Category: life

6 classes every well-rounded person needs

bookWhat are the best subjects to learn for business - and life - success?

If anyone sat down to identify the perfect secondary (and maybe college) education, I doubt they would come up with today’s average American curriculum. While there are plenty of courses in basic skills (reading, writing, mathematics, and so on) many other just as critical basic skills are overlooked (personal finance, homemaking, health/physical education). What are some of the critical components missing from our national curriculum?

From my own personal experience, I can suggest a few, but there are probably many more you can think of easily. I could also bash a few courses I took, but an argument can always be made for “knowledge for knowledge’s sake.” I believe that sincerely. I have never, for example, “used” A Tale of Two Cities in my day-to-day life, but I’m glad I was forced to read it, stuck with it and finished it. Experiences like that created a love of reading for me. Other subjects I guess can be chalked up to “generally good to know although not terribly useful.” For me this included subjects like biology and mythology (one semester of “English” was actually spent studying mythology, which apparently means “Greek mythology” since we didn’t study anything else). While both were interesting, I didn’t learn much from either except that I don’t like biology and that you shouldn’t steal fire from the gods.

Here are a few subjects that would be very useful, and why:

1. Typing. Out of all of the courses I’ve taken in my life, this one has made the most profound difference in my daily life. I took a typing course in high school, back when it meant learning to pound out “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” 500 times on a MANUAL typewriter. However, the experience taught me how to type, and very, very well, which means I can blaze away typing even while carrying on a conversation or reading something else. Really.
2. Speech. I took a public speaking class that changed my life. Before that class, like everyone, I was nervous about speaking. After it, I was still nervous, but I learned that it was a temporary nervousness and that anything was possible. We had to give speeches to groups, recite monologues, debate, take questions and almost any type of “speaking in front of a crowd” activity you can think of. To this day I am relaxed and confident speaking to any group; I have addressed 2000 people or 10 board directors with equal calm.
3. Personal finance. I didn’t ever take a personal finance course, and I wish I had. Everything I learned about finance before college came from my parents, my grandparents or my own reading. A course that taught me things they weren’t as familiar with or not as proficient with - real estate dealings come to mind - would have been a great learning experience for me. That having been said, I’m sure personal finance would use textbooks sponsored by Capital One and tout the benefit of home equity loans to consolidate credit card debt.
4. Physical education. As a varsity athlete I was exempt from physical education, but I wish I hadn’t been. Learning to do some very basic “normal” training would have been helpful. I focused all of my energy on preparation for one sport (tennis) rather than general fitness. This had disastrous results later in life.
5. Homemaking. Don’t laugh. I think learning how to cook could save this country billions in health care costs. Imagine if people could actually prepare healthy food at home. My mother is a terrific cook, and I never had any motivation throughout high school to learn how to cook. I went straight from there to a fraternity house where meals were provided. When I finally started living on my own, my gourmet best was frozen pizza…
6. Civics. I took a civics course, but it was ridiculous. My wife, who is an immigrant, was required to undergo detailed testing before she obtained US citizenship on the Constitution, US history and civic life. Now, it may not be necessary for everyone in this country to know how many Congressmen there are or how many Supreme Court justices there are (although they should) but everyone should know the Bill of Rights and their civic duties (jury duty and so on).

You could go on, but these are some basic courses that would make a big difference in the US population. They are not taught often enough, and it’s a shame they aren’t. I am amazed to this day when I see people hunt-and-peck on the keyboard - not because I blame them, but because that’s not a basic required course for graduation from high school today. The same goes for the other 5 subjects up there. It’s hard to say when they will be required - or if they ever will be - but we can hope.

why do hippies hate the news?

