The 7 Habits of Highly Realistic People

There’s a very famous book called “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Stephen Covey. It’s sold over a million copies since its publication in 1989. These 7 habits, geared to help you with career and life success, are divided into three categories:

Independence

(1) Be proactive (take initiative in your decisions and responsibility for your choices)

(2) Begin with the end in mind (clarify your deeply important character and life goals)

(3) Put first things first (manage your personal life)

Interdependence

(4) Think win-win (by respecting and working with others on solutions to problems)

(5) Seek first to understand, then to be understood (use empathic listening)

(6) Synergize (combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork)

Continuous Improvements

(7) Sharpen the saw (through personal physical, spiritual, and mental renewal).

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Well, I plan to make my fortune on the sequel: “The 7 Habits of Highly Realistic People.” Without claiming—or disclaiming—that these are my actual habits, I do think that they are MUCH more realistic and easy to follow, and therefore would make a profitable self-help book:

Co-dependence

(1) Be reactive, lazy, and quick to blame: Try to get away with doing as little as possible, by never doing for yourself what someone else can just as easily do for you. For example, if you’re bad at changing tires or baking a cake, don’t bother learning how. Let someone else do it! Also, blame others when things go wrong, and take credit when they go right.

(2) Abandon your dreams: Remember when you were a kid and you wanted to be an astronaut or a firefighter? Well, guess what? Math is hard, fighting fires is scary, and someone needs to pay the electric bill. You’re not going to work for NASA or FDNY, so just hurry along to your cubicle now like a nice little man/woman.

(3) Put first things last: Put your personal needs last at all times. Your time does not belong to you, and don't you forget it! Your spouse, children, and boss have first dibs on every minute of your time, so don't expect to so much as take a dump without one of them barging in with a demand.

Interdependence

(4) Think expedience: Do whatever you have to do to make the easiest thing happen as quickly as possible, in every situation. Fuck what anyone else has to say about it.

(5) Seek first to make yourself heard: Yell and scream until you bully someone into seeing a problem and its solution exactly the way you do. Wear the other person down through a war of attrition.

(6) Divide and conquer: Pit the people in your life against one another to your direct benefit whenever possible.

Continuous Indulgence

(7) Just give in: Do whatever you need to do to make it until tomorrow, including, but not limited to: skipping the gym; drinking excessively; taking sleeping pills; masturbating to alleviate boredom; watching reality television; eating raw cookie dough for dinner; allowing yourself a nice, long crying jag; surfing the internet mindlessly and aimlessly.