Learn from my mistakes:
- Do not "Just go at it."
- Do not "Only read the first paragraph of instructions."
- Do not "Eat one dozen doughnuts in an hour."
Just go at it:
I bought a brand new mountain bike, unfortunately it wasn’t assembled yet. I decided that I would just go at it, without reading the manual on how to assemble the bike. After the first hour I was pretty amazed at how stupid I was for not using the manual, but I’m a guy and guys don't need directions. At this point I had the choice to choose between continuing on without using the manual, or stopping now to read it, catch up, and then continue assembling while reading the directions. I with not a second thought chose to continue on, heck I’ve started this far, why not just continue? This was a sore mistake. After two and half hours I finished putting together the entire bike, it even looked like a bike. I had to test it now, and got on the bike. So good so far, until I started riding down the street, a bolt snapped out of place, and the back tire fell out and I royally crashed. I picked up the pieces, went back to my garage, read the entire manual, fixed the errors I had made, and rode my bike from then on with no problems.
Only read the first paragraph of instructions:
I’m the Chess Club President at my school, and we were short on funds this year. I asked the Booster Club for a sum of $250 to buy new chess boards and clocks. They accepted my proposal and the shipment arrived a month later. The clocks were not fully operational yet, and they came with instructions. I decided that my “Just go at it” philosophy was not going to work this time and I invented the reading of the first paragraph of instructions, and go from there. The first paragraph said to hit the reset button and hold it down for five seconds and then went on about how the buttons on the bottom were used. I hit the reset button, turned the clock on, hit some other buttons, and the clock turned on in a ready mode to be changed. These clocks were built for chess games, where each side of the clock has a button to hit. Thus when one side of the clock is hit the other side begins ticking away at time. The time was yet to have a standard setting. I tried to fumble about with it, and the clock would set the time, but would not make it standard. Being standard it would keep the time stored in memory even after turned off and back on. I gave up after fiddling for minutes. Then I fixed my philosophy and went back and read the rest of the instructions, which definitely helped, and changed the standard time setting.
Eat one dozen doughnuts in an hour:
I was in the car on the ride home from my basketball game, I was hungry, tired, and plain not thinking. When we pulled up to the doughnut shop drive-through and my friend’s mother asks “who wants doughnuts?” I replied “I do.” What I didn’t realize is that my friend’s mom was a really nice women. She bought me a full dozen doughnuts, and wouldn’t let me pay a penny for them. After accepting the golden sugar coated doughnuts I thanked her and plowed right on in. Three doughnuts down in five minutes. They sure were good, but I was still hungry, so I ate more. Five more doughnuts were quickly eaten within the next fifteen minutes. Still in the car, and another half an hour to get to home, I was frankly bored. I then began the nibbling phase. I’ve sure eaten a lot of doughnuts, but they taste good, so I’ll only nibble on them. Soon enough I had another three nibbled down. Heck! There’s only one left now, might as well eat it! So I did. Within a few hours I became very sick and almost puked. My stomach was telling my brain how stupid I was, and I felt like a fat toad who couldn’t move. It took an entire day, when the doughnuts were no longer in my system, before I felt better. Ever since that day I have never eaten more than one doughnut at a time. I will never eat a dozen doughnuts in an hour again, ever.
These mistakes have been turmoil for me, do not let them happen to you.