I had an exchange in the comments with a reader (who left no name, just “Email” - for clarity’s sake I’ll call him/her Anonymous). The topic was reading/watching the news (a favorite topic of mine) and I felt it was good enough to move up to a full post. I’ve made a few edits to the original exchange, mainly for spelling, to add and edit a few words for clarity and just to make the flow of the conversation more obvious. This was all in response to the 67 ways to outlive 106 billion people post, in which I argue you shouldn’t watch the news. If you want to see the original unedited conversation, go that post; those comments are unedited.

Anonymous: Never read the news. Never stop learning new things. Enjoy reading. Why do hippies hate the news? But promote what it is?

Brip Blap: I copied and pasted the following from CNN.com on 11/14. These are the “top headlines”:

  • Student: Clinton camp fed me question
  • Police kill unarmed man holding brush
  • Surgeon claims he operated on Kanye’s mom
  • Blacks half of AIDS cases, 1% of AIDS quilt
  • Ticker: Terrorist attack on mall portrayed in ad
  • Governor calls on higher power for rain
  • Man tortured 10 months wants apology
  • WPLG: Man fleeing police killed by alligator
  • Blast rips off man’s fingers at ball game
  • Chlamydia cases sets STD record
  • Suspect tries to flush gun down cell toilet
  • Time: Alicia Keys gets phished
  • How to keep sane on your holiday visit
  • Casino implodes in way-cool glitzy fashion

Tell me how many of those are “learning new things.” You call it news, I call it a waste of time. It doesn’t make me a hippie by any stretch of the imagination to dismiss news stories about flushing guns down toilets or casino fashions, does it?

Anonymous: Sorry about the comment, it may have been too harsh. I forgot a smiley. I receive news from friends, that I read, on a daily basis. I was pleased to read that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. I have a long rant (no link) about News and TV, and about how people dismiss the medium independent of content as a choice of style. I enjoy the news and TV, and know many who don’t. I feel that it is just too simple to find elements of society that you find distasteful and shoot the messenger. Sorry again for the hippie comment. Most people I know that live by the code you posted would consider it an honor. Again though, the human experience is vast … who are you to decide what learning is? how did you learn to not read the news?

Brip Blap: It did seem harsh but that’s OK, I understand (apology accepted). I can’t see that a label like ‘hippie’ would ever be an honor to me, but if it was meant to be, thanks. While I might admire some of the (stereotypical) hippie qualities like peace, love, understanding, etc. I also had a lot of problems with their ideas (again, stereotypical) about drug use and the “drop out” mentality. I am not a hippie by a long shot.

Let’s define news. I say something is news if it in some way provides me with information that affects my life; where I draw the line is arbitrary. Troubles in Pakistan may someday cause me trouble due to their possession of nuclear weapons. Fair enough. Will knowing about riots and so on in Pakistan now cause me to act differently? No. Does it help my career? My family? My relationships with others? No, no, no.

Second: the US media does not actually give us “reporting of events”. They SELL us news. NBC or CNN or FOX receive money for an entertainment program. Some people enjoy the part of the entertainment program that tells them about Paris Hilton, or a triple murder, or Pakistan riots. But each of those networks are using those stories to entice viewers to watch advertising. Same with papers, or online news. There is no not-for-profit news. I also particularly pick on the TV news and yes, I dismiss it both on the basis of style AND content.

Third: the perception of the entire US media towards external events is flawed. If you saw the runup to the Iraq War it is clear that our media is unable to accurately determine the truth of events. They do not investigate. They report others’ assertions. Watch any news program for 30 minutes and at least once I guarantee you’ll see a reporter ask another reporter his OPINION or ANALYSIS of an event. That is not news.

