The best advice you've ever gotten?

"If you spend all of your time worrying about the rabbits, the elephants are going to run you over."

 

I have a few:

Work to live, not the other way around.

Re: my education from a college prof: "It isn't a race."
From the same prof regarding my, um, tendecies at the time: "There is more to life than tokin' and pokin'."

 

Best advice, dad division:

When you start a new job, run up a large expense account bill your first month; then, the beancounters will expect it from you every month.

Best advice, co-worker division:

When I was thrown head-first into the deep end of the pool television producing, my line producer gave me the best advice: Always have a backup plan for every moment of your show.

 

Outing alert: I'm really chazp. lol

I thought of another piece of advice I like: "Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things."

 

Since this thread now lives on, I thought so should this advice from our departed board friend.

 

Two things I live my life by:

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever

And

It's always easier to say I'm sorry than it is to ask permission.

 

When I was 17, my brother told me 'Don't mix speed with other drugs.'

I failed to heed his warning, and several months later I mixed beauties with LSD, weed, Peroset and a massive amount of beer.

I ended up sh*tting myself at a party.

 

My dad's favorite was this: "When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that your first priority was to drain the swamp."

Also, he was a Navy pilot back in the day, and he always said that the best landing was one you walked away from.

 

When I was looking for career advice after losing my first newspaper job, I got the advice to not overlook weeklies. I followed that advice and discovered my true passion for journalism. I had previously strongly disliked Bob Hilliard as a student, but his advice changed my opinion of him.
Another piece of advice came during my sophomore year of high school. A few of us were bitching about how bad our moms were and how we hated our respective moms. A friend who had overheard the conversation quietly spoke: "Don't ever hate your mom, because without her you wouldn't be here." At the time I thought, "Gee, aren't you a Ms. Goody two-shoes?" But over the years I kept coming back to that. When my mom passed away, there were some things I hated her for. For whatever reason, I couldn't let them go. Then a friend's dad passed away and I saw how much he loved and honored his dad. It reminded me of the advice from high school and how wrongly I'd been remembering my mom.

 

I knew early on in college that good grades wasn't going to get me a job in TV, a good reel was.
Since then, I have gone by a mantra I made up: "Experience over education"

I still believe that to this day.

 

I worked on a travel piece once and one of those globetrotting guys said this:

"Never pass up a shower."

Very good advice.

*****
This is more of an aphorism than advice, but an old boss of mine in the PR game always said the following:

"Good, fast and cheap. ... Choose two."

 

Don't shit where you eat.