A random sampling of Big Lessons I have learned at various jobs and other life experiences:
1. Confidence is almost everything. Do what you need to do when you need to do it, and you’re right more often than you expect.
2. If something can be fixed or improved, do so immediately. Do not wait.
3. Assume that other people have something to contribute and listen to them. Don’t dismiss anyone until it’s been thoroughly proven that this person is useless.
4. Open anger and rudeness are weapons of last resort. Only use them when you have exhausted more polite options.
5. If you’re in an organization and you need to make changes, stop and ask yourself “who else needs to know about this?” and communicate before implementing.
6. Don’t ever be afraid to be forthright and open about your opinions on professional topics. It’s better to suffer the consequences of public error than to hide your expertise.
7. A career is what happens to you after a series of jobs in most cases. Do not stress over your “career”.
8. Treat jobs like school; a place where you learn and where you are entitled to contribute.
9. Get money and status problems out of the way at the job interview and then forget about that stuff between reviews. Doing work well is its own reward almost all the time.
10. If you hate a task or assignment, concentrate as hard as you can on doing it well. It goes by faster and gives more satisfaction if the hated work is done beautifully.
ok, off soapbox now
Be My Blog 
I think that, that should be posted in every office breakroom, with one little provision. On number 2.
2. If something can be fixed or improved, do so immediately. Do not wait. Assuming you are compitent enough to realize the full consequences of your actions.
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I always thought it worked better as
1) LIE. LIE a lot. if someone realizes you are lying kill them and burn the body.
2) dont run out of lighter fluid
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1) LIE. LIE a lot. if someone realizes you are lying kill them and burn the body.
I generally find leaving the body at the water cooler for all to see to be more effective, personally.
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sshh it’s not time for the Higher Teachings yet 🙂
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These are excellent.
It’s a remarkably positive list.
Number 2 is the most dangerous in the hands of an injudicious mind. If number 5 is followed then all will be O.K.
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Good stuff
I will keep [10] in mind as I morph a crufty sh script into a less crufty Perl script today.
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Most helpful. I’ve been stressing out lately about work and interviews and all that gunk, and most of the stuff I’ve read online is actually negative. And that certainly doesn’t help. But, this does.
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Thank you for reminding me why I’m a troglodyte. The world thanks you 😉
P.S. Those are good. I even used to follow them. Then my brain exploded ;x
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I agree with Mr. Mustard, 2 and 5 need to be closely linked.
2 can be dangerous. The usual state of any IT shop is that most things are semi-broken. So unbreaking them may have cascading consequences.
as for 4) I have never found anger and rudeness to be a weapon, it has only hurt me. Anger works only if the target is totally, utterly useless to you, and you’re certain anger will make him or her quail and never bother you again.
Thanks for the list. Good things to think about. Especially the career one. I fret about that.
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