." Where you live in your 20s matters. If your hometown is holding you in old patterns, give yourself a season somewhere new.
If you are prone to loneliness, "do NOT work a remote job." Those early years with small teams, late nights, and shared goals build not just skills but identity and lifelong friendships.

At the same time, she reminds you that "you are not everyone’s cup of tea, that’s a good thing." Part of growing up is tolerating being misunderstood or even disliked. The alternative is living, as she puts it, in "a prison of other people’s beliefs."

Energy, Joy, and Avoiding Burnout

One of her simplest but most powerful questions is: "Does this bring joy?" Not in a hedonistic sense, but as a check on whether you are spending your one life on things that light you up.

Sanchez argues that burnout does not come from working hard; it comes from "working too hard, on things that don’t light you up." Anyone who has pulled an all-nighter on something they care about knows this is true. Exhaustion feels different when it is tied to meaning.

Her advice here is disarmingly basic:

"Touch grass." A walk outside will do more for your brain than another 30 minutes of scrolling.
If people are only interesting after a few drinks, they are probably not your people.
Do something hard every day, and then let what "hard" means evolve as you get stronger.

These are habits that compound. They keep your body and mind in the game long enough for your skills and relationships to pay off.

Growth, Identity, and Relationships

A recurring theme in Sanchez’s list is growth. If "old you" does not make you cringe, you probably have not pushed yourself enough. That discomfort is a sign that you have updated your beliefs through experience, not just opinion. As she puts it, "If you haven’t done it, you just have an opinion."

This growth mindset also changes how you see other people. She notes that most successful people she has met "aren’t that smart"; they simply move fast, take risks, and work a lot. That is encouraging. You do not need to be a genius to build a good life; you need reps.

Then there is the relationship piece. "Marrying well is the biggest life hack of all. Marrying poorly is a costly path to misery." Whether or not marriage is on your radar, the deeper point is that your closest relationships will amplify or undermine everything else you are trying to do.

And finally, she suggests we take notes from older people: waking up early, reading books, going to bed at 10 p.m., and drinking less are not boring; they are performance enhancers disguised as tradition.

Working Hard Before You Work Smart

One of my favorite lines from the post is: "Working smarter not harder is a beautiful lie. You will not know how to work smart until you’ve worked very hard for an irrationally long time." In your 20s, you are still building your personal library of patterns. You learn what works by trying a lot of things that do not.

That does not mean burning out for the sake of it. It means choosing environments where your extra effort translates into learning and leverage: mentors who notice, projects that matter, and skills that travel with you when you leave.

Bringing It All Together in Your 20s

Taken together, Codie A. Sanchez’s 27 lessons are not a checklist; they are a mindset for your 20s:

Expect it to feel chaotic, and show up anyway.
Chase usefulness and outcomes, not job titles.
Care about money enough that it expands your options, not your ego.
Curate your environment – people, place, and habits – as aggressively as any career move.
Let yourself grow so much that past versions of you make you wince.

If you are in your 20s right now, you do not need to have it all figured out. You just need to treat this decade as a lab: experiment widely, learn quickly, and stay close to the things that make you feel vividly alive.

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Codie A. Sanchez, Investing millions in Main St businesses & teaching you how to own the rest | HoldCo, VC, Founder | NYT best-selling author. View the original LinkedIn post →