Speed-reading (applicable to most non-fiction) helps with #1. Yes, it works. The brain can derive meaning faster than we can speak or mechanically move our eyes. Basic SR techniques can be picked up in a few days of practice and self-timing of reading speed. Given increasing advances in mobile sensors, we'll soon realize the value of optimizing how we use our biological sensors.
Watch all episodes of the first three seasons of Fringe and La Femme Nikita (old version). Read Carroll Quigley, Olaf Stapledon and Jon Rappaport. Question all symbolic media including this message.
Know that time will only provide additional reasons why you must or cannot do XYZ. Thus your task is to safely and soon go beyond claimed boundaries, before you become convinced that they are non-negotiable.
Read "how to code a secure system": http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/27.25.html#subj16 . Life offers the challenge of coding a secure self-modifying mind. As the piece above quotes Seneca, "There is a great deal of difference between a person who chooses not to sin and one who doesn't know how".
One answer to your question is another question. What do you want to say now to your 15-year old self? What if all of your possible future selves were each trying to convince you to bring them into existence? How would you choose between their justifications for existence? Do you consider this to be a security, optimization or spiritual question?
As much historical "hardware" becomes software, historical constraints will disappear. What will be the basis of the new software constraints that we (you) will choose for our shared worlds? Should it be the future worlds/startups with the best team, best marketing or largest cluster of peers?
It is harder than it seems to identify when choices lead to divergent futures, or when all official choices lead to equally undesirable futures. Thus the obligation of every startup and teenager is use their imagination to grow the pool of possible choices, future selves and future worlds.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wvCXOXQ0f7c&feature=youtu.be&a=