The Yardstick

We cannot measure our success without knowing what success will look like. Our goals should be the yardsticks for our lives. If we are meeting our goals, then we are successful. If we are not, then we need to adjust either our goals or our efforts. Do you know what your goals are?

You might want a million dollars, but that’s not good enough. That’s not a goal. It’s a dream. You can’t act on a dream. Do you want to save a million dollars for retirement? If so, then maybe your goal should be to “invest $250 in a mutual fund every month for the next 40 years.” That’s a goal you can act on. You are much more likely to invest $250 than you are to just “save a million dollars.”

Let’s look at another common example. If you want to get in shape, then “eating better” and “going to the gym regularly” should not be your goals. Even “lose ten pounds” shouldn’t be your goal. Those are all just too intangible to reliably act upon. Your goals should be to “eat no more than 1500 calories per day,” and to “go the gym from 6:00 to 7:00 on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.” Anything less than that isn’t a real goal. It’s just a dream.

Toward a Goal

Once you’ve made your goals into something tangible, something measurable, you can monitor your progress. Did you save $250 last month? If not, you need to adjust your budget and compensate. Did you go to the gym last Tuesday? No? Then you need to make the time.

By setting a measurable goal, you can constantly evaluate whether you’re going to reach that goal. If your dream is to spend more time with your kids, you can’t really track that. How much is enough more? If you want to spend 2 hours every weeknight helping your children with their homework and then going for a walk as a family, that’s something you can track. You can try to track your success in your head, or you can actually keep a personal log. Either way, the first step is to make the goal measurable.

I want to finish all of my degree, except for my dissertation, by the end of next spring. That’s not very tangible, though. So instead, my goals are to take my comprehensive exams and finish 12 hours of class this fall, and to take 6 hours of class and propose my dissertation in the spring. These are by no means easy goals (I have a full-time, off-campus job), but they are measurable goals. I know exactly what I need to do, and I know exactly when I need to do it. I can and do track how my school goals are progressing.

Once your goals are measurable, you can make progress. Until then, you’re just frustrating yourself with dreams that won’t come true.

Big Goals

Sometimes a goal might just be too big to really be tangible. If that’s the case, you need to break it into smaller goals. For example, starting your own company is a huge goal. It’s definitely possible, because others have done it. But “start a company” just doesn’t seam tangible, or very measurable, for that matter. You’ve got to somehow break it up into achievable pieces.

If you want to start a software company, you should probably have a goal of spending several hours a day putting together a prototype product. After that, maybe you need to find a partner or an investor. So you should have a goal of spending some amount of time finding a partner. Or a goal of hitting up everyone you know with more than $5 for investment money. At every step of the way, there should be tangible goals. Even if they aren’t all obvious from the beginning, you should be nailing them down as you go along.

Meeting goals can be hard. It can be very hard work. But the first step is to really know what the goals are. Setting goals is not an extremely difficult thing to do. It takes some time, a little personal honesty, and probably a pen and paper. Whatever time and effort you put into setting your goals will pay itself back many times over, when you actually meet your goals. Once you’ve actually set real goals, you’ll know what you want, you’ll know what you need to do to get it, and you’ll know how to track your progress.

People waste their entire lives dreaming and never doing. All the hoping in the world won’t turn a single dream into reality. But hard work can turn goals into reality. Don’t sell yourself short.

The First Rule of Bathing

The first rule, and really the only rule, for good personal hygiene is to bathe regularly. Why, oh why, does this still have to be said? It’s been in every style or hygiene guide ever written, but it still gets violated like a drunken prom date.

Do You Smell?

I know you don’t think you smell, but seriously, some people do smell, and one of them might be you. Don’t dismiss the idea immediately. Most people who smell don’t realize it.

Has anyone ever described you as greasy or smelly? Has anyone ever told you they could smell your feet even though you still had your shoes on? Do people walk by you and then cough, as if their lungs have suddenly been violated by something vile? If you can answer yes to any of those, you might have the condition known as FPS (funky personal smell). It is an easily treatable condition. You simply need to shower once a day, twice a day for serious cases.

Bad jokes aside, if you aren’t taking at least one shower per day, you smell. I know you can’t smell it. I know you think you can get away with showering only once every couple or three days. You are wrong. If you aren’t taking a shower ever single day, then others can smell you, and they don’t like it. Maybe your sense of smell just isn’t as good. Maybe you’ve just gotten used to the smell over time so that you no longer notice. I don’t know, and I don’t care. Just take a shower already.

