The Handy Dandy Guide to Acing Life

Found buried in my file labeled "fun stuff," I thought that this might be worth posting. I penned it a few years ago while teaching at the Sawyer School in Pittsburgh.

The Handy-Dandy Instruction Guide for Acing Life

1. READ ALL OF THE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST – Tragically, some students do not do this! As a result, they do the assignment incorrectly and lose many, many points. Practice this skill. Bosses love people who can do this.

2. Make sure you do ALL of the problems – Sometimes you will need to turn the page to ensure that you have actually completed the assignment.

3. TAKE PRIDE IN YOU WORK – Studies have shown that neat, legible homework receives a higher grade than sloppy, illegible homework. The same applies in the workplace, except for the grade part.

4. Keep in mind that foolish, rude sentences make you look equally foolish and rude – What you write can never be taken back. So if you write prejudiced, stereotyped, and rude sentences or essays, your readers will end up suspecting that you are not only uneducated but also unconcerned with what the world thinks of you.

A very good rule of thumb in general is to ask yourself two questions before you begin to communicate:

a) what is the point of this communication?

b) what do I hope to achieve with this communication?

If you cannot either either one of those questions, don't communicate. Wait until your communication has a point.

Do not become someone who makes noise for the sake of making noise.

5. The opinion of the outside world matters much more than you realize – People talk and the professional grapevines that exist are easy to underestimate. There is always someone who knows someone else, and the urge to talk negatively is stronger than the urge to talk positively. We like to think that our actions exist in a bubble, but they don’t.

6. All of this academic stuff has a point in the real world – Excellence, achievement, and high standards become a habit. Ask anyone who has succeeded in life. Very few people make it to the top by being careless with appearances and work habits… and, if they do, they rarely have the respect of those they manage.

7. Consider the standards you hold others to – Are they high? Low? Why do you expect perfection from others but not yourself? Do you think that, perhaps, others hold you to higher standards? Are you living up to them? Employers, and potential employers, will hold you to the high ones over the low ones.

8. Take responsibility for yourself – This is something that you can only avoid for so long. Once you hit post-secondary, the avoidance days are definitely over.

9. Your language reflects your education and class – Obscenity, while fine in private and certain situations, has no place in the workforce. It doesn’t make you look cool. It makes you look like your vocabulary and your brain are too small to find a more acceptable word.

10. Lastly, decide what you want out of life and work for it. Define “success.” – Do you simply want a paycheck that covers all of your bills? Do you crave stardom? Do you measure success by the amount of responsibility you’re given at work? Decide what your personal success is and work toward it.


P. S.

Life will not always work out the way it should (but you knew that).

The good news is that the jerks who appear to be more successful and who appear to be moving faster professionally will eventually fall on their faces. Trust me.