16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School

16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School
Published by Henrik Edberg April 2nd, 2008 in Productivity,
Relaxation, Personal Development, People Skills, Career & Work and
Success.
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 you 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.

You may want to read more about this topic in Take the Positivity Challenge!

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.

From "The Positivity Blog"