How to Do Life: What I Wish My Parents Had Told Me

I’ll be giving a talk Thursday based on my new book. The talk will be called, How to Do Life: What I Wish My Parents Had Told Me.

I thought you might like to see what I plan to say, so I converted my notes into this post:

Communication

Listen more than talk. You have two ears and one mouth–act accordingly. You can often make deep connections fast by also asking questions, especially those to identify and amplify on a
person’s hot button: career, family, hobby, health, money, looks, pop
culture, etc.

In conversation, follow the traffic-light rule: During the first 20 seconds of an utterance, your light is green. You can keep talking with impunity. During the second 20 seconds, your light is yellow: your conversation partner may be starting to think you’re a chatterbox. At the 40-second mark, your light is red. Yes, very occasionally, you want to run a red light and keep talking–for example, if you’re telling an anecdote that’s clearly interesting not just to you but to your conversation partner. But usually, at the 40-second mark, you should shut up or ask a question. If the person wants to know more, s/he can ask.

Usually, you’ll effect more change if, instead of giving advice, you ask questions to help your conversation partner develop his or her own solution. You’ll also be better liked because the person feels efficacious rather than disempowered.

Don’t try to show how smart, rich, or well-connected you are. Usually, it’s wise to prioritize making others feel good about themselves.

Choosing a Career

Do what you love and you may starve. And even if you don’t, you’re
more likely to be unhappy than you may think. Because most people’s
passions lie in just a few common areas—entertainment, fashion, the
environment, helping the have-nots, video games, etc–a zillion people
want jobs in such fields. That means that employers can pay poorly and
treat employees poorly because a wealth of wannabes
is always waiting in the wings. And even if you’re treated well, you may not be
happy–because, for the most part, work is work and because people are as happy
as they want to be. It may be wiser to choose a career in a less crowded
bailiwick—It may be easier to land a job that has the characteristics
that more often affect career contentment: an ethical product or service,
a good boss and coworkers, reasonable compensation, adequate learning
and promotion opportunities, etc.

Preparing for a Career

School is overrated. Studies, for example, this one,
ever more clearly demonstrate how frighteningly little students learn
in college despite all that time and money. And while yes, most
employers demand degrees of their employees, 5 to 10% get hired without
the “required” degree. Before deciding you need to spend that fortune in time and
money to get a degree, see if you can get hired without one, perhaps
doing your learning at You U: a combination of reading, individual courses, mentors, tutors, conference attending, etc.

Finding a Job

If you ask your network for a job, you’ll get advice. If you ask for advice, you may get a job.

Career Success

Dabbling is fun but often is a career killer. Relentlessly focus on becoming the go-to guy/gal at something that can earn you at least a middle-class living. Relentless focus--I’ve found those two words to be a defining characteristic of most successful people.

Everything matters enough to try. Almost nothing matters enough to get angry.

It’s rarely worth fighting your boss. When I first was hired at US News in 2006, my editor changed my articles in ways I thought were wrong. I often argued with him and while I occasionally got my way, I won the battle but lost the war: I was replaced in 2010. Fortunately, I was rehired in 2012 but now, if my editor changes something I wrote, unless it’s really important, I let it go. In retrospect, the changes I wanted weren’t that crucial. Indeed, once I wrote the cover story for Family Circle and, in error,, it was published without the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs, which made the 4th paragraph a non-sequitur. In the end, the world didn’t change even with a significant error like that in an eight-million-circulation publication. It’s important to have perspective: How important is that, really?

Management tip: Intelligence and drive are key and hard to change. Hire for high intelligence and drive and train for skills. You can far more readily teach people information than make them smarter or harder-working.

Relationships

Don’t judge people by what they say but by what they do. Recent example: Al Gore became famous for saying oil is evil yet he owns five SUVs, a mansion, and flies around in his gas-guzzling private jet. And last week, he took $100 million of that evil oil money so Current TV can be converted to Al Jazeera America.

Choose a low-maintenance romantic partner: someone who is kind to
you, doesn’t spend a lot, and isn’t emotionally fragile. Don’t let
sexual chemistry trump those critical factors.

Choose friends who bring out the best in you, not those that drag you down.

Family
is overrated. Sure, for some people, family is the best thing in their
lives. But many people quietly find family more painful than it’s worth.
After all, you choose your friends while your family is selected for you.
Corollary: Even though it’s a societal norm, don’t reflexively have
kids. Few parents will admit it publicly but many feel the
restriction of their freedom and the dollar-cost of having kids wasn’t worth it. And that assumes you’ll have a good relationship with your children: Countless kids and parents have relationships that stay strained for a lifetime.

Money

You probably can’t shop your way to contentment. The shopper’s high of having acquired that stupid Coach purse or whatever quickly dissipates and, like a drug addict, the materialist needs to quickly search for the next dose, usually a more expensive dose. That hedonic treadmill is a fast path to short-term pleasure and long-term misery. It also requires you (or your sugar daddy/mommy) to make lots of money. And most employers who pay employees lots of money do so because the work is difficult, distasteful, spiritually empty, and/or requires absurdly long work hours. That’s a high price to pay for designer-label crap, a fancy address or car nameplate, etc. If you find your contentment not in buying “stuff” but in productivity, creative outlets, and relationships, you won’t need to pursue such a financially remunerative job but one you might find more fun–for example, one in the creative arts or for a cause you believe in.

Put your savings in one place where you can diversity at low-cost. That will keep you from getting drowned in paperwork, losing track of where you money is and how it’s doing. Most of my savings is in a Vanguard All-in-One Fund. Do maximize your contribution to tax-deferred savings vehicles like an IRA and 401k, which of course, also can be in such a fund.

Never try to time the market. Trust me on this one: The vast majority of professional money people can’t. As soon as you get $1,000 or more in money you don’t need to keep in your checking or rainy-day account, invest it that day. That way, you’ll buy more shares when prices are low and more shares when prices are high.

Your Well-Being

Lafayette Reservoir

Rituals are useful respites from our ever-changing lives. Six days a
week, I take a 45-minute hike with my doggie Einstein. I go to the same
place (the Lafayette Reservoir) every day, never even changing
the direction I take around the lake. It’s comforting.

Avoid doctors. So many medical errors are made, with more unnecessary deaths and morbidity likely especially now with ObamaCare covering 51 million more people (40 million legals +11 million
illegals) who will become eligible after Obama passes “Comprehensive
Immigration Reform.” You may be wiser to minimize your interaction with the medical system and instead focus on the obvious: control your weight and stress, don’t smoke or
abuse alcohol or drugs, eat reasonably, and control such conditions as
hypertension or diabetes. If you’re under 60, it may even be wise
to forgo the annual wellness exam. Discuss this with your doctor–or
under ObamaCare, ever more likely to be a physician assistant or nurse
practitioner.

Pick your battles. Especially don’t fight a megatrend, for example,
America’s current move leftward toward redistribution to society’s
have-nots. Corollary: You have little chance to change people’s
foundational views: political, religious, work ethic.

Never look back. My father, a Holocaust survivor, rarely talked about the Holocaust. I asked him why and he responded, “Martin, the Nazis took five years from my life. I won’t give them one minute more. Martin, never look back, always take the next step forward.” I can leave you with no better advice.

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