I was on a Carribean Cruise recently and was so impressed with the life philosophy of one of the entertainers, that I am seriously considering making it ten rules instead of nine. Her basic idea was that time is precious. While she used that as a spring board for thanking those who came to enjoy her show, her presnetation really has a great deal of resonance for college students who are probably in a position to waste more time than just about anyone else on the planet.
The performer suggested that every increment of time is precious and to make her point she suggested something like the following. If you want to understand how valuable a year is, talk to politicians who have to run campaigns that last several years. They can tell you how valuable a single year is. The same goes for students in college who might not be taking a particular course seriously enough only to find out that they have to spend yet another year in college or perhaps yet another slug of money that used to be enough to buy a house.
If you want to understand the value of a month, talk to a terminally ill patient who has been given 5 weeks to live. If you want to understand the value of a week, talk to someone on a ten-day vacation. If you want to understand the value of a day, talk to someone who got to the bed of his dying parent a day late. If you want to understand the value of an hour, talk to someone with a sick child who has to wait to see a doctor. If you want to understand the value of a minute, talk to a Super Bowl advertiser. If you want to understand the value of a second, talk to someone who narrowly escaped a horrific accident. And if you want to understand the value of a hundredth of a second, talk to the Olympic swimmer that placed second in a very close race.
Our college bound kids would do well to understand just how precious every moment is. If they made even half as much use of them as they ought to, they would all be way ahead of me.
Possible Rule Ten: Time is Precious
Rule Five: If You Can't Be Good Be Careful
I first heard this rule for life in my college fraternity days. One of my older and wiser fraternity brothers said this to just about everyone. I had largely forgotten about it until my kids grew up a bit.
When the kids were young enough to appreciate directives from their father I would often tell them how important it is to be careful. Sometimes this was directed to them as they were walking by a hot stove or about to run into something. Both of them had an unfortunate habit of looking at me behind them while they wolked straight ahead and directly into something.
As they aged, I came to the conclusion that there was little or no hope in having them be careful just because I requested it. I harkened back to my college days and immediately understood the wisdom in Rule 5. If you give someone a choice (especially one who incorrectly believes he or she is a responsible adult) they are much more likely to exercise at least one of the choices then just to go off and ignore the advice altogether. Giving a college student a choice to be good or be careful significantly increases the chance that they will do at least one of those things. With the propensity of college students to misbehave, there really is no point in insisting that they be good.
How does Rule 5 apply to life outside of college? There really is not anyone who can be good all the time or at least I have not found that person yet. So in those moments when each of us is not being good, we need to exercuise caution and protect ourselves from disaster.
I hate to take all of my examples from the gambling world but it seems to teach some important lessons. There are those that would argue that gambling is not being good. One could certainly argue that point but there are several things one can do when gambling to be careful so that, if gambling is indeed being bad, one can still be using Rule 5. For example, one should never gamble unless one completely understands the game and knows how to gain an advantage over the house or the other player. One should never drink and gamble at the same time. Even those of us with rational judgment about gambling will do poorly after too many drinks. One should gamble in a way that is intended to maximize ones chances of winning rather than in a way that feels right at any moment in time. Rule 6's teaching that one should never mess up a 20 in Blackjack is a classic example of how to apply this rule in a specific card game. Using Texas Hold 'Em Power Plays is another great way to gamble (be bad) and still be careful at the same time.
If you can't be good, be careful.
Rule One is Not as Harsh as it Seems
Many of you reading my suggestion that children and other loved ones should be left in jail for one night might think that it is a bit too harsh. Not true. Even public agencies have picked up on the wisdom of this rule.
There is a public service announcement that runs locally depicting a sort of morality play in which a nice looking young man is thrown in jail for drunk driving. His grandmother is working the phone to try and get him out of jail, apparently not her first effort at this. The young man's grandfather enters the picture, hangs the phone up, and tells grandmother to leave the young man in jail.
