New Year’s Ideal Resolutions

• Stop procrastinating. Either do it, get help to do it, or forget about doing it.
• Stop feeling guilty. You’re a good person, you’re not responsible for the sins of your parents (we all have sins of our own), and you’re making a contribution to society.
• Show more compassion. Someone standing on a corner or on a traffic median with a cardboard sign may be just a hustler, but probably isn’t. Stop worrying about what that person will do with a few dollars and just give.
• Fight road rage. When you’ve been legitimately “wronged” by being cut-off or someone not using a turn signal or not letting you turn in front of them, ask yourself before becoming enraged if you’ve ever done the same thing, inadvertently or advertently.
• Escape a poverty/scarcity mentality. People in the hospitality industry, from servers to chambermaids, sommeliers to doormen, deserve to earn a decent living. Tip kindly and generously for good service.
• Seriously review the baggage you’re carrying around from things said in your youth by your parents or siblings, and toss them off your train. They were probably wrong or embittered and that’s not you any more in any case. If you can’t do that, pay a few bucks for a therapist. (None of them know how to charge correctly and they’re a bargain.)
• Ignore those who have positioned themselves on a mythical higher moral ground. If you want to put salt on your food before tasting it, do so, it’s your decision, your food, and your life. It’s not up to anyone else to tell you how to live so long as you are ethical and obey the law. Salt is not illegal.
• Stop blaming others and accept accountability. If you and someone else trip on exactly the same chair when entering the room, you can’t call the other person “clumsy” while you’re claiming it’s the fault of the person who put the chair there.
• Spend far less time on social media and stop hunting for bias confirmation. Listen to people with whom you don’t agree to examine whether or not you should change your mind and/or beliefs.
• Stop eating kale just because it’s fashionable. It’s disgusting and even rodents won’t eat it. Have some self-respect.

Quick Riches

The crypto craze has crashed. The coffee shop owner who claimed his $18,000 investment had grown to a healthy six figures can’t even open his account any more. No doubt some early adapters who also got out early made some serious money. But that’s like the gambler who’s ahead and can seldom walk away from the table until everything is gone.

In retrospect, it’s clear that Enron and Bernie Madoff, for example, were bad deals, too good to be true, but people were caught up in the frenzy of quick riches. That’s what every pyramid and Ponzi Scheme intends, even if they paint the front of the store “network marketing” or some such deceptive normality.

When things look too good to be true, they are.

I don’t believe in hard work, but I do believe in and practice smart work. Uber is nothing more than a better cab service. Dyson knows how to move air better than others who make vacuum cleaners or hand dryers. FedEx figured out how to move packages faster than the post office could (and still can’t).

I introduced value based fees for consultants to get them out of the unethical hourly billing trap back in the 90s. Streaming services still bring entertainment and sports into your home, no matter what the platform (and even on your TV). You can do your banking and even deposit checks on your smart phone, but you’re still engaged in banking.

If the energy invested in short-cuts and “quick riches” were simply redirected into smarter approaches, more people would be wealthier. But the allure of some magic bullet is hard to ignore for many.

After all, some people are still trying to rob banks, thinking it’s easier than working. I don’t know about that, but it’s certainly not safer.

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I call it “waiting around to die.”

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