My Best Ideas

Marty Nemko Ph.D. How To Do Life

My Best Ideas

I'd want these ideas scrolling in the video played at my memorial.

Posted Jun 14, 2016

Source: Marty Nemko

At memorial services, they often play a video about the deceased. Instead of puffery about my life, I'd want my video to just scroll what I think are my best ideas. Here they are:

• It's odd for a career counselor to say this but it's borne of my lifetime in the field: You'd likely end up equally happy and successful in any of many careers. So after a short period of exploration, choose. Further exploration is less likely to yield the career than for you to lose time and money. Once you've chosen, do take the time to become expert in your specialty: mainly not in school but by observing masters in action, having them watch you, and then begging for honest feedback from those you respect, including your wisest stakeholders.
• The pursuit of contribution is far more worthy than the pursuit of happiness. So while I know you won't do it, it would be wise to, at least once an hour, ask yourself, "What should I do now that would do the most good?"
• People use college and grad school to provide structure and thus reduce flaking out. But after graduation, the training wheels come off. That's a reason so many people succeed in school but fail in life. The answer is in realizing that being productive/contributory is more important than anything and to let nothing stop you from that.
• Ethics are key. An evolved person recognizes that the life best-led serves universal/cosmic values above all.
• We're less malleable than the media has led us to believe. Accept your basic self and, in choosing people, whether to hire, befriend, or mate, assume they'll change only modestly.
• In choosing who you spend time with, for example, a romantic partner, don't let sexual attraction blind you to the ultimately more important factors of kindness, intelligence, and emotional health.
• As every medic in war knows, you end up doing the most good by spending your limited resources not necessarily on the sickest but on those with the greatest potential to benefit.
• Be just rather than merciful. Ultimately that may be kinder to the person and certainly to the world.
• We must solve the decline in the number of living-wage jobs caused by technology and globalization. My inadequate solution requires encouraging people to hire folks to do simple services: helping with their newborn, homework helper for their child, teaching them technology, helping them age in place. Also, people must come to realize they can live well on little income by living in low-cost housing and in prizing not things but relationships, creative outlets, and kindness.
• The live teacher is obsolete, especially at the college level. We can enable all students, rich and poor, from Alabama to Zululand to get the best possible instruction by creating online, immersive, simulation-centric multi-modality, individualized courses hosted by a dream team of the world's most transformational instructors. As needed, a live instructor could supplement, for example, with an in-person or Skype discussion section. I've written about this regarding K-12 in TIME, re higher ed also in TIME, and re high school in the Washington Post.
• Because of unfair treatment by society's mind-molders (the colleges and media,) men are underrated. I make that case in a PsychologyToday.com article.
• Don't do drugs. For example, pot is far more dangerous than the media tells us. Here is an updated version of a review of the literature I wrote in TIME and here is my PsychologyToday.com interview with the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
• Adopt a sweet dog. The hassle is outweighed by the comfort and joy. And if you get your doggie from a pound or rescue, you save an innocent life.
• Concentrate your charitable giving on what will have a big ripple effect on society yet wouldn't be funded if not for your dollars. I donate money to research on the biological basis of intelligence and on providing mentors for intellectually gifted, low-to-moderate-income children.
• My father rarely talked about being in the Holocaust. He explained, "The Nazis took five years from my life. I won't give them one minute more. Never look back. Always take the next step forward." He's right. More than a bit of "processing" is more likely to keep you mired in the past and to play victim. Don't look back. Do take the next step forward.

Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia. His new book, his 8th, is The Best of Marty Nemko.