I recently (either through Digg of StumbleUpon) found an article 10 virtually instant ways to improve your life. Now, I don’t usually go in for self-help douchebaggery, but this one made some sense to me. For the impatient, the ten things are:
- Stop jumping to conclusions.
- Don’t dramatize.
- Don’t invent rules.
- Avoid stereotyping or labeling people or situations.
- Quit being a perfectionist.
- Don’t over-generalize.
- Don’t take things so personally.
- Don’t assume your emotions are trustworthy.
- Don’t let life get you down. Keep practicing being optimistic.
- Don’t hang on to the past… let go and move on.
It’s amazing how many people come to mind when reading this: colleagues, questionable supervisors, ….
Of course, the elephant in the room is actually noticing that you’re doing these things when you are. That seems to be the tricky thing.
Hmmm… Maybe I should just concentrate on one at a time and make real sure I’m not doing that one. Fuck… that’s being a perfectionist! 🙂
August 10th, 2007 at 2:14 am
This is, immediately, the most useless thing I’ve ever seen. It’s things like this that are responsible for the terrible state of the world today! (Oh, woe!).
It’s in clear violation of the Rule of Simple Lists, “No list should contain more than 7 items.”. See? This is exactly what I would expect from a *Computing Science* professor.
I also feel the need to point out that this list exhibits massive redundancy- almost every line contains the word ‘don’t’. It could shave off a few words by re-organizing the list, and generally, a more concise list is a better list.
I find it personally insulting that you would suggest that the people around you need to follow rules like this- I’m infuriated (and therefore, justified in my actions).
Of course, this is just one in a whole series of let-downs. Ever since I’ve been small, people have been posting crap like this to their blogs.
(I think that’s 10 for 10)