I suspect the morality play was intended to shock people and send a message, endorsed by a givernmental agency, that someone who is arrested for drunk driving ought to stay in jail overnight. Either the agency has been reading my material (I doubt that) or they have discovered the wisdom inherent in Rule 1. If you really want to prevent the behavior that led to incarceration, make sure that the incarcerated person suffers some consequences. Leaving a person in jail overnight is about as serious a consequence as one can inflict in these circumstances. Not only will you be doing a service to your loved one who apparently needs to reform his behavior but you are also serving society by increasing the chance that your loved one will not inflict pain, suffering, or perhaps even death on another member of the public.
Another Set of Rules
A friend recently sent me another set of rules that he sometimes calls Unconditional Truths. These will make you smile but they won't get you through college (or life) as well as the Nine Rules.
10. Life is sexually transmitted.
9. Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
8. Men have two emotions: hungry and horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.
7. Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
6. Some people are like a Slinky. They are not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.
5. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
4. All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
3. A slight tax increase will cost you $200.00 yet a substantial tax cut only saves you 30¢.
2. In the 60s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
1. We know exactly where one cow with Mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in America but we haven't got a clue as to where hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of
Agriculture in charge of immigration. Or better yet, let AARP know that Osama is 50 and they will find him wherever he is.
Take Pride in Your Performance
People need to take pride in what they do. There is extraordinary virtue in observing someone who does a job well.
This is true regardless of the nature of the work. I get joy out of watching an expert in just about any field. A good waiter is just as impressive as a brilliant pianist.
Daughter and I disagreed on this point recently. She thought I should feel bad about cross-examining someone to the point that they were destroyed professionally and their testimony had no negative impact on my client. I told her that, like everyone else, it is my job to perform my duties at the highest level. I told her there was virtue in doing that well even if someone was damaged as a result. She was not impressed and thought I should go easy on the witness.
The Nine Rules do not eliminate kindness but they absolutely require performance at the highest level. I am not sure I won the arguement but my position was certainly clear.
The unfortunate fact is that our service culture is at a crisis because so few people take pride in the work they do. What a joy it is to find someone that delivers good service beacause they take pride in their work and understand that service is what they do.
The Nine Rules teaches that there is virtue in doing a job well and that one should take pride in what they do. Rule 2, for example, teaches us that we should do our own work and reject others' efforts to do the work for us. There is nothing more fundamental in the advice to do your own work than the fact that you should do that work well and take pride in it. Rule 6 teaches us that we should never mess up good work. This is another part of taking pride in your work. When it is right, it is finished and until then, there is more work to do.
Anything less than pride in your own performance translates into a lack of success and, if adopted broadly enough, will translate into a deteriorating society.
Applying Rule 8
Rule 8 teaches us that, if you can't tell who the sucker at the table is, it is probably you. This rule, like the others, can be applied in many situations.
Daughter called from college the other evening with what she saw as a simple request. She wanted to know what her math score on the SAT was. I naturally wondered why that would be relevant to a Sophomore in college. She explained that, although she knew I would think she was crazy, she was thinking about taking Statistics and one of the prerequisites was a math score of a certain level on the SAT.
I told her that she was right. I thought she was crazy. Not only is Statistics notoriously difficult, but the concept of a non-numbers person taking a class that required a certain math score on the SAT is very close to insanity.
While the quick way around the issue was not having access to the SAT score, the application of Rule 8 teaches us that taking Statistics in this case would likely make daughter the sucker at that table. Declining to get in that position is the right thing to do. My only real comfort in this case was the fact that she knew, before she called me, that taking Statistics was going to be a bad idea. I would like to think that's because she was applying the Nine Rules.
Rules You Won't Find in the Nine Rules
You are right. We actually gave all of this some thought before we posted our Nine Rules. Here are some of the possible rules one could follow that did not make it in to the Nine Rules.
