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.
This works
surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations:
Assuming Rapport.
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?
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