If you will ever have to delegate something, it’s best to do it as early as possible. Minimize your ramp-up period, train as little as possible. Use as much of the available time that you’ll be around to just be accessible for questions and feedback.

This is parenting and management advice. Tell your kids to make their own lunch – they’re hungry, they’ll figure it out. Don’t hover over your team when you assign them a task.

In both cases, they’ll make a mess here and there. Don’t kid yourself – you would have too. Your involvement might have made different messes, but not no mess at all. So let them make the mess while you’re there to see, clean it together, and push them back in.

When I was a junior in high school, a girl from my class who I had no relationship with beyond “classmate” came up to me and asked if she could buy weed from me.

I was pretty stunned. I had never used, let alone sold, any drugs in my life. I was pretty opposed, in fact. I certainly hadn’t given anyone any signals, direct or otherwise, to the contrary. And I didn’t know this girl at all beyond a name in attendance in the morning, so I asked her what gave her the impression that I was the right person to ask.

“Nothing,” she said, “but you seem resourceful, weird, and not like a snitch. So might as well start with you.”

What absolutely incredible networking! This girl was a genius. Look at the assessment she made! Even though I wasn’t one, I certainly fit the “stoner” archetype well enough – strong dislike of authority evidenced by lots of smart-aleck remarks in class and frequent detention. Somewhat counter-culture wardrobe (though considerably less cool than I thought of myself at the time). We shared a lot of the Advanced Placement classes, so she knew I was at least not a total idiot. Based on just this knowledge, she figured she could safely ask me if I would sell her weed and not face any consequences if she was wrong. Best case scenario she gets her goal, and worst case scenario she just gets a ‘sorry, nope’ – no risk that I was going to run to the school administration and narc.

Now, this story happened more than two decades ago (ugh) and back then weed was a LOT less legal than it is now, so there was actually a decent risk to what she was doing. And yet she made savvy assessments and went after what she wanted.

Now compare that to you. You probably want something right now. Maybe a new job? A promotion? A date? And these things are legal, but you’re still more hesitant to ask someone to get you closer to your goal than that girl in my junior class.

And there’s the other huge lesson – not only is it silly not to ask when the risk is so small, but it’s also silly to wait to ask until you’re sure you’ve got the “right” person. That girl figured that even if I couldn’t sell her weed, that there was a decent chance that I had a better lead, that I could at least get her closer to her goal. That turned out to be true, by the way – I didn’t smoke, but I knew plenty of people who did, so I directed her to one of them who in turn was able to get her hooked up. Networking!

Just remember that lesson, people – when in doubt, pursue your goals like an 11th-grader looking to score some pot. You’ll probably do better.

Considering how much of our flow of information is moderated by a small collection of very specific gadgets (always, but now more than ever!), I’m surprised at how easily we avoid choice architecture when it comes to them.

“Choice architecture,” by the way, is a neat concept from the world of behavioral economics. Here it is in a nutshell: people buy items that are on the eye-height shelves more than they buy items that are on the bottom shelf, all else being equal. You can go from a 12% organ donor rate to a 99% organ donor rate, even if both systems are totally voluntary, just by changing whether the default is “opted in” or “opted out.”

So “choice architecture” is changing the defaults about our lives – not removing choices, but restructuring them. It’s putting the candy in a difficult-to-reach back corner of your cabinet, out of sight, while putting the healthy foods in the front of the eye-level shelf in your refrigerator. It’s putting your bike in the garage in such a way that you’d have to move it out of the way to access your car.

In my case last month, it was deleting the mobile app versions of certain social media sites I used from my phone. I didn’t delete my accounts or anything. I could still access those sites via browser. But that’s a lot less convenient than clicking the app button – and it worked. In the time it would take me to access the sites by browser, I’d remember why I didn’t want to in the first place. It was using inconvenience as a habit-breaker.