If you’re still unsure whether you smell, just ask. Seriously. Ask people if you smell. Ask people you trust. Ask strangers in the bar. Whatever. Most people won’t volunteer to inform you that you smell, but most people will be honest if you ask them outright. Do not, however, ask other smelly people. They might not be able to tell. Ask people who look well-groomed. They can probably tell whether you smell or not. If anyone tells you that you smell “okay”, it means you smell bad. If they say you smell “fine”, get them to clarify, or get another opinion. Fine is too ambiguous. They might mean you smell a little, but you aren’t quite gag-inducingly smelly.

How To Shower

Simply standing in the water is not good enough. Neither is simply washing yourself with your hands. That’s called masturbation, and that’s a different thing altogether. A proper shower should, at minimum, involve the use of shampoo, soap, and some sort of scrubbing device. The following are all acceptable scrubbing devices:

• Wash cloths
• Loofahs
• “Body poofs”
• Shower sponges
• Scrub brushes
• Automotive “bug” sponges
• 3M Dish scouring pads

Select at least one based on your personal shower needs.

Use the shampoo on your hair and the soap (and scrubbing device) on your face and body. Wet your hair, apply shampoo, and massage into scalp and all hair for at least 30 seconds, building a good lather. Rinse well. If your hair is really greasy, or you just enjoyed the experience (good!), feel free to repeat.

Now, wet the rest of your body, along with your scrubbing implement. Apply soap to your body and/or your selected scrubbing device. Scrub your entire body. Scrub your arms, legs, stomach, face, shoulders, back, chest, etc., not necessarily in that order. You need to wash your feet with soap, too. Just standing in the water is not good enough. Remember, we could smell them through your shoes. Spend extra time on your underarms. They’re a common culprit in personal funk.

Potential Points of Controversy

You should definitely wash your naughty bits. Just remember not to spend too long there. That’s masturbation again, and that’s just not the kind of site I run. If you have problems wanting to dally in the area, I’d suggest switching to a harsher scrubbing device, and the problem will probably resolve itself.

Shampoo is not optional, either. I don’t care if you think your hair only needs to be washed only every couple of days, and I don’t care that you’ve read that advice in magazines. Your hair is greasy if you aren’t washing it daily. If your hair feels too dry after you wash it, it’s probably because you’ve gotten used to the greasy feel. If that’s not the case, then you can add hair conditioner to your shower routine. Select a conditioner for “normal” or “dry” hair unless the person who cuts your hair specifically says otherwise. (You do get regular haircuts, don’t you? Damned hippies.) After washing and rinsing your hair, apply the conditioner, massage in, and rinse again. Leave-in conditioners are for expert users. Stick with the traditional kind.

After-bath Care

After the bath, you can pretty much do what you want. You should not, however, put on clothes that are not clean. Just like your skin, your clothes need to be washed every single day they are worn, or they will smell.

You should also use a deodorant/antiperspirant. There’s a huge assortment of these available. Pick one. Use it. Smell better.

Be careful with cologne. It can easily be a problem of its own. Read Cologne Tips for the Smelly Masses if you want to explore that possibility.

Advanced Bathers

If you have any kind of skin condition, your now-daily shower is a good time to use a special soap. For example, you might use Cetaphil for your face, and Neutrogena body wash for the rest of your skin. If you’ve got dandruff or dry scalp, there’s a whole world of companies out there willing to take your money in exchange for their “clean black shirt or your money back” shampoos. Try one or two of them and see if they help. Use whatever products work for you. Just make sure you wash daily, following the guidelines set out above.

A Word About Baths vs. Showers

Now that you’re a regular bather, you might be thinking it’s time to try forgoing a shower in favor of a real bath, i.e., sitting in a tub of hot water. Resist the temptation. Real baths can be relaxing and enjoyable (or stimulating and enjoyable, if you’ve got company). However, a bath will not clean you as well as a shower. The stagnant bathwater simply cannot compete with the flowing shower water in terms of funk-removal. Besides, to properly scrub your body, you’ll have to stand up anyway, and then you might as well be taking a shower. If you really want to take a bath, I recommend taking it in addition to your daily shower, not instead of.

Share the Cleanliness

Now, go share your newfound shower joy. No, I’m not saying you should invite someone into the shower with you (though that’s also an option). I’m saying that you should share this advice with your friends.

Share this with your smelly friends, your smelly coworkers. Share it with your fresh-smelling friends and coworkers, too. Email them the link, or tell them verbally. Spread the good word. Beware, though, that if you’ve ignored the advice above, they’ll probably send the link right back to you.