I love reading history. History is also seen through the eyes of the victors and so on, but there is some sort of consensus on events after the passage of time that you can’t get AS events occur. I can even start to agree that there is simply some benefit to being educated about the history of mankind in a general sense. I should know who Caesar was, who Robespierre was, who Hermann Goering was, I guess. I simply don’t think there is much value in learning too much that is not relevant to my daily existence unless I derive some other value from it. I have a lot to keep up with, as we all do. I do not find that knowing Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize is useful information for me. I’m terribly glad he did - I think he represents what is best about America and I wish he was our president today. It might even just make me happier to know that he won. Fine. But knowing he won an Oscar or a Nobel doesn’t really enlighten me, or help me. Reading his book and watching his movie did. Reading about the prizes he won for them didn’t. And hearing about a triple murder in San Diego or Dallas or the Bronx certainly helps me in no way, shape or form. Out of all of this, too, I’m just skipping past the fact that 90% of the news is ridiculous entertainment junk. Britney blah blah blah.

I used to be a news junkie. All day every day I read about death, stupid politics, hopeless terror and the sex lives of celebrities. I filled my head up with tension and worthless knowledge. Then one day, after reading a particularly horrible series of news stories about abused children I decided enough was enough. That time I spent reading about abused children? Better spent working to make more money and give it to causes I support like children.org and the Russian Children’s Welfare Society. The time spent on politics? Pointless - if you think anything these politicians say will come to fruition, go read about Bush’s compassionate conservatism. Go read about Clinton’s promises in 1992. There is nothing there.

And as far as the question “who am I to decide what learning is?” I cannot learn for you, or for my wife or my family or my friends. I can only learn for myself. For others I can teach, or give opinions, but I cannot learn for them. So who am I to decide what learning is? Since I am the only person I can learn FOR, I am the ONLY person who can decide what learning is for me. I turn around and explain my position, but whether you accept it as knowledge for yourself is up to you, just the same as my decision to watch the news or not was mine. And really, if the tone of this seems overly angry it’s not meant to be, but I do feel it strongly. None of this, finally, is original thinking. Thoreau said it best:”If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, we never need read of another…. All news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”

the stone in the shoe

Once there was a farmer with a beautiful daughter. Men came from miles around to ask her father for her hand in marriage, but he was the old-fashioned type, and wanted to make sure his daughter would be well looked after.

So finally he settled on three likely young men, and told them he would ask them a question to decide which one could woo his daughter. The three young men nervously waited while he prepared his pipe. Finally, he asked all three of them a single question: “If you are working in the fields and find there’s a stone in your shoe, how long can you work?”

The first young man sprung to his feet. “I can work all day long! I can ignore the stone in my shoe until the sun sets! I am tough and I will endure the pain.”

The farmer nodded and turned to the second young man. “I can do the same, but I’ll even whistle to show I’m not bothered one bit by the stone! I can completely ignore the pain.”

The farmer settled his corn cob pipe and turned to the third young man, who declared, “I can’t work one minute with a stone in my shoe.” The other two young men laughed and congratulated themselves, declaring loudly that one of them would surely be chosen. The third man finished as they laughed, saying “I’ll stop and take the stone out of my shoe and keep on working like I always would. And at the end of the day, my wife won’t have to wash a bloody sock.”

The third young man and the farmer’s daughter were married the next spring.

———-

The moral of the story is that it’s not always about being the toughest or the most driven - sometimes it’s about being smart. This applies almost every day in your work life and in your personal life. Don’t just keep hammering away at a problem to prove you can stick to a task. Know when to quit, reevaluate and begin fresh. And if you don’t know, stop, take a break and start again. The answer will come to you.

(photo by emstrur)

teaching risk tolerance

Risk is the possibility of an event occurring that will have an impact on the achievement of objectives. Risk is measured in terms of impact and likelihood. (from Wikipedia)

That’s the definition from my profession, auditing. Basically risk is the possibility of something bad happening. It does not necessarily follow that if the risk event doesn’t happen, something good will happen - simply that the negative outcome won’t. Most people have a subjective perception of risk.

For example: you and I may perceive bungee jumping in vastly different ways. Let’s say that 1 out of every 1 million bungee jumps goes really wrong - it snaps and the jumper dies. If it does not snap, you get your thrilling giant rubber band ride up and down. For me, the 1 in a million chance of death renders the benefit of the jump (a thrill) as unacceptably risky. For you, 1 in a million may not be enough to make you forgo the benefit. You have what is known as a higher risk tolerance.