It can work in reverse, too. I genuinely read more when I have a convenient e-reader, so that’s very nice to have. In fact, by making sure I have a nice, new-model Kindle and a somewhat crappy phone with little customization effort put in, I’m more likely to indulge in genuine reading than mindless scrolling.

The thing about these little nudges is you can do them without much internal resistance. Pulling bad habits up by the root, going “cold turkey,” often gets met with a huge outcry from whatever negative part of you was fed by that habit. As a result, sometimes that voice wins and we don’t do anything at all. But you can trick that voice, a little – nudge by nudge.

How long ago does something need to have happened before you can accurately examine it?

If someone asked you to picture “the 70’s,” then lots of images might come to mind. Fashion choices, musical influences, political events, and so on. Things we recognize as having a uniquely “70’s” vibe. Would those things have been recognized as such at the time?

We tend to think of our own culture in terms of “default.” No one thinks they have an accent, for instance, but everyone does – to someone else. We think of things happening right now not as uniquely “20’s,” but as just “normal.” We don’t think of our food as “regional;” it’s just normal food, and everything else is measured against that.

Even science fiction tends to reinforce this kind of view. One thing I’ve always noticed in things like Star Trek or Star Wars or whatever is that there might be tons of different sentient species out in the fictional universe of that particular franchise, but they’re always deviations from an average represented by humans. For every species that’s bigger than humans, there’s one that’s smaller. For each species more peaceful, there’s one more warlike. One more advanced, one more primitive. There’s rarely if ever a space opera where say 95% of other sentient species are larger than humans. Because we always think of our own microcosm as the default from which all other things deviate.

So when you look back at an event or time period, that’s a lot like looking at a foreign culture or alien society. It might have unique characteristics, but you’re framing them in your mind in terms of how far they deviate from your own experiences in the present. That can make it hard to get a realistic view of the significance of those events.

Keep that in mind even when looking at your own personal history. You can look at your own life 20 years ago and think “I was so much more foolish then, so much more reckless,” but that’s because you’re framing it against your current life. You certainly don’t feel foolish or reckless now, but by this method in 20 years when you look back on your current life you’ll judge yourself accordingly.

Don’t undervalue the experiences and choices you made in the past. Understand them, reflect on why you made them, and if you wouldn’t make the same choices today – don’t just chalk it up to capricious youth. Build on that, combine your forces with that younger you, and don’t just let your present be a default to be deviated from. Build a future exactly how you want it.

When we build something new in our lives, we often make the smart move of supporting that new endeavor with a little extra “outside help.” For instance, if starting a weight loss journey, it’s not uncommon to have an “accountabili-buddy” to motivate you. Or perhaps you use one of those services that lets you bet on your own weight loss. Maybe you ask a spouse or roommate to hide, lock up, or dispose of unhealthy foods.

These things are scaffolding. They’re meant to support the construction of a new thing – in this case, healthy eating habits. Habits, like cathedrals, are hard to build. It’s perfectly fine to need to support their construction with something additional while you do so.

But there is a hidden trap here, one that can snare you if you’re not careful. That trap is coming to rely so much on the scaffolding that you never remove it – and thus, never really finish building what you set out to build.

Scaffolding is short term. You can’t expect to maintain healthy eating forever on the back of spouses hiding cookies and apps where you bet on your scale. At a certain point the new thing has to be an internal thing, something that will stand under its own construction and support its own weight within you. Scaffolding eventually collapses.

I am actually hugely supportive of the “scaffolding” technique of building habits. Inertia is real, and in order to change we need to defeat many demons. If you want to quit smoking, I support everything from nicotine patches to support groups to anything else you can think of. But you cannot rely on those things forever. You must, at some point, finish the cathedral.

So many people, in their initial interactions with others, hide their most unusual or unique characteristics. As a result, they delay heartbreak – delay it, but not prevent it.

For instance, imagine you’re excited about a first date with someone. You want it to go well, so you hide the fact that you’re an avid snake breeder and you have like a thousand snakes. The date goes well! And then the second date comes around and they find out about the snake farm and they run screaming. What was the point of hiding it? If something’s important to you, lead with it.

