16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School By Henrik Edberg

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, fulfillment 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 over
polished 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 are 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 kind of a 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 analyzing 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 you 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
practiced 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?