All throughout history, humans have been fond of making lists of how to behave. The Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Laws Of The Twelve Tables, or in modern times, that horrifying mass of documents known as “law”. Well, we all pretty much know by now that lying, stealing, cheating, and killing are bad; frankly, it’s just a lot of rationalization that makes them seem okay when conducting business. But in our day-to-day lives, we seem to have lost touch with some of the basics. Below are five simple suggestions for better modern living. Feel free to let us know if we missed anything.

Lose The F-Bomb

Sure, it makes you sound tough and indifferent to trivial problems, but maybe that’s the problem. This isn’t about being prudish. The F-Word has its place as a powerful punctuation for a heated remark, but it not only loses its impact when used repeatedly, it makes for rather inelegant expression. Besides, you kiss your mom with that mouth. And while you’re at it, why not lose damning people and things, and stop invoking the names of the underworld? If these words DON’T have metaphysical powers, why use them? They’re just inarticulate. And if they DO, well, enough said. Just be careful – you may invoke THE END OF DAYS by accident.

Put Yourself Second

We’ve had at least fifty years of pop psychology and consumer culture telling us that we – as individuals – are the most important thing in the world. Well, look where that has gotten us. We’re obese, have heart problems, waste millions of tons of food while half the world starves, and road rage is at an all-time high. And everybody is surly at the grocery store and the mall as they buy more stuff to fill their emptiness. Next time you’re at the checkout line, let the other person go first. Hold doors for people. At four-way stops, go last instead of edging in passive-aggressively. Next time you feel like ordering “pizza doubles”, bake your own SINGLE at home, and send the savings to a food charity.

Fight Over Who Pays

No, not the way most people do it, as in that awkward moment at the end of lunch when everyone busts out the calculators because they forgot to ask for separate checks. Next time just pay the whole darn thing. And if someone else pulls the same trick first, argue politely twice against it, it shows class. Arguing three times is just rude. You will be shocked by the revolution this creates amongst your dining companions. It also works at the theater, the ice cream parlor, the cafe, the ball game, and when playing golf, whether mini or life-size.

Say Excuse Me, Please, and Thank You

I can’t tell you how many times a day I see someone grunting and snorting on the sidewalk or in a store aisle because someone is blocking their path. It’s quite comical in a way, given the startled smile and courteousness one usually gets in response if they just try saying “excuse me”. Likewise with the ancient magic incantation “please”. It adds mystical power to the statement “I’d like a lowfat lowfoam double vanilla latte”. And when you say “thank you” as your request is granted, members of the Secret Cult of Please and Thank You will grant you an additional secret blessing of “you’re welcome”, letting you know you are welcome to do this all again some time.

Learn How To Use A Mobile Phone. Politely.

It’s amazing that technology has advanced sufficiently that you can call your kids at home from your base camp as you climb Mount Kilimanjaro using a device that fits in your shirt pocket. And it’s amazing that you’re smart enough to get a job that pays well enough to buy one of these incredible devices. Now maybe it’s time you got smart enough to use it in a civilized fashion. Some simple rules:

1.) Unless it’s your stockbroker calling in the middle of a market crash or your dying mother calling from her deathbed, don’t interrupt face-to-face conversations to take a call. And if you MUST glance at the phone to know who called, apologize to your physically present companion

2.) When dealing with checkout clerks, waiters, barristas, bartenders, delivery people, or anyone else who is merely trying to SERVE you, get off the phone, or put your caller on hold. Everyone will be happier. Perhaps most of all your friend who can’t figure out why you’re saying “how much” and “keep it”.

3.) Turn the darn thing off at the theater, the restaurant, the cafe, the funeral, the library, and anywhere else that people don’t want to hear a crappy robot version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. Failure to observe the RTFM Protocol (Read The Freakin’ Manual) is not a legitimate excuse. If you can figure out how to make a call, you can figure out how to turn the ringer off.

Bonus List:

Stand up and greet people when they join you at a restaurant or cafe

When you’re with a friend and run into someone they don’t know, INTRODUCE them.

Embrace people when greeting them, instead of offering the “white man handshake”

Say “hi” and smile at strangers. Maybe even say “how are you today?” or “Nice day, isn’t it?”