Here’s a fun example – the Nigerian Prince scams. You know those email scams where someone writes to you claiming to be a Nigerian prince with millions of dollars they just want to give you for some flimsy reason? They’re always super obvious, the grammar atrocious, the email address suspect, etc. Want to know something crazy? They do all that on purpose.

The people behind those scams are actually quite sophisticated. They have more than sufficient command of the English language to write a compelling and believable email. They could come up with a better initial “pitch.” But they don’t, on purpose. Their reason makes perfect sense once you know it: they want to eliminate, as early as possible, anyone smart enough not to fall for the full scam.

You see, you can trick a LOT of people into going 3-4 emails deep with you on a scam if you’re a good writer and con artist, but the number of people who actually go all the way to giving you their bank details is way lower. That’s a lot of wasted time – you don’t want to be emailing back and forth with hundreds or thousands of people, 99% of whom figure you out before you get a dime. It’s better (from the scammer’s perspective, of course) to just make what you’re doing so obvious that the only people who engage at all are the people who will fall for the whole thing. And clearly some people do: the scam wouldn’t exist if it didn’t generate enough money to be worth it.

So those scammers are horrible, but we can learn a valuable lesson from them. Put the things that are going to eliminate people up front. If you’re looking for friends, a relationship partner, a new job, anything – lead with the weirdest stuff. Because somewhere out there is someone who loves snakes as much as you do, and you don’t want to miss your chance with them because you’re busy wading through a sea of ophidiophobes, pretending to be something you’re not.

Have you ever seen the movie “The Princess Bride?” Of course you have, what a ridiculous question. (And if you haven’t, it’s one of the finest films ever made, so go watch it.) There’s a scene where the main protagonists are trying to plan their attack on the bad guys, and the lead asks for a list of assets from his compatriots. It’s sparse. He brainstorms out loud, wishing he had some random mundane item and it turns out they do – which makes him mad that it wasn’t listed among the assets in the first place.

(Go watch the scene if you don’t like my summary!)

The reason I bring this scene up is because it’s actually harder than you might imagine to conjure up a complete list of all your assets on the spot. Here’s an example: write down a list of everyone you know.

Daunting, isn’t it?

You could write for hours and still miss people. That’s one of the advantages of social media networks; they’re a sort of inventory management system for your friends, loved ones, and professional contacts.

And the reason I bring that up is because if you can’t even list your assets, you’re certainly under-utilizing them. You don’t even know what tools you have at your disposal! Want a sure-fire way to network better? Introduce people that both know you, but don’t know each other. Figure out connections that can add value.

When you introduce two people that may benefit from the connection, you improve both of their lives. That’s two people with a reason to be grateful for your existence, a reminder that you’re awesome, and at least a marginally improved situation that you helped cause. Do that enough, and the spillover effects back to you are HUGE. But how can you do that if you don’t even know who you know?

Every so often, inventory your own “assets,” especially the intangible ones. You might be one wheelbarrow away from a breakthrough – and it was there all along.

If you’re going to be an iconoclast, be a nice iconoclast.

John Darnielle, the front-man (and sometimes only-man) for The Mountain Goats, says that the reason he doesn’t curse in his lyrics is because his lyrics are controversial enough without giving people an additional reason to dismiss him out of hand. That’s a good lesson for anyone who likes to be able to speak controversially, at any time.

Rage and spit and fire and brimstone don’t convince anybody. They might intimidate people into disagreeing with you silently instead of publicly, but disagree with you they still shall – and in fact, probably more vehemently than before. And you’ll have no ability to maneuver that disagreement because you won’t even know it.

Tactics of rhetoric like screaming and flailing and getting all fired up can make people who already agree with you do so more fervently, or whip them into a particular course of action. But if your goal is to sway, then remember that swaying is an inherently gentle act.

