I have two children. My daughter is older and has already begun here life independent, in another state even (I miss her). My son is 14 and immensely intelligent... but he is a teenaged boy and motivation for him is sometimes elusive. I want to be inspiring and say just the right things, so that he can sidestep some of the hardship of his teenaged years, but alas, I have become the out of touch parent. Somehow I would like to be able to convince him I am an advocate, hired by his future self, to guide him in making the decisions his 30 year old self wish had been made. This sort of high brow philosophical nonsense just reinforces my ineptitude. All that being said, I am still greatly impressed by his potential. Whatever it takes, I hope someone will fill that niche and inspire him towards the greatness I see for his future.
This article is one of those types of lessons I hope someone whispers into his ear... soon.
16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School
by
Henrik Edberg
I am 28 now. I don’t think about the past or regret things much these days.
But
sometimes I wish that I had known some of things I have learned over
the last few years a bit earlier. That perhaps there had been a
self-improvement class in school. And in some ways there probably was.
Because
some of these 16 things in this article a teacher probably spoke about
in class. But I forgot about them or didn’t pay attention.
Some
of it would probably not have stuck in my mind anyway. Or just been too
far outside my reality at the time for me to accept and use.
But
I still think that taking a few hours from all those German language
classes and use them for some personal development classes would have
been a good idea. Perhaps for just an hour a week in high school. It
would probably be useful for many students and on a larger scale quite
helpful for society in general.
So here are 16 things I wish they had taught me in school (or I just would like to have known about earlier).
1. The 80/20 rule.
This
is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule
– also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent
of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your
activities.
So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.
You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.
And
if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those
things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.
2. Parkinson’s Law.
You
can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will
expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set
aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up
with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more
difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a
solution.
So
focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour
(instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to
solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and
action.
The
result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the
task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value
will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up
with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished
things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your
ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus
on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating
stress in the back of your mind.
3. Batching.
Boring
or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level
anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them.
This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them
quicker because there is less start-up time compared to if you spread
them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the
tasks and more focused.
A
batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your
desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a
grocery shopping list for tomorrow.
4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.
This
is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that
someone should give us something or do something for us before we give
back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so
far less than possible is given either way.
If
you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness,
opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because
over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to
get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.
5. Be proactive. Not reactive.
This
one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little
will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do
something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time
before it happens.
A
more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one
to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not
only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you
feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you
are run by a bunch of random outside forces.
6. Mistakes and failures are good.
When
you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow
a bit older, you learn from – for example – school to not make
mistakes. And you try less and less things.
This
may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being
reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if
you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at
you?
Perhaps
they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is
seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care
that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.
And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.
When
you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a
knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the
saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can
just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way – instead
of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do -you would
probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable
lessons and have quite a bit more success.
7. Don’t beat yourself up.
Why
do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think
one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s
a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary
pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop
this habit as much as you can.
8. Assume rapport.
Meeting
new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to
make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward
conversation.
The
best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This
means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best
friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of
the nervous one.
9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.
I
learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class
but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a
shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn
about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow
you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It
pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.
So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.
Setting
goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on
what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer
to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such
as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things
from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. And then you
can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.
10. Your attitude changes your reality.
We
have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that
“you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I
suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just
brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.
But
the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change
your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance
use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see
things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think
to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.
When you change your attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.
This
is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this
one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane
change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about
it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because
your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to
see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is
what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being
right all the time.
If you try changing your attitude for real – instead of analysing such a concept in your mind – you’ll be surprised.
11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.
Sure,
I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was
the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had
said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way
to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have
practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your
attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people
happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are
contagious.
12. Don’t compare yourself to others.
The
ego wants to compare. It wants to find reasons for you to feel good
about yourself (“I’ve got a new bike!”). But by doing that it also
becomes very hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than
you (“Oh no, Bill has bought an even nicer bike!”). And so you don’t
feel so good about yourself once again. If you compare yourself to
others you let the world around control how you feel about yourself. It
always becomes a rollercoaster of emotions.
A
more useful way is to compare yourself to yourself. To look at how far
you have come, what you have accomplished and how you have grown. It may
not sound like that much fun but in the long run it brings a lot more
inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.
13. 80-90% of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.
This
is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are
just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most
often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often
just a waste of time.
This
is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of
what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can
start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.
14. Don’t take things too seriously.
It’s
very easy to get wrapped up in things. But most of the things you worry
about never come into reality. And what may seem like a big problem
right now you may not even remember in three years.
Taking
yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often just
seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and as an extension of that; your life.
15. Write everything down.
If
your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many
of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a
habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus
on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.
16. There are opportunities in just about every experience.
In
pretty much any experience there are always things that you can learn
from it and things within the experience that can help you to grow.
Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better
than a success because it teaches you something totally new, something
that another success could never teach you.
Whenever
you have a “negative experience” ask yourself: where is the opportunity
in this? What is good about this situation? One negative experience can
– with time – help you create many very positive experiences.
What do you wish someone had told you in school or you had just learned earlier in life?