1. If you can't see it from the road, don't wear it. Believe it or not, this is actually the slogan of a local jewelry vendor. From the looks of their products, they believe it. When sending a daughter off to college, there is little or no point in suggesting what she should or should not wear because she is going to wear whatever she and her friends think is cool. More important, I am not sure that the ability to see it from the road is exactly what we are going for in daughters. Don't waste your time on rules about how a youngster should dress. Save your energy for the important stuff in the Nine Rules.
2. Do as I say, not as I do. You better be ready to practice the Nine Rules yourself if you are going to have any hope that daughter (or anyone else) will pay any attention to them. Indeed, if you read about the Nine Rules, you will see that they apply to all sorts of life situations. Take Rule 1 for example. Stay out of jail and your kids have a shot at following your lead. Land in jail and try and get out before you have spent an evening as a guest of the state and your kids have a pretty good chance of following that lead as well.
3. If you can't beat them, join them. It is important to be competitive and that is embedded in several rules including Rules 6 and 8. It is not important, however, to join the enemy after the competition. Whatever it was that made them the enemy in the first place is still making them the enemy after the competition. If you can't beat them, keep trying and improving until you can beat them or move on to a competition at which you can beat them would be a better, although long-winded, rule.
4. You can't beat City Hall. Again with "can't" and "beat" in the same sentence. These are not good thoughts. You can beat anyone if you find the right game and get good at it. See Rules 6 and 8. That could be another, less verbose, addition to the Nine Rules.
Rule Nine: Quid Pro Quo. Everything has a price.
I hestiate to use latin phrases to express myself but I thought it would be more educational than using my father's advice to me as a young child. "There's no such thing as a free lunch." He also told me, "You never get something for nothing." I landed on the Latin phrase because it is a little more elegant and is one that my daughter already knew and understood before she went to college.
While I was in college back in the dark ages I worked at the campus radio station. Yes, they had radio in those days. In an effort to decrease grafitti in the station control room, the General Manager, Gary Chew, hung a blank sheet of butcher paper and pen and encouraged people to record thier comments there. He made the first of our pre-internet postings writing, "There is no such thing as a free lunch -- G. Chew". By the next morning there was a new posting just below it, "There is no such thing as a G. Chew -- Free Lunch". That is the only evidence that I have ever seen that there is such a thing as a free lunch.
A number of years a go, daughter accompanied me to work one day on take your daughter to work day. She wanted to learn some new word so I taught her this Latin phrase and used the opportunity to explain its meaning and the life lesson behind it.
There is an obvious lesson here. You have to pay, in one form or another, for all of the benefits you get. Sometime payments are hidden or delayed but they are nonetheless payments. Some deals are better than others and some of those deals may include things that seem to be free but rest assured that there is a payment involved. A great example is the daily offers I get through emails that want me to take advantage of millions of dollars as my share of some ill-gotten gains if only I will trun over a small fee on the front end. We all know that is a dangerous and pervasive scam. Yet, on the face, it sounds like something for nothing. Rule 9 teaches that such propositions do not exist and, if one is presented with such an opportunity, one should investigate to find the real cost before one accepts the terms of the transaction.
On the surface, I simply wanted daughter to make sure she understood that everything has a price and that there really is no free ride. While that concept is fairly simple, Rule 9 says a great deal more about life in more subtle ways.
The more important lesson here comes from its application to the way we conduct ourselves in our personal and professional lives. Good marriages happen when both parties work hard at making the relationship work. Successful careers are made as the result of hard work. Good football players often have God-given talent but the best football players succeed because of hard work. The late Walter Payton is a great example. No one worked harder at his conditioning and his craft that Walter Payton and his astounding success is a testamant to the value of hard work. In short, success (at college and in life) comes at a price. That price is most clearly and regularly expressed in terms of hard work and devotion to one's craft.