We’ve all got some smelly friends or coworkers (or at least smelly acquaintances). With our help and support, they can work to fix their smelliness. They too can trade in their gym sock funk for rose petal freshness.

Once you’ve effectively rid yourself of the bulk of your natural fragrances, you might be interested in trying a cologne or some kind of other artificial fragrance. Colognes and such can be acceptable (even good) in small amounts. You must use a high-quality cologne, though. Axe and such need not apply.

How to Pick a Quality Cologne

Picking a good cologne is as simple as eliminating all the bad ones. There are two major techniques to eliminate bad colognes. The first is to check the price. Cheap colognes are universally bad. I don’t care if it says it’s supposed to smell like Hugo Boss. It doesn’t. And don’t try to convince yourself that you can tell. Price has a way of swaying our decisions. Besides, you couldn’t even tell that you smelled bad in the first place. Buy an expensive cologne from a department store.

The second way to eliminate bad colognes is to ask. If you’re not sure about a cologne, put some on and ask people what they think. You can even use the tester in the store to “try before you buy.” If it smells good, people will tell you so. If not, they’ll tell you that it’s “okay.” That means no.

Do not ask the lady working the cologne counter whether a cologne smells good, though. She’ll tell you it smells good no matter what. She’s working on commission. Besides, inhaling all that airborne cologne killed her sense of smell years ago.

Light Cologne Use is Best

How much cologne should you use? One squirt of a high-quality cologne is almost always okay. Two squirts might be okay. More than two squirts might very well cause you to pick up a different type of funk. Too much of a good thing, in this case, is definitely a bad thing.

Always err on the side of less. If your cologne is particularly strong, and you don’t know if you might be using too much, just ask people again. If people can smell you before you enter the room, they’ll probably tell you so, as long as you ask first.

Rules and Regulations

You should never, ever, ever, use cologne as a cover-up for body odor. The only thing worse than terrible body odor is terrible body odor mixed with cologne. Until you’ve fully resolved any smell issues you have, you may not use any kind of cologne.

I have one more tip about cologne. Don’t mix fragrances. Never put on two different types of cologne, and never put on an aftershave that has a different scent than the cologne. Trust me, they do not mix well.

Good Luck and Good Smell

With these tips, you’re prepared to enter the world of cologne. Remember, though, less is more. And if you’re not sure, just ask.

I’m not talking about race or gender, though I’ll touch on that at the end. I’m talking about your outward appearances. Your clothing. Your style. Maybe your hair.

Judging Book Covers

I can already hear the voice of dissent: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Well, I do judge books based on their covers, and so do you. When you walk into the bookstore, there are thousands of books, with hundreds (at least) in any given section. You can’t tell me that you look through every single Sci Fi book, or every single mystery book, before you decide what to buy. The sheer number of books would be overwhelming if you tried to “properly” evaluate every one. So you optimize. You look at covers. You read the titles. Out of the hundreds of books, you might pick up half a dozen, at most, and glance through them. You pick up maybe one percent to actually look through, probably even less than that.

Well, the same rules apply to people. We interact with too many people to really get to know them all. We optimize and judge based on appearances, just like we do with books. Go ahead and deny it if you want. You can cling to an idea of “fairness” that requires that everyone be judged based on “who they are” if that’s what you want. But it’ll make you a hypocrite. Just like you have to judge books based on their covers, purely as an optimization, you also have to judge people on appearances. You don’t have the time to get to know everyone. Even if you did, they wouldn’t all have the time.

Who Judges You Based on Appearances

Want to know who’s judging you based on appearances? I can tell you:

• Potential employers
• Current employers
• Coworkers
• Potential mates
• Current mates
• Friends
• Waiters/Waitresses
• Everyone you know
• Everyone you don’t know

Potential mates are evaluating your appearances before they even know your name. Employers are judging your appearances from the instant you walk in the door. Waiters are deciding what you’re likely to tip based on your clothes. Even strangers on the street are sizing you up as they walk past you: “Geek,” “Frat boy,” “Suit.” They’re judging you based on appearances, based on your clothes, your hair.

Even your current friends are judging your appearances constantly. You don’t believe me? You think that maybe my friends might judge me, but your friends would never judge you based on how you look? Okay, go dye your hair neon green. You’ll get some comments. They might tell you that you look great — more likely they’ll tell you that you look like an idiot — but you can bet they’re going to notice. If they weren’t judging you based on appearances, why would they care? Why would they even notice? If you think your girlfriend, coworkers, and employer are any less judgemental than your friends, you’re crazy.

