The little secret treats are better than the bigger, obvious ones. It’s the seeking that makes it good, not the having.

Some problems aren’t the kind you can solve yourself – they’re the kind created by, and therefore only solvable through bureaucracy.

These are the worst kinds of problems. But there are some secrets to solving them efficiently.

First, the most important skill you can master is how to identify people who cannot help you at all. This is most of them. 100% of the time, the first person you talk to will not be able to help you, even if they wanted to, which they do not. What you must do is quickly identify these people and then be incredibly nice to them. You have to hide your contempt for their position and remember that ultimately they are people who aren’t out to get you, specifically. They’re just part of a horrible system.

Remember though, while they absolutely cannot help you, they certainly can hinder you. And they will definitely do everything they can to do so if you’re not nice. Powerless people trapped in a soulless system often take any opportunity they can to become petty tyrants, so don’t give them a reason. Be an absolute sweetheart, every second. Your goal is just to get past them as quickly as possible, and being nice is the best way to do that. Believe me, you may feel the urge to let your frustration out, but that’s just pouring concrete around your own feet. You can’t bully these people. You can’t “customer is always right” them. Consequences be damned, it’s just too satisfying for people in their position to squash a miserable complainer, so don’t be one.

Be nice. As nice as you’ve ever been. And quickly move inward until you meet someone who actually has the combination of authority and/or intelligence to help you.

And then be nice to them, too! It’s good to be nice to everyone, but I’m telling you this because in this situation you will not want to be nice. You’re only here because you’re frustrated and irritated and you’ve wasted your afternoon trying to solve this stupid problem that wouldn’t even BE a problem except for these very people. It’s natural to want to scowl.

Do not scowl.

Be as kind as you’ve ever been in your life. You have absolutely no way to destroy this bureaucracy. You can’t “teach these people a lesson.” You can’t even make them care, even for a second. Their system won’t let them care, even if they’re the kind of people who naturally would. So don’t try to win any moral victories through self-righteous posturing.

Just be nice, nice, nice until you get what you want.

Then get out, and try to make it a long time before you have to do it again.

When we only have an idea of something, we fill in the rest in our imagination. We take the core concept and apply our own optimism or pessimism to it, and that can end up creating an enormous fiction.

Ideas are meant to be tested. You might think it’s going to be awesome to work at the ice cream place because you love ice cream – but when you actually start you find it’s not exactly a whimsical Wonka-esque experience. Or you might think that going on vacation with your in-laws is going to be a drag, but you soon discover that they’re actually party animals and you have a fantastic time.

Don’t fall in love – or hate – with ideas. Find ways to test them and then take the best parts for the next idea. Save love for real life.

Complaints are a gift.

I’m not much of a complainer. I don’t see much point in it – most of the time, the better option is to simply fix the problem. If it’s too hot in a room, I have many options that get me to a comfortable temperature more effectively than complaining about the heat. I can find and change the thermostat myself, I can leave the room, or I can take off my coat – or I can even just decide not to care about slight discomfort. I’ll choose those options over complaining almost every time because I think they’re all much more likely to get me what I want.

But let’s say the room I’m in – the one that’s too hot – is a business of some kind. And while waiting for my turn, I notice other people also showing signs of temperature-related discomfort. I see these people, exasperated by the heat, deciding to leave rather than staying as customers. The owners of the business seem oblivious; perhaps they’re so busy that they simply don’t notice, or maybe they think they’re hot because they’re working hard and don’t realize it’s actually the whole place.

In this instance, alerting the owners of the problem – complaining about it – is a huge gift. They might be losing a lot of business because of this simple and easy-to-fix problem and they don’t know it. That simple complaint and its equally simple solution could be worth thousands of dollars to them, or more.

So when someone complains to you, it’s often a tremendous gift. Of course, sometimes it’s poorly given. If I complain about the heat in that building to my neighbor when I get home, that doesn’t accomplish much. Likewise, if I complain about the price of a product to a cashier with zero input on that price, I’ve missed the mark again.

Before I complain, I take a moment to think – is this complaint a gift? Or am I wasting someone’s time and ruining their mood for no reason?

That’s why I complain rarely. But when someone complains to you, give a thought to unwrapping it before you throw it away.

One of my favorite books of all time (and hands down my favorite non-fiction book) is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman was a Nobel Prize winner for his work in behavioral economics. His life was as fascinating as his work and sadly, that life ended today.

His work has had a genuinely profound effect on me. Someone once asked me what book had the most actual impact on my life. It’s a hard thing to measure, but I can’t think of a better case for a book than for Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Raise a glass fast to an interesting man with an interesting life, 90 years long and still over too soon, and then set it down slow.

Like it or not, your emotions are a rough draft of your opinions.

What eventually becomes a deeply-seated opinion on a particular topic starts out as an impulsive, emotional reaction to that topic. And it’s very, very easy to just take that rough draft and edit it only for presentation rather than content before we turn it in.

That means we often have a gut reaction to something, and all we really do is “clean it up.” We add post-hoc reasoning that sounds high-minded but is really just the rider justifying the movement of the elephant. In other words, we rationalize.

But we don’t have to! The first step is accepting that a rough draft is just that. It isn’t something to be ashamed of, and nor is it a sunk cost we now have to justify. It’s just an initial impression. We can use it for data, edit it for content, or even throw it out entirely if that’s where the rational editorial process leads us. We should let it cool for a while before we publish.