Ethics 101 – The Forgotten Business Course

The problems of mass production often stem from the same process as the benefits. In the beginning, this may be a superficial complaint, as poignantly highlighted in the familiar Henry Ford quote “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black”. The obvious benefits of mass-production – reduced human error, a reduction in labor costs, and increased production – intrinsically create a few problems. One is the superficial kind just mentioned, the inability to tailor the product to a customer’s whims. But the greater problems are the result of either legitimate unintended consequences, like the detrimental health effects of eating McDonald’s highly-processed foods, the destruction of family farms by agribusiness, or the toxic wasteland that we’ve created through our hunger for more and more at a lower price, or another kind of more INTENTIONAL consequence. If the elements of the game are as simple as “create a product at the lowest possible price and sell it for the highest possible price”, someone, somewhere, is going to pay. And when the entity making those decisions is an amoral collection of guidelines designed solely to maximize profit to please stakeholders – the long term price is hardly worth the cash savings at the time of purchase. For companies like McDonald’s and their competitors to have food outlets all around the globe, and for two thirds of the world to have a cell phone, a lot of “someones” had to make the decisions to utilize nearly slave-like labor, to destructively mine rare minerals to create throw-away devices that return to the environment in massive toxic dumps, or to engineer food that is shippable and attractive but has no flavor and questionable nutritional value.

This Soapbox Makes Me Feel Pretty Tall!

So all I’m really saying here is that I think morality in business skipped a generation, and if you’re planning a global empire to deliver your widget, why not throw some basic forward thinking into the mix? While the iPad, for instance, is an amazing device, its artificially low price was made possible largely by sending jobs overseas, massively underpaying THOSE workers, and marketing it with a “sin of omission” lie, which was failing to tell the marketplace that it was a walled garden media platform. And if you’re a big Apple fan (I personally love their products) you may be shocked to learn that the company engages in virtually zero charitable donations. Is that really success? I don’t think so. Not if our grandkids can’t afford to pay their electric bill and recharge the thing because they spent all their money on potable water and health care.

*steps down from soapbox*

The Work You’re Doing Today May Be Your MBA Program

If you don’t feel like picking up a copy of that Forbes Greatest Business Stories book that I mentioned above, there’s a lengthy excerpt here that includes a part of the story that suddenly resonated in a powerful way for me upon re-reading it. And that part of the story was the part immediately BEFORE where the McDonald’s tale really begins. It mirrors something that I’m sure is true for thousands of us pursuing various careers, but that few fail to capitalize on. In that excerpt, the author points out that Kroc had spent “thirty years selling paper products and milk-shake machines to restaurants all over the nation”. And that “In his journeys, Kroc saw an astonishing variety of operations – coffee shops, mom-and-pop dinettes, diners, burger stands, and ice-cream chains like Tastee-Freez – and became something of an expert on the low end of the American restaurant scene”. Were you paying attention just now? Ostensibly, Kroc was a “paper products and milk-shake machine salesman”. But his job in fact allowed him to observe – in a way that no business researcher possibly could – the inner workings of hundreds, if not thousands of different foodservice businesses. To the uninspired sales rep whose only aim is meeting and/or exceeding his numbers – the common framework of even the most successful sales professionals – this career of Kroc’s may have had an abysmally dull end, as the aging sales guy lost his edge, and ended up living on some meager retirement he may or may not have been smart enough to assemble. But Kroc kept his eyes open and his brain switched on, and recognized the goldmine of the real-world foodservice research lab that was right in front of him every day. I personally began applying a similar concept just a couple of years ago, which has led me to doing consulting, authoring a couple of books, and preparing to position myself as an “expert”. I am quite confident I have found my truer path, and am already beginning to feel the early success of my efforts in this new direction. My story has a similar arc, in that for over a decade, I worked with dozens of small and medium businesses on a rather intimate level, mostly helping them refine their digital media or marketing strategies. I didn’t come away from that decade with millions in net worth or a huge revenue stream, but I came away with something I now know is even MORE valuable, which is the knowledge of a hundred ways to fail or be mediocre, and the mindset that makes that path a near certainty for an entrepreneur. We’ll see if I end up building a multi-billion dollar empire like Kroc, but one thing I’m CERTAIN that I – and perhaps you – DO have in common with Kroc, is that by working hard on one thing, but keeping my eyes open to others – I have basically put myself through business school, and gotten paid to do it! Is there a learning opportunity in YOUR life that you’re overlooking? You don’t have to be a traveling salesman to learn from the work experience around you, you just have to remember to pay attention in business class!