Why People Judge You Based on Appearances

Aside from the fact that there are so many people that judging people becomes a necessity, there’s one other basic reason why people judge your appearances. It’s the same reason that I say it’s good to judge based on appearances.

You choose what appearance to present.

If you’re wearing a suit, you chose to put on that suit. If you’re wearing torn jeans and a “witty” t-shirt that’s worn around the neck, you chose to put on those clothes. You picked out what you’d put on for the day. Why wouldn’t I judge you based on your choices?

If you wear a baseball cap and everyday clothes to an interview, your potential employer is going to assume that either you’re an idiot, or you don’t really care. In either case, you’re not who they want. If you’d worn a suit, you’d appear as if you cared. You’d look like a professional.

If you’re a guy with long hair, it says something about you. Depending on how groomed it is, it might say you’re laid back, or it might say you’re lazy and a slacker. I’m not telling you to cut your hair. I’m just saying that it’s sending out a message. You are sending out a message.

Your Appearance Says Who You Are

Your clothes tell others who you are. If you’re dressed like a college frat boy, and you’re trying to pick up some girl at the bar, she’s going to notice how you’re dressed. Depending on your age, and whether the girl in question wants to date a frat guy, it might help or hurt your chances, but she’s going to notice. If she doesn’t want a frat guy, you’re going to be dismissed out of hand. If she does want a frat guy, I hope you’re not wearing that same worn-out, anime t-shirt I saw you in last week. That shirt marks you as a geek.

Your clothes might mark you as a geek, a frat guy, a suit, a sorority girl, a free spirit, a lackey, or a goth. You better believe they mark you, though.

The Clothes Don’t Make the Man, They Make the Promotion

Everyone’s heard a story about some guy who got promoted because he dressed the part, while another guy who did all the work got left behind. I’ll admit, that’s not entirely fair. Fair isn’t the way the world works, though. If you don’t have a really great manager, he’s probably going to have trouble telling who’s really doing the most work. He’s going to rely at least partly on appearances. The guy in the suit simply looks more productive than the guy in the stained jeans, even if that’s not the case. You can hate this if you want, but it’s not going to help anything. You’re better off competing than crying foul and removing yourself from the game.

If everyone at your work is wearing a suit, and you want to compete, you should probably wear a suit, too. I know, suits are expensive. If you’re working in an environment where everyone else is wearing a suit, though, you can probably afford to wear suits, too. You decide whether it’s worth the money.

Remember, you pick your clothes. You decide what appearance you want to present. When people judge your appearances, they’re judging decisions that you made. They’re judging you based on what you choose to advertise.

What You Shouldn’t Worry About

There are aspects of your appearance that you probably shouldn’t worry about. Basically, don’t worry about the things beyond your control. Your race is irrelevant. Now, I’m not saying that your race isn’t being judged. It most certainly is. However, you can’t do anything about it in the day-to-day, so you might as well deal with it. The same with your gender. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t fight against serious discrimination when you can prove it. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t get your panties in a bunch just because some jackass’s personal opinion of you suffers because you’re black. There’s little you can do to get Mr. Hitler on your side, so I wouldn’t bother. You’re probably better off avoiding that frustration and improving other areas of your life.

You also shouldn’t worry about it if you can’t afford to spend a lot of money on clothes. I certainly think that buying higher-quality clothes is a plus, and the quality of your clothes certainly says things about you. However, the effort you put into your clothes matters more. If I’m an interviewer, and I’m comparing a guy in a Calvin Klein suit to a guy in a suit from Target, the guy in the expensive suit might look a little better. However, both look a lot better than the guy in jeans. The fact that you’re wearing a suit at all matters more than the expense. The guy in the cheap suit still looks better than the guy in Abercrombie jeans. It’s not just about cost.

Of course, cheap doesn’t always have to look cheap. Shop around. Also, those suits from Target don’t look half bad.

Importance of Factors Other Than Appearance

All this attention to appearances should not be taken to mean that other factors do not matter. A good boss will notice your suit and the high quality work you do. A good mate will appreciate your clothes and your personality. Still appearances are important, particularly before people get to know you. First impressions are very much based on appearances, so don’t sell yourself short. Don’t dampen your wonderful personality by dressing like a boor. The people who you should really want to impress are going to judge more than just your appearances, but even they are not blind to your clothes. If you want to impress, put a high-gloss ankle boot forward.