I think that risk tolerance and lack of fear is key to achieving great things. Don’t assume this means being a risky adventurer like Steve Fossett. This simply means not being afraid to risk failure. Most of the great entrepreneurs and thinkers have been characterized by a boldness and lack of concern about risks in their personal and private lives. They were not afraid to fail. Their willingness to accept a potential negative outcome was much higher than the average individual’s.

So my question would be a simple one: is risk tolerance learned or inherited? I’ve been wondering about this as we start teaching my still-less-than-2-years-old son about ‘danger’ - don’t jump off the stool! Don’t touch hot stuff! Slow going down the stairs! Don’t jump around in the tub! While you certainly would never want to encourage risky behavior, is this teaching him to be less risk tolerant and more fearful? And - I mean this very seriously - is this good or bad? Should we encourage fearlessness, risk-taking and boldness? If so, how do you know it’s not too much, making your children reckless? And it extends beyond children, too: how could I teach myself to be more fearless and risk-tolerant in my old age? Should I?

What do you think?

all aboard; or, why the earth is doomed

Sometimes life just hands you a little gift. It wasn’t expected, wasn’t particularly sought after and certainly can’t continue to be counted on - but it’s nice. Here’s a little story about a bus, with a surprise ending.

The community I live in is close to a lot of public transportation but not conveniently so. To get to the excruciatingly slow and (in the evenings) somewhat dangerous trolley system you would have to walk a long distance along a major highway with no sidewalks (urban planning failure). It’s also quite expensive considering how slow it is. Parking is expensive, too, making it a bad option - both for slowness and expenses.

The New Jersey transit system is further away - several miles - and requires driving along a heavily congested highway and parking in an $8 per day parking lot. It’s more convenient but I hate driving my car every day. Lo and behold, my community cobbled together funds from our maintenance fee and started a once-every-15-minute shuttle service to the NJ transit system station. We have clean, private buses that will accomplish a half dozen things, both for me and other residents:

  • Increase housing values: obviously having a cheap, safe transportation option for the community will help increase housing values.
  • Helping the environment: today, on Blog Action Day, this is a nice bonus - I rode with a half-dozen other people who otherwise would probably all be sitting alone in their cars riding to the same place.
  • Better use of my time: I hate car time. You can’t do anything fun or productive while driving unless you are a big audiobooks or music person; I am not really either. I prefer reading or writing or (if I’m tired) napping. Now that 20-25 minutes I spent sitting behind the wheel can be better spent blazing through another highly productive personal finance book. Oh, alright, you got me - actually I’m reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Sue me 🙂
  • Safer: it’s taking dozens of cars out of the morning commute mix, which can get ferocious right around my community. It’s a huge community with ONE exit to the main highway nearby, so there are big jockeying-for-position battles every morning around that exit.
  • May even allow for one-car existence: “my” car is paid off, so I don’t have much incentive to get rid of it, but if I don’t drive it every day to work I keep my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to stretch its use out for another 10-12 years (it’s already 6 years old). If I don’t drive it to work I’ll barely drive it 1000 miles a year, I bet.

That all sounds great, and I’m sure many of you are ho-humming. Here’s the surprise twist ending: it’s a clean, quiet, comfortable private mode of transportation that’s exceptionally convenient and free and good for the environment - and in our community of hundreds of homes, I see dozens of cars, one right after another, streak by on their way to the train station passing up the free bus. Usually there are 5 or fewer people on the bus every time it leaves.
Why are people so unwilling to give up their cars in this country? I wonder if there’s hope for public transportation anywhere but in the heart of east coast cities, when even New Jerseyians - a hop, skip and jump from New York City - won’t give up their beloved cars for free public transportation. Yesterday was blog action day and everyone was hopeful about the chances to slow down climate change, but sometimes I wonder, faced with such short-sighted behavior.

