Your biggest asset is time. So the most valuable lesson for you concerns compound interest. Learn to appreciate the absolute centrality of compound interest in every major department of life. Every one of these things works by compound interest logic.

1. money
2. skills
3. knowledge
4. health
5. creative output (code/writing/movie making/songs composed/business deals closed)
6. your social network
7. success with the opposite sex

In each of these departments, a small difference between you and your peers today in some sort of cumulative investment behavior will lead to orders of magnitude difference in 10 years. Memorize the behavior of compounding interest at various levels and time periods and compounding frequencies. Here are a few:

1. 5% over 10 years is a 162% difference, over 20 years it is a 265% difference, over 30 years it is 432%, compounding annually.
2. 10% over 10 years is 259%, over 20 years it is 670%, over 30 years it is 1745%, compounding annually.

Make up a more fine-grained table like this. Include faster-than-annual compounding cases. You must develop really really good numerical instincts for how compound interest behaves.

This table is almost more important than the multiplication tables you memorized as a kid. We are rarely blindsided by the dynamics of multiplication. We are often blindsided by the dynamics of compound interest.

How do you practice the religion of compound interest? No, you don't have be a narrow-minded saver or somebody who practices some narrow skill with extreme tunnel vision for decades.

All you have to do is become sensitive to how new experiences in your life build on old experiences. Other things being equal, pick experiences that cause compounding along some dimension that exhibits it.

Sometimes the variables that are compounding may not be apparent at first, so you may have to make gut-driven decisions based on whether something feels like you are "growing" or "throwing something away." Be particularly careful about burning bridges or walking away from investments, but don't be afraid to do so.

As a caution against getting too married to compound interest philosophy, keep a copy of Rudyard Kipling's "If" taped to your workspace.

http://www.adamandtiffy.com/blog...

Highlight this verse in particular:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

Sometimes the obvious compounding variables are horribly wrong. Your education is an example. Just because you have a CS degree does not mean you've been compounding skill in that field for 4 years and will continue to do so. The hidden compounding process may actually involve a skill at interpersonal relationships for example (if you were always the one who put effective teams together).

And don't forget the processes that may have been compounding from much further back.

And don't get too hung up on the numbers. That puts your mind into too much of a quantitative mode. Instead try plotting various compounding growth rates.

Make a nice poster with curves depicting 5, 10 and 10 % growth at different horizons/compounding rates for example.

On the time axis, be sure to put common life stage markers. Put "heart disease risk" at 45. Put down "invincible gut" at 35. Put down "math skills start to dull" at 40.

Keep the actual table of numbers handy though.

I am now 36. I was stupid. I never learned the importance of compound interest, and never developed a sensitivity to its behavior.

Fortunately, I was also lucky. I unconsciously and accidentally ended up investing in certain compounding behaviors that have basically rescued my life from hopeless mediocrity.