Based on the responses to the 9 resume tips (and the bonus tips), lots of people really don’t want to hear that they are being judged based on what they show the world. I doubt those people are going to like this post much, either. I’m not going to try to keep everyone happy, though.

If the 9 tips made me responsible for starving diabetics to death, then this post is probably going to cause an outbreak of the plague. Get your penicillin ready.

About a year ago, I bought a brand new stainless steel grill. I absolutely love it. It makes wonderful burgers, grills chicken like a champ, and cooks steaks good enough to may Bobby Flay jealous. Well, it does all those things when I don’t mess up.

A couple of weeks after buying the grill, I opened the refrigerator to find a plastic tub full of raw, marinating chicken. My roommate at the time had bought this chicken, and was clearly planning on grilling it. I gave it a sniff, and thought it smelled a bit off. Whether it was really the chicken, or just the marinade, I couldn’t say. But I knew I had to let him know. How would I feel if I let him eat bad chicken? What if he got salmonella? Or e. coli? Or a cold sore? I could have prevented that!

So, out of only the most genuine concern for my roommate’s health and safety, I asked him how long the chicken had been marinading. “A few days.” I told him that I didn’t think it would really be safe to eat chicken that had been sitting uncooked for that long, even in the refrigerator. He blew me off, but then checked online, where other people also told him that three days is a bit too long. (Everyone knows that random Internet sites are trustworthy sources of information.) He ended up throwing the chicken out and eating something else.

This isn’t the story of how I saved him from certain salmonella, though. I don’t honestly know whether or not the chicken was safe to eat. As long as he cooked it thoroughly, it probably would have been fine. Upon later reflection, I realized that my concern for his health was not the primary reason I asked about the chicken, not by a long shot. The real reason was that I knew he was planning on using my grill. How dare he?! If he’d asked, I wouldn’t have minded, at least not much. He was going to use without asking, though, the bastard.

My roommate using my grill, even without permission, would not have been the end of the world. But I let my emotions get the better of me, and I did so without even realizing. Rather than recognizing that I felt insulted by him neglecting to ask for permission, and acting properly, I turned to a passive-aggressive technique to get him to not use my grill. The appropriate thing to do would have been to let him use my grill, but to tell him that in the future, he should ask before planning to use it. By not recognizing my own emotions and how they were affecting me, I let myself act in a way I normally wouldn’t. By neglecting to step back and evaluate the situation, I allowed myself to ignore the real issue.

Acting the way I did didn’t cause any massive problems. I don’t know if my roommate ever even realized the real reason I asked him about the chicken. It’s not the end of the world if he did. It could have caused problems, though, if he’d seen through it and he’d gotten upset. Two passive-aggressive people do not a happy home make. Acting the way I did is fairly transparent. Behaving that way repeatedly will eventually be noticed, and it can’t possibly breed anything but bad feelings.

What would have happened if it had been a boss that had slighted me? Would I have started neglecting my duties at work? Would I have become passive-aggressive there? That could have been a problem.

Inevitably, everyone we know is going to hurt our feelings at some point. If we don’t step back, and realize what the problem is, we greatly increase the chances of the situation escalating, perhaps immediately, perhaps over the long term. How many friends have you drifted apart from because some minor, possibly even unintentional insult turned into a big deal? (Hint: If you have bad feelings toward someone you drifted apart from, and can’t fully explain the feeling, that might be what happened.)

How many couples split because tiny issues built until they were driven apart? Sally feels that John just doesn’t care anymore, and John thinks that Sally’s turned into a nag. Likely, neither of them has really changed much. Instead, they’ve let the little things build up. They’ve let the feelings of resentment build. John has been shirking his part of the household work and he doesn’t take Sally out much anymore. Sally has been acting distant because John hasn’t been doing his housework, and she doesn’t realize her tactics are not helping the situation. Neither of them are showing much affection. Both Sally and John need to step back and realize that there’s no critical problem. They’ve simply let tiny things build until they’ve convince themselves that the problems are huge.

However, if we take the time and put forth the effort to just step back and really figure out why we are acting the way we are, we can often fix the underlying problem. We don’t have to compound minor issues. Sometimes we need to work through the problem with the others involved. Sometimes we just need to understand why we’re upset, or why we’re acting the way we are, and just stop. Once we understand the problem, it can more often than not be easily solved. We just have to try. We have to pay attention, look past the superficial issue, to find out what’s really underneath.