Life Advice To Young: 1. Communicate Properly

One of the first things you must learn is proper English. Actually what you should learn is proper language, any language is fine, but most likely you are going to be using English. If you know Hindi, learn proper Hindi too. If you write in Hindi, try to use correct Hindi. Its okay if type in Roman, but the Hindi itself must be correct.

As a young individual you probably take pride on how fast you can type using all that dis s so kool, the SMS lingo. Lose it. User proper English. Which means first letter of sentence is capitalised. There is *EXACTLY ONE* space after a comma or a full-stop and ZERO before them. And all the sentences are full. There is proper tense. The spellings are correct. Read Elements of Style, and follow it.

Never be seen using that kind of crap. You can switch to that if you are talking to some person who uses that, may be to show understanding etc, but do not start with it. Start with proper English. Then move to smalls, just drop capitalisation (for beginning of sentences, not for proper nouns). And finally move to SMS lingo. But never lead in this downward progression. Be quick to upgrade your language as soon as the other person does, or if you think others may be reading it, for example if you are tweeting or commenting on Facebook etc. Reserve SMS lingo only to one to one conversation with someone who is an idiot. Be very careful, if two are using SMS lingo, the assumption the world makes is either one or both of them are idiots. If you entirely lose SMS lingo, you are better off. You are smarter and better than others. If you come across with dirty dress you do not roll in dirt to match them.

And do not leave people to guess what you meant. If you ever are found saying “Oh that is what I meant”, slap yourself. Err on the side of repeating yourself. Err on the side of over explaining. If there is even remotely possible that your sentence has two meanings, assume that nobody will get the meaning you intended and will pick the meaning you did not. Do not complain about this. Fix your sentences so there is no ambiguity. Avoid pronouns, in favour of nouns. Do not use indirections, be as direct as possible. Repeat the whole thing. Do not have meaning spread over multiple sentences if possible.

Your written words are your appearance in a lot of cases. You take shower everyday before you leave. Your brush your teeth every day. You wear clean cloth. You cut your hair from time to time. You like it or not, this matters. This shows that you have ability to follow rules. It shows that you get it. This is not important. You do not judge the book by the cover. What matters is what you provide as a value. But assuming that is the only thing that matters. Or assuming that people will be able to just look at your inner values and will completely ignore your outward appearance, is a naive assumption. That kind of assumption shows that you do not get it. You do not understand how the world is. If you have not understood this simple thing about the world, its hard to imagine you would have understood more refined things you think you should be valued for. World is a harsh and unfair place. It has plenty of obstructions in your way. People will push you down. Least you can do is do not shoot yourself in your foot. These are simple things that give you an edge over others. Take them. When some firm is hiring you, they are looking for someone who will give them and edge over others. Be an asset not a liability. Signal this in every fashion you can. And be one. Being and appearing are two things, those who get it, understand this. Be that.

Answer all questions. If you are asked three questions, answer all three questions. In order. Do not make someone repeat the questions. If someone asks you same question twice, be very sure that you had intended to refuse to answer the question. If you carry on in your thought, focusing only on what you have to say, you are showing ignorance. You are showing in ability to structure things. Go topic to topic. Let it conclude, then move on to others. Or be smart about remembering what all topics are going on. People need to know that you get it. People need to know that they do not need to repeat the same thing before you understand it. I will repeat the same thing till you get it, but the moment I have repeated (after being clear the first time), I assume I am talking to an idiot. I will get my job done by repeating it as many times as the idiot gets it, but I am not going to be thinking about the idiot when I need some job done next time. I will prefer a non idiot. A person who when asked 20 questions, leave alone 3, will answer all 20 questions. In order. With no ambiguity. If someone asks "What subjects have you taken? When is the exam? What are life plans?", may be consider adding a word to make it obvious which answer is to which question, eg "subjects: math+bio, exam on 24th apr and plans == engineering i guess", avoid the temptation to say "math+bio, 24th apr, engineering", which is still clear, but many unclear answers are possible, which you can justify. Do not justify. Make sure that you do not have to give excuses/justifications afterwards.

Get an acknowledgement and give acknowledgements. It is very easy to live in your own head. When you are talking to someone, communicating with someone, you are a better communicator if you can imagine what is going on in the other persons head. Be not concerned with if what you say accurately represents what is in your head. Be concerned with if what you say is what is needed to be said so that what was intended to does go into the head of other person. If someone says "lets meet on friday for dinner at 8”, avoid the temptation to say “sure”. If this reply comes directly after the question, may be a “sure” or “ok” is enough, but prefer saying, “sure, we will meet on friday at 8 for dinner, I will see you at your office”. Do not be lazy and try to avoid typing. Explicit is better than implicit. If there is a gap in communication, both parties suffer, and assume other party is idiot, and any gap is only your fault. Do not leave any possibility of a gap.

Don't use hard words. When you use a word, be very sure that 1. you are using it correctly, and 2. the person you are talking to understands the word, the correct usage of the word and agrees that your usage was justified. In Enlish, and for that matter in any language, for every words there is a connotation and a denotation. Denotation is mostly the "dictionary meaning" of the word. Connotation is more of "what people use it for" kind of meaning of the word. Use a word only if you understand both. Different audiance may have different connotation. Be aware of that when using a hard word. Do not insist on dictionary meaning to be the one you meant. The audiance will take into consideration their positive and negative bias of the word as per their connotations as the meaning of the word you used. With time you will have finess, you will get things. Go slow. All the best authors and speakers used simple words. Hard words is for prissys. You are not that. You are cool. You get it. Your focus in communication, not sounding smart. What you say has to be smart, not how you say it. Trying to sound smart is the simplest indication that you have nothing smart to say.