10 things you should know about knowing 10 things

I have learned a few things in my life. Some of them I learned from working, some of them I learned from not working. Now I want to share these golden nuggets of wisdom. Here, you can have 10 for free:

1. If you manage people and you are only friends with some of them on Facebook, you are doing it wrong. You must be friends with all or none of them. That is just how life (and Facebook) works.
2. There was a time when you built everything online from scratch. There were no Squarespace templates or copy/paste Dribbble communities, and the general consensus was that it was NOT OK to do exactly the same as everybody else. In fact, that was considered plagiarism. You learn a lot when you build things from scratch. That might become fashionable again, hopefully some time soon.
3. The vagina part of the AirBnB logo is too thin relative to the word mark.
4. People who get mad at you for not responding to their unsolicited attempts at selling their “solutions” on LinkedIn should look for another line of work.
5. Do not wear a suit to a job interview for a creative position. If you leave the interview feeling like you should have worn a suit, then it probably wasn’t a creative position.
6. Don’t walk down stairs with your hands in your pockets.
7. Nobody has good taste; when it comes to taste expect the worst in people. Over-communicate direction on aesthetic matters. Show examples. Check in often. Don’t allow others to fuck you over with their ugly taste.
8. In “Advice for Young People” William S. Burroughs says, “Never interfere in a boy and girl fight.” From personal experience I can attest that this is very true. Last time I did, I got subpoenaed to testify in a nasty custody case and was subsequently stalked for months by a crazy person.
9. Back up your work. Surprisingly, most people don’t do this. Back up to the cloud. Never trust hard drives. Also never trust the cloud.
10. Ending all your articles on Medium, LinkedIn or Wordpress with a veiled attempt at drawing traffic to your product/app/game/website sucks all credibility out of your written piece.

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