Free advice

One of the distinct pleasures/horrors of marrying a person with whom you attended high school is that they are under no illusions regarding your past.  My wife knows I did not spring from a lotus flower or donate every waking minute of my childhood to volunteering at a soup kitchen.  The upside is that I never had to spend a lot of time worrying whether she would find out about all the distinctly immature things I did as a teen.  Another upside is that she has saved things from our time dating in high school that I would have never thought to save (we did not date in college, so most of my documentation was lost to the ages).

A particular piece of relationship memorabilia is an email I have no recollection of ever composing; my wife’s hard copy of said email and the distinct writing style, along with the sentiment, suggests I am, in fact, the author.  The email was a reply to a note in which she sent me some advice; I responded in kind with my own general life advice.  Because honestly, what could an 18 year old not know?  Most of it is not memorable, but two jumped out as amusing:

1. There are plenty of times when life does suck.  Are you dead?  If not, get over it.

2. You know that you want to, so everyone once in awhile you should act like an ass.  People will envy you for it.  This I cannot explain, but it is a fact.

You should write those down.

In the same container with this email was a list of Chef Geoff’s ”Steps to Being Great.”  Chef Geoff is the eponymous owner of multiple DC area restaurants, the first of which employed my wife during college.  He apparently gave his “Steps to Being Great” to all new employees – it is 110 items detailing his expectations, requirements, and desires from employees.  Though it is clearly related to the restaurant industry, most of the takeaways are pretty universal, and I have enjoyed rereading the list when we happen to run across it at our house.  I don’t know Chef Geoff, so I won’t post the document, though I will highlight a couple of points which I think are applicable for MBAs:

1. It IS your job.

2. If you step over something on the floor, you are not doing your job.  Pick it up.

3. Don’t confuse effort with accomplishment.

4. If you pour salt on a grease spill you will only end up with salty grease or greasy salt.  Clean it up.

Darden provides a lot of opportunities to listen to advice from all sorts of successful people.  It isn’t free when you pay 100k for it, so I’ve been recording, evaluating, and internalizing the highlights.  You want to keep the important advice around, so that when each particular piece of advice becomes immediately relevant you can call upon it.  Because frankly, how else would my wife have survived?