Next time: Why you probably don’t want to actually be like Ray Kroc.

Are you more motivated by charity than by greed?

I just finished reading a really interesting book. It’s called Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior The authors are Ori and Rom Brafman, and I highly recommend it. These guys make some surprising points about the way our irrational sides undercut our rational decision making. One part of the book that really stayed with me was about how altruism and avarice compete for our attention. Almost all of us are sometimes giving and sometimes greedy, and it’s really tough to be both at the same time.

They tell a great story about Switzerland, I think it was. The government wanted to store nuclear waste near a certain town, and they wanted to find out the best way to present it to the townspeople. So they commissioned a study that asked half the people a question designed to appeal to their altruistic side, and half the people a question designed to appeal to their avaricious side.

Radiation – It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

The first question was something like this: Your country needs a place to store nuclear waste, and we want you to help. Would you be willing to support your country by agreeing to let us store the waste near your town?

The second questions was something like this: Your country needs a place to store nuclear waste, and we want you to help. Would you be willing to agree to let us store the waste near your town in return for a payment of $2,500?

You might think a lot more people would want to get paid for the “privilege” of having nuclear waste stored nearby. But the truth is, the percentage of people who agreed when they were asked to volunteer in order to help their country was a lot higher than the percentage of people who agreed when they were offered money.

People are Basically Good …. Unless They’re Greedy

And the authors said that this kind of thing happens a lot. They talked about some studies that showed that when people make altruistic decisions, one part of their brains activate, and when they make decisions based on personal gain, a different part of their brains activate. They also explained that it’s almost impossible for both the altruism center and the avarice center to activate at the same time. And what’s really surprising is that altruism may be a better motivator than greed!

Would You Buy a Used Car to Save the Planet?

If this is true, it could have a profound effect on marketing strategies. Maybe if you’re a marketing expert you already know this, but based on what the Brafmans said, it’s going to be critical to make sure your marketing and sales materials appeal only to one side of your customers’ minds – either the giving side or the greedy side.  And if I’m right about this, your advertising dollar might be a lot better spent appealing to the giving side. I’m planning to do a lot more research on this idea, and I’ll try to write a column about it when I find out what data is available.

But here’s a point that’s a lot more important if you’re into personal development. You may be a lot “better” person that you think you are. Do you know if you’re motivated more by a good cause than by a good paycheck? Would an appeal to your inner St. Vincent de Paul be more likely to succeed than an offer to your inner Gordon Gecko?

When you Absolutely, Positively Have to Get Something Done

Here’s one way you might be able to find out – take some time to imagine a high-stakes situation similar to the nuclear waste example I pointed out earlier. Would you, really, truly, be more likely to agree to accept a risky or difficult situation if you thought you were helping out your country, your church, your family, or your company? When you put yourself in the shoes of the Swiss townspeople in the story who were offered money, did you do a mental calculation like I did … “Jeez, they want me to put myself, my family, and my neighbors at risk for a lousy $2,500. They’re gonna have to do a lot better than that!”

If you can figure out what approach works better for you, you’ve got a very powerful leverage tool for following through on personal development challenges. If there’s something you want to do or you’ve been meaning to do but just can’t get yourself started, why not take some time to figure out what would motivate you better to get started – personal gain or some benefit to your community. Take some time to write out a list of the reasons to do it and put the altruistic reasons in one column and the avaricious reasons in another column. When you can clearly see which column motivates you better, re-read that column several times. For each entry, visualize how it’s going to feel to attain the reward when you succeed. Make the visualization part of your daily routine, and I bet in a few weeks your desire is going to be very strong! I bet almost nothing will stand in the way of you taking the steps you need to reach your goal.

Remember – don’t just do something, DO SOMETHING! Get started today, pair up your goals with rewards that really get you passionate about achieving. And please let me know how it turns out for you. I think it’s going to be fantastic!