Write a letter to the you of five years ago. You’ll find out what you actually learned.

Growth is almost impossible to see from inside, because the person doing the measuring keeps changing too. Addressing your younger self forces specifics, since you have to tell them something they did not know. Whatever you end up explaining is the real learning, usually smaller and more practical than you would guess.

Spend twenty minutes on it this week, one page, no audience. Tell that kid what turned out to matter and what turned out not to. Keep it somewhere, because in five years it becomes the letter somebody else wrote to you.