Life Hacks: Narrowed Down to 2

As anyone knows who has spent time on the Internet, there are countless articles devoted to life hacks: from the top 100 that will make your life easier to the top 40 that will change your life.

And while I am happy to know that wrapping a wet paper towel around a beer or bottle of wine and putting it in the fridge for 10 minutes will get it ice cold, I found that regardless of how many life hacks were picked, two that I find invaluable were missing from every list.

Are you ready? Here they are:

  1. Say “Please”
  2. Say, “Thank you”

This idea was reinforced last week when I was asked by a CEO to observe a junior colleague whom she felt was overreaching.

Having spent a bit of time in their workplace, I will be making a number of recommendations as to how this young person might organize his behavior to guarantee a more seamless fit into office politics.

That said, the first — and primary — thing I will be mentioning to this young executive is that abandoning “please” and “thank you” when interacting with others is unlikely to end well.

And while it may seem old fashioned to some of you — certainly not on par with knowing that good batteries only bounce once when you drop them from 6 inches and dead batteries bounce multiple times — I guarantee that incorporating “please” and “thank you” into almost any situation is likely to be the most helpful hack you know.

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