The most controversial voice in the room always should be the calmest. Your first debate is with your own emotions, and you have to win in order to proceed to the next round. Truth and wisdom alone have gotten plenty of people stoned to death. If you want to be able to speak your mind, potentially convince people, and remain immune to the worst of the fates of the pariah – then be nice.

There’s a pretty funny joke I’ve heard a few variations of. Apologies if you’ve heard it before, but here it is:

This is the transcript of an actual radio conversation between a US naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland.

US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.

CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!

US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!

CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Hahaha! Yeah, it’s cheesy, but that joke makes me smile. I think it’s clever. I also think it’s wise.

In life, you’re the only battleship. Everyone else is a lighthouse. You can get all mad and blustery and indignant about other people not getting out of your way, but that’s just going to result in a lot of collisions.

Have you ever been walking towards a street you need to cross, and at the same time a car is headed down that street? You see each other, and there’s some awkward shuffling as each person tries to figure out who’s going and everyone gets slowed down as a result? I have a trick for that. When I see the car approaching, I turn and walk in a different direction. The driver will no longer see me as potentially crossing their path and they’ll just drive on by. I won’t get two steps out of my normal path before the car is passed and I can just cross the street, saving us both about 30 seconds. I don’t try to affect the other person’s behavior at all. They’re the lighthouse; I change course.

People almost never change their behavior without stimuli. So if you have a neighbor that does something that annoys you, it’s pretty silly of you to expect them to change. If they’ve let their dog bark at 11 PM every night for six years, they’re not going to suddenly now realize that it’s pretty rude of them to do so. You, only you, can create change. You can create change by going over and having a nice talk with your neighbor or you can create change by soundproofing your own house, but in either case you have to be the one to act.

The lighthouse isn’t going to move.

“If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”

There are few things in this world with a payoff as great as cultivating the people who influence you. Every single person you interact with will have some effect on you, even if you’re an incredibly stalwart person. That means that who you give the most influence to is vitally important.

The question of whether or not you’d jump off a bridge if all your friends did is entirely dependent on the quality of your circle of friends.

If your friends are all savvy, intelligent, and competent people, and ALL of them jump off a bridge, then there might be something to it. It’s not about blind faith in others! Those friends aren’t random – you chose them, and if you do a good job in that choosing then you can use that as a proxy for later decisions such as whether to trust their decisions to leap off of things.

Conversely, lessons so often taught on after-school television specials about not letting your friends dictate your behavior are really lessons about picking better friends. If you need to constantly choose between your own moral compass and the influence of your peers, then your peers might just be terrible.

Contrary to what you might think, this doesn’t mean I advocate an echo chamber or a circle of “yes men/women.” Quite the opposite! If your chosen peer group is filled with smart, savvy and competent people then you can actually feel more confident seeking out contrary opinions and views and giving them fair consideration. You won’t have to worry as much that some silver-tongued influence will get the better of your higher reasoning with emotional appeals, because you’ll have forums to discuss these things with other rational minds.

It’s no coincidence that demagogues so often find the chronically isolated among their most devout followers. No matter how smart and stalwart we are, none of us are immune to emotional bias or weakness of reasoning on occasion. We all have our bad days. If you don’t have a circle of minds to connect to your own that you trust and value, then a “bad day” can be an open gate for every bad idea that floats your way. But if you have ten other strong minds that influence you, that you’ve learned to trust over time and value their input? Then even if you get caught up in a bad idea, you have tethers.

If I want to talk someone into jumping off a bridge, all I have to do is catch them at the right (wrong) moment. If I want to convince a group of ten to do the same, they’d have to simultaneously be experiencing the sort of terrible emotional strain that would make them susceptible to that kind of influence, and that’s significantly less likely.

Whether they’re your close friends, certain family members, professional peers, or even a salon of thinkers you cultivate and interact with solely for this reason, it’s a good thing to have a regular forum of ideas.

Without it, you’re closer to the edge of the bridge than you might think.