I don’t want my strong opinions to be rough drafts with a coat of paint on them, and neither should you.

I have no idea what the actual number is, but some number of people have these things called “intrusive thoughts.” (Personally, my guess is very near all people have them; we just react to them differently.) This is a fancy term for random thoughts that pop into your head that represent unpleasant things you wouldn’t actually do, don’t actually believe, and wouldn’t even consciously choose to think about. They’re little unpleasant impulses or dark images or anything else you might rather not occupy your brain.

We have them because the brain is basically just a huge stimulus-response machine with a teeny tiny little bit of intentional consciousness on top. So a lot of your thoughts are just reactions to things and it’s totally normal to have a bad thought pop into your head.

That doesn’t mean it’s fun.

I like to find constructive ways to use mine. One of the recurring kinds of “intrusive thoughts” that I have is I will find myself writing eulogies for people I care about quite frequently. If I let this thought “win,” I will get very sad, because it will make me dwell on losing people I hold dear.

So I don’t let it win. Instead, I let that eulogy play out a little bit, get the kind words flowing… and then I’ll just say those things to the person. (Minus the context, of course.) See, a eulogy is usually very complimentary! Those same thoughts can make a living person’s day and strengthen our relationship. My mind wanted to take it to a dark place, but the sentiment is anything but.

We often have to ignore or fight against our worst natural impulses to live noble lives. But sometimes we can do one better – we can harvest those very impulses for noble ends.

You know the expression “Two wrongs don’t make a right?” It isn’t true. But here’s the bad news: it’s not the way you think.

The intent of the phrase is a caution against revenge. You can’t right a wrong by perpetuating another wrong. That, for the most part, is true. Revenge mostly just hurts you. But a second wrong can definitely make a right… for the other person.

You have to be careful about this in your life! Sometimes you’re on the right side of some sort of conflict, and think “This is great, I’m going to get what I deserve.” You might! But if you react badly enough, you can swing the scale the other way.

Here’s an example: Imagine you’re driving your car, and another driver runs a red light and collides with your car. They aren’t going super fast, but both cars are damaged (thankfully, neither of you are hurt). You’re in the right! It’s the other driver who is at fault, and it’s their insurance that will have to pay to repair the damage to your car. It’s not as good as not being in an accident at all, but hey.

But now let’s imagine you have a temper – a bad one. After the collision, you get out of your car, stomp over to theirs, and begin screaming at them. At first it’s just heated, but moves quickly into downright hateful stuff. You pick up a rock and start smashing in their car further. Then you even strike them physically in a rage.

Guess what? Your second wrong just made them very right. By the time the police get to the scene, they aren’t going to be filling out a favorable insurance report. They’re going to be arresting you.

That’s an extreme example, but it’s an illustrative one. When you’re right – don’t blow it. Acting wrong can hand the win to the person who was wrong to begin with, and should have stayed that way. Win graciously, especially before you’ve cashed the check. Don’t push your luck, and don’t gloat. If you know you’re right, stay that way.

Some things you can’t mess up except by worrying about whether you’ll mess them up.

You can’t do a bad job at hanging out with your kids, jamming with your musician buddies, or walking around the lake with a partner. There’s no element of them more important than the fact that you’re just enjoying that time together. So don’t sweat the experience – just experience it.

By default, humans have pretty incredible immune systems. We’re constantly bombarded by tiny little micro-organisms that want to devour our various nutrients in ways that would render us dead. They generally fail because we have such a robust system of fighting them off. It’s incredible because you rarely even realize it’s happening – for every one cold you get, you fought of hundreds of other attacks and never batted an eyelash.

Some people have the misfortune of having an immune system that doesn’t work as well, or even doesn’t work at all. This is a great burden, because those people have to be sheltered from the world. A lack of an immune system isn’t itself deadly – in an environment that was 100% safe, they’d have no issues. Of course, no environment is 100% safe, and these poor souls have to live most of their lives in the safest environments they can.

On the other end of the spectrum, some people’s immune systems are even more robust than normal. They might just be genetically lucky, but there are also things you can do to strengthen an immune system. The right diet and exercise can help. Ironically, so can exposure to more attacks! If you have a normally functioning immune system to begin with, then facing exposure to sickness can train it to be even stronger, both in specific cases (such as the way vaccines work) and more broadly.

Now, all of that is about your physical immune system. But you also have another one – an emotional immune system. And it works largely the same way.

You are constantly bombarded by things that try to make you upset, afraid, or angry. If you have a healthy emotional immune system, most of them you don’t even notice! But if your emotional immune system is weak, then those things will frequently cause you to “get sick” emotionally. You’ll cry, scream, rage, strike, and so on – the emotional equivalents of coughing and sneezing. If your emotional immune system is too weak, then just like people with auto-immune diseases, you’ll only be able to live in the safest of environments, cut off from the world and all its experiences.

And just like with a physical immune system, it is possible for most people to strengthen it deliberately – and in much the same way. Exposure to emotionally straining situations will help you build the system you need to endure them. You should upset yourself. You should hear things you don’t like, suffer though some unpleasant circsumtances, and move through them. Regulate your experiences and focus on how little power they actually have over you.

Build your emotional immune system. The world is a wonderful place, and you don’t want to miss it.