7 random things about me

OK, I was tagged by Kyle at Rather-Be-Shopping and plonkee to list seven things about myself. I’ll make that my Saturday post instead of my usual link roundup. Well, at the risk of exposing my superhero identity, here they are, divided into two categories:

Amusing:
1. I had a morbid fear of macaroni and cheese until I was a college student because my dad jokingly told me it was made from worms when I was a little kid (and felt bad about saying that ever since). I still feel uneasy sometimes when I see it.
2. When I was 10, I wrote a letter to ABC when they canceled the original Battlestar Galactica. I thought if I wrote a compelling enough letter, they might reconsider. They didn’t, but maybe an old copy of my letter made it into the hands of the SciFi channel years later.

3. I don’t care how ridiculous people may think they are, I admire Brad and Angelina for taking on so many kids. This may make me seem like a silly person in some ways, but I think they are great.

4. I cannot add 8 and 5. Seriously. Despite a mathematics degree, I have to mentally rearrange the numbers to 9 and 4 or 8 plus 4 plus 1, etc. When I see those two numbers added together, I cannot mentally make the number 13 appear in my head. That is the only such combination that I can’t add (or subtract or anything else).

5. I stridently denied Maynard Jackson, the Democratic mayor of Atlanta, from entering a Democratic Party benefit where I was a volunteer once - because he didn’t have a benefit invitation. I lived in Athens (right outside Atlanta) at the time, so I probably should have had a rough idea who he was… considering he had been mayor for about 10 years at that point. He was exceptionally good natured about it, and laughingly introduced me around all night as a stickler for the rules.

Not So Amusing:
6. I have a problem with authority, and it’s caused me a lot of trouble through the years, particularly at work. I think it’s because deep down I think there’s no way ANYONE could be smart enough to tell me what to do, and that’s a ridiculous conceit on my part. Plus saying being so “against” anything is a pretty strong negative emotion, and I am trying to get rid of that.

7. I seldom dream, but when I do they are often bad nightmares, which always makes me a little bit nervous about what’s roiling around in my psyche. Most involve something like monsters or aliens enslaving my family or just people in general, and my violent reactions to this. It began when I was very young. Dream interpretation says two things about this: first, the aliens/monsters represent my fear of the unknown. Second, violence supposedly shows resistance (either internal or external) to change. I suspect it’s my own internal mental and emotional resistance to change. The trick will be to work with these nightmares, not against them.

And although I always enjoy these tagging memes, I’ll let this part of the chain end with me and not spread it further. I actually plan on trying to create one of my own soon…

But feel free if you read this to consider it an open-ended tag to the blogoverse if you want!

a building mental storm

“Success in highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which comes only to the man who has found the work he likes best.” - Napolean Hill, author of “Think and Grow Rich”

cognitive dissonance (n. Psychology) A condition of conflict or anxiety resulting from inconsistency between one’s beliefs and one’s actions, such as opposing the slaughter of animals and eating meat. - from American Heritage Dictionary

The quote and definition above describe my current mental state about my work these days. I thought for many years that I could achieve happiness through one of about five different ways. When I write the list out now, several of them seem terribly trivial to me now, but bear with me:

  • Making a lot of money
  • Travel throughout the world
  • Nonstop nightlife
  • Working at a big corporation with a good title
  • Keeping myself free of obligations as much as possible

If I redid the list today, it would probably read more like this:

  • Achieving financial freedom
  • Travel throughout the world
  • Safe and comforting home environment
  • Going to work for myself doing something I like
  • Loading myself up with obligations that please me; exercise, family time, etc.