I know that my daughter understands and applies Rule 9. She was only a Freshman in her high school band when she decided that she wanted to be a drum major. She devoted herself completely to that goal. She did everything that they asked her to do and more. She became the veritable picture of a student leader. In short she worked as hard as she possibly could to succeed. I was proud of her for working so hard and I told her that regularly. I wanted her to be chosen as drum major not because I wanted her to have what she wanted or I wanted the recognition that came with that post. I wanted her to be drum major so that she would really understand that hard work is the key to success. She was a drum major and that experience did more to make her understand the rule than anything I could have said or written.
There is another important life lesson here. Things that claim to be free rarely are. Indeed, all claims need to be taken with a grain of salt. I was on a cruise recently and the prize for winning one of the poker tournaments was a nice polo short with the cruise line logo and the designation on the front "Casino High Roller". It became clear to me very quickly, by applying Rule 9, that anyone who wore such a shirt (maybe even anyone who owned such a shirt) was clearly not a casino high roller. Companies that claim they are not responsible for what happens to your car while it is parked in their parking lot are wrong. They likely want you to believe they are not responsible and ceratinly some people believe that but the truth of the matter is that they are responsible for their negligence just like everyone else, regardless of whether they erect such a sign.
Another subtle notion contained in Rule 9 is the concept that one must understand the costs and benefits of their proposed actions before one acts. Successful businesses do this rigorously. We should do the same with our personal interests.
My wife sometimes misses the cost benefit analysis especially when she considers the price of gasoline. She is willing to drive half way across town to save a penny or two per gallon on ten gallons of gas. It does not make much sense to spend 50 cents in gas to save 20 cents on the total purchase to say nothing of the time and effort involved in driving across town.
To apply Rule 9 well sometimes requires that we work hard to find out the true costs and benefits of a proposed action. For example, it is not easy to understand the costs and benefits of a new job offer. One has to very carefully understand all of the elements of compensation and benefits and try to predict what they are worth before one can understand the benefits of the new job. One also has to understand the costs of the new job whether they are expressed in temrs of the amount of time away from one's family, the cost of commuting (see the gasolint discussion above), the cost to one's reputation, or the costs associated with security and insecurity if that is a factor. Any one of these costs can readily be turned into a benefit. For example, one might enhance her reputation by changing jobs or one might reduce commuting time. The entire analysis would be different for one looking for work while employed than it would be for one looking for work while unemployed or while facing a certain prospect of unemployment.
My brother recently offered a very good example of the need to employ rigorous cost/benefit analysis. He was working for a company that had been acquired by another firm. It was apparent to him that he would eventually lose his job but he was still employed. He found another job (or at least something resembling a job) but the new position would be available whenever he left the current job. The company that acquired his employer was requiring him to perform jobs for which he was not qualified and for which he did not have or expect to get adequate training. He was asked to make a presentation with the understanding that if it did not go well he would be terminated. The first effort did not go well but the new owners gave him extensive feedback that he could use to improve his performance and perhaps have a chance to keep his job.
He called me and asked for advice. His plan was to tell the old employer to forget it and leave with his dignity in tact. He had the good sense to call me and ask for advice although he clearly did not understand or practice Rule 9. I suggested to him that he do the very best he can at improving his performance and make it as difficult as possible for the new owners to fire him. I suggested that this approach would maximize the amount of income as long as he was confident that it would not negatively impact his future with the new position. He agreed and acrried on. I got another call a couple months later. He had since made two more presentations and neither was well received although he continued to get comments, continued to work on his new duties, and continued to collect a paycheck. Now he really wanted to tell the new guys where to put their job. Doing anything else was demeaning. I suggested that he stay the course and continue to do everything in his power to make them want to keep him and, in the meantime leave with as much of the company's money as he could. He took my advice and was eventually terminated but not before taking several additional months of salary.
He could have made a cost/benefit analysis himself if he had truly understood what Rule 9 means. The benefits associated with his inflated ego were cleaely not as valuable as the continued salary but he could not get there without considering one of the basic tenets of Rule 9. Since everything has a cost, you need to understand what that cost is and weigh it against the expected benefits. If you need help with this analysis, post your issue and we will help you work through it. Let us know if you want us to keep it confidential.
