Of course, it might just cost you your job.
For that reason, I thought I’d collect some of the thoughts that my bosses have shared with me over the year – all of it good advice that would certainly have come in useful if I’d known it earlier.
Some things you tell your mates you shouldn’t tell your colleagues
I don’t know how many times I’ve fallen into this trip. All go out with a couple of colleagues from work. We have a couple of drinks. And before I know it, I’ve told them something they really didn’t need to know.
That really isn’t a good strategy.
You see, you can change your friends. Or if they look at you as if you’re an idiot, you can get over that. Maybe you don’t see each other for a while. Maybe they tease you about it relentlessly for a few weeks. That’s a lot harder to do with your colleagues. If they think you’re an idiot then that will affect your relationship and that affects your job.
What’s more, it can quickly spread around the company – in which case what you thought you told in confidence on a night on the town suddenly becomes common knowledge for everybody. That’s because
Colleagues that are nice to you don’t necessarily like you
Sometimes they’re just nice to you because they need to work with you, while secretly they think you’re actually absolute scum. They accept you, because they have to. But the moment you reveal a chink in your armor – in plunges the knife!
You’d be surprised how many people are good at hiding their true feelings. I had one guy I worked with who I know suspect was an actual certifiable psychopath. He waited until he had the dirty on me, then used that to leverage himself into a position of power.
The thing was, afterwards naturally I regretted telling him anything, but at the moment I told him I really thought we were the best of friends.
You can bite off more than you can chew
You know how they say that you should shoot for the stars? Well, that’s all well and good unless the stars shoot back. When you take on every challenge people throw your way and every opportunity that comes along, before you know it you’re in over your head.
What’s more, once you’ve got a reputation of saying ‘yes’ to everything, people will use that. They’ll come over and ask you to do their dirty work and then they’ll twist your arm just enough so that you end up agreeing to it after all. It’s not about college already, and you are not students. Everyone used dissertation writing service during studying to cope with homework faster. But you are not in college anymore. No one should do someone else’s job. What’s more, once you are that person who will do everything for everybody, they actually start to lose respect for you. I don’t know what that’s about, but it really happens. For that reason, I’ve learned the power of the word “no”. What’s more, I’ve learned to pick the projects I want to be a part of more carefully. I now choose projects that more closely fit my skill set. This both means that I won’t plunge off the deep end and that I’ve actually got a good opportunity to shine – and that matters when they give you your yearly employee review.
Start saving early
I really wish I would have actually listened to the people who told me this. Everybody did, you know. They said, put a little bit of your pay check aside from day one. It doesn’t have to be much, but as long as you do so consistently. Then, when you’re a little bit older, through the power of compound interest, you’ll actually have the money you need to follow your dreams.
It sounded like great advice. I still didn’t follow it though. If I would have I would have been in a much better position to start my own business when I wanted to, or to travel the world, or to do the thousands of other things that I would rather have done.
Instead, I got a whole bunch of extra coffees and a car I didn’t really need. What a shame!
The suit makes the man
I always thought this was ludicrous. People shouldn’t judge me on my appearance. They should judge me based on the thoughts in my head! I was right, of course. People shouldn’t judge you based on your appearance. They also shouldn’t eat too much junk food and should spend more time with their family.
Just because that’s the case, though, doesn’t mean they will. And that matters. Because ultimately the only person that was being hurt by me dressing like I was a university student even though I had a normal job was me. People didn’t take me serious and that hurt my opportunities – not theirs.
The moment I finally caved in and started dressing better, people took me more serious. What’s more, I took myself more serious as well. Somehow how you dress changes how you look at yourself – and dressing professionally made me think of myself as being far more professional.
Last words
Yes, being young is about making mistakes. At the same time, being human is about being able to see the mistakes other people make and learning from them so that we don’t have to repeat them. We’ve done that in plenty of places in our culture. We no longer bleed people to make them better. We no longer think that washing once a month is enough.
For that same reason, it’s time we learned from the mistakes that we’ve already made. Here are some perfect examples. Follow these and you’ll stumble a whole lot less often in your earlier years than I did.
And who knows? You might end up with an actually positive annual review.
