Keep a little of your younger self: the curiosity, the dumb jokes, the willingness to ask “why?”

The things that get trained out of you first are the ones that look unserious. Asking why, finding stupid things funny, being openly interested in something with no use: all of it reads as childish and all of it is the actual engine. People who keep learning past twenty five mostly never handed those in; they just stopped apologising for them.

So ask one naive question out loud this week. Make the bad joke, and read something with no exam attached to it. Nobody thinks less of you, and the habit is easier to keep than to recover.