In some cases the challenge in applying Rule 9 comes in understanding the cost of a proposed action. In many cases, value can be gained simply by agreeing to accept a risk that someone else currently carries. nsurance companies provide an excellent example of this analysis. An insurance company will sell you financial insulation from an identified risk in exchange for your payment of a premium. How do insurance companies make money doing this? They analyze the losses that have historically happened with respect to the identified risk and, with the application of some math, determine how much money they need to collect in premiums to fund all of their loss payments, their operating costs, and a healthy profit. If they think there is too much risk, they will decline to sell the insurance or they might sell some of the risk to another insurance company. The company does not have any significant cost when it issues the policy so the premium may look like a free lunch. The cost to the company, however, is the assumption of your risk. That has a cost and the company understands that.
The college student is confronted with a similar choice whenever she makes a choice about some behavior that is suddenly available to her. Is eating whatever you want a fair benefit in light of the cost associated with adding the "freshman 15"? Does eating now do enough for you that you are willing to risk health, popularity, or whatever? Does drinking alcohol provide you with enough benefit to compensate for the risk of discipline from the school, arrest (see Rule 1), or poor academic performance? The choices at college are endless and each carries a benefit and a cost (often in the form of an identifiable risk). To be successful you must apply Rule 9 and always understand and compare the costs and benefits of your proposed actions.
Rule Seven: Always have a bag of pretzels available.
Like most kids, when mine were little, they would sometimes have stomach troubles. Also like most other kids, this usually happened at the worst time. It could be in church or on the way to school or just about anywhere else. My son had a knack for getting sick in the most artful of places. He once lost lunch at the entrance to the teachers' lounge in grade school. Another time, he threw up down my back while I was carrying him on an escalator at a busy shopping mall. I am not sure either of us can go back there even to this day.
I am not sure how other parents deal with the stomach problems of their children but we very quickly determined that a pretzel or two would generally calm things down until we could deal with it more comprehensively. We used this technique so often that we eventually started carrying a small bag of pretzels wherever we went. It was effective to a point.
The real lesson for success in this rule is the need to be prepared. College students will probably not appreciate the need to be prepared immediately. Business people either realize the need for preparation or they will find it hard to stay employed. I have several co-workers who are frightened to death by the prospect of meeting with the CEO. I was confused because I always viewed a meeting with the CEO as an opportunity to demonstrate my talents to someone who might be able to reward me appropriately. One of those workers told me that he did not like to meet with the CEO because he can be very mean and intimidating of you are not prepared. How dull is that? I suggested to the co-worker that he might look forward to meetings with the CEO if he took the time to prepare fully in advance. He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. There simply is no substitute for preparation.
There is a danger in using this rule. I refer to it as the Dumbo Syndrome. Some people might view the pretzels as similar to Dumbo's magic feather. With pretzels, one has super human powers but if the pretzels are not there we are all mere mortals. The true wisdom in the rule comes with the understanding that the pretzel you need has to be something that actually makes you prepared rather than just a placebo that has no real impact.
Rule Eight: If you cannot tell who the sucker is, it is probably you.
This is, of course, a famous adage by which poker players live. In poker, as in life, it provides two very fundamental corollaries. First, if you are playing a game (or doing anything else for that matter) with a group of people who all seem to be highly skilled at that activity, it is highly likely that you have found your way in to a group with which you cannot compete favorably. Second, if you are competing with a group of people, you must analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the group in order to compete at the highest possible level. All of this may sound a little excessively competitive, but let’s face it, life is full of competition. The successful princesses will be the ones who played the game better than the competition. If you want to succeed, you need to play better than everyone else.
The first corollary teaches us that we are unlikely to succeed if we insist on competing against people that are clearly more skilled than we are. It is obvious in the poker room but it is equally true in other endeavors. The average algebra student cannot expect to get the highest grade in a class full of algebra geniuses. The first year professional cannot expect to do better than the veteran professional. A freshman music student cannot expect to be first chair in the best orchestra.