Here is the real problem, though: although I have read many books on financial freedom, productivity, etc. I am often suffering from cognitive dissonance trying to pursue my “old” goals (with the exception of the nightlife) even though I know better! Even though I know, for example, that I should do something for my work different than what I do today, I have taken very few steps to pursue it. I still avoid obligations out of laziness or simply fear of setting priorities. I still worry more about making money to pay for things (although when I say things, I mean “our house” rather than “my iPhone”) than achieving financial freedom. I talk the talk, but often I don’t walk the walk.

So why is this? I think the problem is that your thought patterns and objectives are often set more firmly in stone than you realize in your youth - and by youth I’m talking about the years from, say, 13-30. All of the patterns set then are interrelated. Your exercise (or lack thereof), your entrepreneurial spirit (or lack thereof), your creation of a lifestyle where financial freedom is a forseeable future or even your ability to easily change goals all intertwine and make a tangled mess where changing one goal means changing all of them.

I debate, therefore, how to smash through these bad habits that prevent my goals. Should I:

  • Abruptly quit my job and launch a private company doing something interesting?
  • Massively restructure my work life to free up more time to prepare for something ‘new’?
  • Work like crazy ‘on the side’ (although at the expense of my time with my family)?
  • Just suck it up, hammer down at work and try to grit my teeth through to 60 years old when I’ll achieve freedom?

This is my building mental storm - the idea that nothing will change with a continuation of the daily rotation of wake, brush teeth, ride train, stare at computer screen, attend meetings, ride train, brush teeth, sleep. This daily rotation is a part of the steady progession: Birth, School, Work, Death. But finding the right moment to make that break, to take that leap, seems to me to require a spark of inspiration.

But what I’m really afraid of is that there’s no inspiration needed. What I’m afraid of is that Nike is right and we should just do it. Don’t wait, just change. And doing that without seeing the guiding star of inspiration seems really scary to me. And so I will wait for inspiration and thereby find none. Or, hopefully, I will simply just do it.

15 things I’d say to high school BB

I read an interesting article at Lazy Man and Money this morning entitled “15 things..”. It got me thinking about what I would tell myself, aged 18 or so, if I could travel back in time and give some advice to myself. So here goes:

  1. Save more. Echoing a comment by Lazy Man, I saved a lot but I could have saved a lot, lot more in my youth. There were a lot of gadget purchases and CDs and dinners out that I could have avoided that would probably pay for a year or two of my mortgage by now.
  2. Don’t stop exercising. The reasons for saying this should be obvious if you read some of my earlier posts on weight gain. I had a long slow period in the mid-to-late-90s where I never, ever exercised. The effects of that still haunt me today.
  3. Pay more attention to your tax courses. I have a master’s degree in accounting, but all of my specialization was in international accounting, audit and other ‘corporate’ areas. In taxes I whisked through a couple of courses simply because the university required it. I wish I had spent more time learning my taxes and building up my expertise in that area.
  4. Don’t move every year. From 1996 to 2000 I lived in 9 different apartments. Now part of that includes three brief stays of one or two months while “in transition” between cities, but I wasted a lot of time and money moving. While I was living in Moscow, it wasn’t so bad; I moved most of my stuff in one or two cars since I didn’t really own any furniture. In New York I wasted a lot of time and money moving, even though twice it was a somewhat involuntary move (Marriott bought my apartment building once, and 9/11 rendered another place I lived almost un-commutable).
  5. … and on a related note, buy a house when you start working and rent a couple of rooms out to roommates. I probably would be sitting on $300,000 of equity by now. And when you move to New York and think “who in their right mind would pay $600,000 for a two-bedroom in Manhattan?” the answer should be you. Some of that money wasted investing with priceline.com could have been spent on a down payment.
  6. Stay in touch with people. In the early 90s, it was tough to stay in touch with people. You had to call, or write a letter, or visit them. Then suddenly we got this neat little thing at work called ‘electronic mail’, or email for short. With a tiny bit of effort, I could have carried a little notebook with the email address of every colleague, acquaintance and friend of mine for the next ten years and dropped them a two-line email twice a year. I didn’t do this. I lost touch with a lot of good people – people I wish I still stayed in touch with for networking purposes, and some I just miss.
  7. Don’t work so much once you do get a job. I had a colleague in the got paid exactly the same as I did. Neither of us stayed with that firm, and as far as I know he went on to do just fine, as did I – but neither of us were making a future at that particular company. I had another colleague who smoked pot constantly and wouldn’t show up for days at a time. He didn’t get fired either. So I wasted a lot of time working very hard at a job I detested (I quit before I finished my three year contract). Who was the idiot?
  8. Don’t join a fraternity in college. Joining a fraternity seemed like a good idea, but other than making some very good friends it taught me nothing other than: (a) laziness, (b) racism, (c) sexism, (d) violence and (e) drunkenness. Sounds like a good deal, all for just a few hundred dollars a semester, huh? I basically spent three years surrounded by violence and ugly behavior that would make most people cringe. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
  9. Don’t worry about trivia. A major drama of my senior year involved a quiz for (supposedly) the smartest kids in school. I lost because of a difference of opinion over which battle of the Civil War was the “bloodiest”. I believe I answered Antietam, the single bloodiest day of the war; the correct answer was deemed to be Shiloh, the bloodiest battle of the war over the course of several days. Did losing the Brawl affect me in any way, shape or form? No. Don’t even enter the stupid contest, high school BB. Spend that learning Russian or just hanging out. It will be time better spent.
  10. Don’t waste a lot of time on TV. You will live in two of the world’s biggest cities, with a million possibilities for entertainment, the world’s best restaurants, cultural events and explosive nightlife, and you will often spend whole weekends watching football. You will even watch Notre Dame play, and you hate their team. Nice going.
  11. Buy a cell phone when you live overseas. I know $1000 for a mobile phone circa 1997 is a lot to pay, but it will be worth every dime not trying to coordinate your daily life from pay phones that never work. Your phone card cost $8 a minute, anyway.
  12. Be kinder to people, particularly women. I have never been cruel, I hope, but I spent a lot of careless years not worrying about how my actions might upset other people, particularly girls I dated or who liked me. I certainly ended quite a few relationships rudely and thoughtlessly, and probably created some real dislike if not downright hatred for myself. I was brutal in some of my work relationships both in my speech and actions. A little bit of compassion or even white lies to appear compassionate on my part probably would have made life better for everyone. I would have lost nothing by being kinder. I guess that’s just life, but I do look back and really regret some of the ways I lashed out at people where no lashing out was necessary. I particularly regret being cold and emotionless when I just could have faked a little bit of pleasantness.
  13. …and related, don’t worry too much about your relationships in the 90s and early 2000s. When you meet the right girl, things are going to be immediately and blindingly obvious. You may think you’ve met the right girl a few times in the late 90s, but when you actually do meet the right girl you’re going to realize that everyone up until her was definitely not the right girl.
  14. However, don’t do vodka shots with Russian mafiosos while out for a fancy dinner with your at-the-time-girlfriend and her friends. That will not end well on many, many levels. Oh, and make sure your visa paperwork is correct before you travel to remote Siberian cities. They don’t like it when foreigners show up with the wrong paperwork.
  15. Don’t work for the Big 4 or a corporation. This one is tough, because of course it has led me to the life I have today. But I do wish that when I was young and more or less free of responsibility that I had taken a few more chances. I wish I had gone to work at a smaller company, or a foreign company or even started a business. I spent a lot of my mid-20s – most of it, in fact – working horrible hours at decent but not exceptional salaries doing work I detested. I wish I had some of that time back, even if it meant I couldn’t afford a slightly fancier apartment or to eat out 5 nights a week. Working in the Big 4 gave me a lot of opportunities, but I always wonder what if…

That’s actually a good exercise. Feel free to leave a comment if there’s anything you’d tell your high school self.

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