Consider the novice, amateur poker player as an example of how we must apply this axiom. The new player enters the casino and joins a poker game in progress. He has two ways he can learn about the game and develop as a player. He can play lots of hands and rarely fold his cards. In this way he can observe how other players conduct themselves and can start to predict how they will play in the future or at least get hints at the nature of the unseen cards from the way they bet or other physical cues. The unfortunate truth is that the new player will lose a great deal of money by playing too many hands. For some real good poker tips, click here.
This rule also applies to raising children. You show up at the science fair with your child and her science project. You helped some by making sure that the presentation was neat and that the child followed all the rules. Billy and his dad show up at about the same time with a project devoted to the way that Billy saved his cat's life by transplanting an important organ. Nevermind that Billy's father is a renowned heart surgeon and probably had something to do with the project. Some parents would vow to compete with Billy and his father by doing something even better next year. Those who follow Rule 8, however, realize that such an endeavor would be destructive, especially for your child who is supposed to be learning something. I suppose he might learn the truth inherent in Rule 8 and that would not be all bad. The rule follower would make sure that next year, his child competed on her own, doing her own work, and learning something in the process.
Suppose you have no choice but to compete with others that may have more experience or better skills than you. If that does not sound familiar, you are probably self-employed and in a business with no competitors. In this case, you must whole heartedly adopt the second corallary. You must fully understand the stengths and weaknesses of your competitors and use that information to assure your own success.
For example, if the guy in the next cubicle appears to be smarter than you, better trained, better educated, or more experienced you cannot just sit idly and wonder why he gets all the breaks. That would be the role of the sucker and will result in low satisfaction and limited success. The rule follower will, instead, study his competition and learn his strengths and weaknesses. In his areas of strength, one would be wise to ask for instruction from the competitor. Who among us is not flattered when someone asks us how to perform? Having identified areas of weakness, the rule follower will do everything in his power to become thoroughly proficient in those skills. In this way, the rule follower becomes more satisfied with his job, his employer gets better service out of the combined talents of the two competitors, and the rule follower increases his chance of winning. That automatically means that he is not the sucker at this table.
Rule Six: Never mess up a 20.
At first glance, this rule may seem strange. One might even think I have lost my mind or my ability to form coherent sentences. You doubters obviously have not played Blackjack. This is an absolute, hard and fast rule that should never be broken when playing Blackjack. It also provides significant guidance for potentially difficult and perhaps even life changing events.
To understand this life instruction, you must first understand a little something about the game of Blackjack. For the complete novice, the object of the game is to get a combination of two or more cards that comes as close as possible to 21 without going over 21. If you get closer than the dealer or if you stay under 21 and the dealer goes over 21 you win. If the dealer gets closer to 21 or you go over 21, the dealer wins. Tens and face cards count as 10. Lower cards count for their face value. Aces can count as 1 or 11 at the player’s option. All of that is pretty simple. Computers could do that and do it very quickly.
The tricky part of Blackjack comes when the player has to decide whether he wants more cards. The player and the dealer each get two cards to start the game. The player gets to see both of his cards but only one of the dealer’s cards. The player has complete freedom of choice. He can take a card or not. There are other more complicated options as well. If the player has two cards that count as the same number (two nines, two threes, two face cards, a face card and a 10, for example) he can choose to “split” them. He puts up an additional bet equal to his first bet and plays two hands with the first card in each hand being one member of the pair that he split. Splitting is a really good idea if you get a pair of eights because two eights are sixteen. There is little chance that a sixteen will win and a very high chance that taking another card will put the player over 21 because the high majority of the cards in the deck yield that result. An eight as the first card in a hand, however, is not so bad. A 9, a 10, a face card, or an ace gives the player a playable 17, 18 or 19. A two or three gives the player a 10 or 11 and a strong chance to get 20 or 21 on the next card. A four, five, six, or seven, leaves the player with a difficult hand but one that is not as bad as the original 16. If the player gets another 8, he gets to split again. Splitting eights is a good play. The same is true of a pair of aces but the probabilities are not important.
After his first two cards, a player also has the option to “double down”. To do that, he doubles his bet and gets exactly one more card. This is a good idea when the player has a 10 or 11 because the next card cannot put him over 21 and has a high probability of making a very strong 20 or 21. It can also be very powerful if the player believes that the dealer has a weak hand. Like splitting, however, it is risky because it requires the player to double his wager.
In Blackjack, a 21 wins the vast majority of the time and ties the rest of the time. That is a very good hand. Totals from 12 through 16 do not win unless the dealer busts. That certainly does not happen often enough to make those very good hands. Because those are not very good hands, in most cases players should take another card and hope to improve. Seventeen is a very difficult hand because it is only a winner if the dealer busts but the odds are very high that another card will bust the player. An 18 is a little better because it wins if the dealer has 17 or busts. A 19 is better still and will win more often than not. A 20 is a very good hand. It beats or ties every hand except 21. Getting a 20 is not perfect and does not assure victory but it is very good and is definitely cause for celebration.
How can a person mess up a 20? Suppose that your first two cards are an ace and a nine. You will recall that the ace counts for 1 or 11. The player could decide to count the ace as 1 and double down which would require him to double his bet and receive exactly one more (at this point unidentified) card. The other choice is to count the ace as 11 and stay with 20. Our life rule says we should stay with the 20 even though we might have an opportunity to make more money by doubling down. The reason is simple. The 20 will win the vast majority of the time and will lose to only a few extraordinary hands that allow the dealer to draw to 21. Never mess up a 20.
There is another way to mess up a 20 in Blackjack. If you have two face cards, say a Jack and a King, you have 20. Even though you have a good hand, you have a decision to make. You can double your bet and split the two face cards into two hands in which the starting card is a face card in each of the hands. You might think this is a good idea because you believe the dealer has some more face cards he is about to deal or he might even have an ace in there for you. You might think this is an especially good idea if you are convinced the dealer has a weak hand and will probably bust. If you think that sounds like a good idea, you are wrong. Splitting face cards means that you are trading a very good hand that is very likely to win for two hands, the fate of which is entirely up to the cards. Never mess up a 20.
How does this rule apply outside of a casino? We are faced with situations in which we have the functional equivalent of a 20 all the time. In life, as in Blackjack, never mess up that hand.
Take the example of the very solid marriage. The husband and wife truly love each other. They enjoy spending time together and have common interests and goals. The children are healthy and happy. The in-laws are no problem. Both spouses have good jobs in which their futures are reasonably safe. They make enough money to keep food on the table, a roof over their heads, and have a little left over for retirement savings, entertainment, vacations, and other discretionary spending. They could use more money so they could get a newer car, some nicer furniture and have enough to send the kids to private school. This is a classic 20. The spouses should not mess with the 20 by arguing over finances to the extent that they destroy the good relationship. They should not double down and take an extraordinarily risky job with a big payout and the risk of significant losses. They should not split their face cards by canceling their health insurance in the hope that they will raise enough money to send the kids to private school. Their 20 is a very good hand. They should stay with the hand and strive to make their lives better by avoiding huge risks.
This rule says a lot about how one should view the world. The idea of not messing up a 20 in Blackjack is all based on the probabilities associated with the other options. If you split face cards, you have to double your bet for two hands that have about a 50/50 chance of becoming losers. If you stay with the 20, you do not have to increase your bet and you have about an 80% chance of winning the hand. If you do the math, it becomes very clear that the expected value of staying greatly exceeds the expected value of splitting the cards. The decision will not be right every time but, at the time you make the decision, it has a greater likelihood of being the right decision. If we face every decision in life the same way, we will definitely come out better over the long haul.