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Children look to adults as role models, which as any sufficiently humble adult will tell you is a terrible plan. After watching a few meetings devolve into play ground name calling and noticing that your kids have a better grasp of sharing than your boss, you realize that it might be time to start looking in the other direction. This guide will reintroduce you to a few things that you might have forgotten in the process of growing up.

Keep Out Of Reach Of Small Children

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If there is a way for them to hurt themselves, your users will find it. When designing a web application, always aim towards the lowest common denominator. If you are at all confused about how your UI is supposed to function, chances are good the vast majority of your users will find it completely unusable and will manage to destroy your app while trying to figure it out.

Stick A Fork In A Light Socket

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Experiment. Sure you might come away with a few cuts and bruises, but how else are you going to learn? As a corollary, once you see that something obviously doesn’t work, don’t do it again. It’s one thing to make a mistake, it’s quite another to make the same mistake over and over again.

Climb A Few Trees

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Look for opportunities to get some fresh perspective on a situation. If you stare at a problem for too long from the same angle, you’re bound to miss something. Do yourself a favor and step away from it all for a little while. The perspective that you gain from a few hours of not working on a problem can be worth hours of banging your head against the wall looking for a solution.

Don’t Throw Hissy Fits

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Learn to stay calm. I can guarantee that throwing a temper tantrum will do nothing to help you solve a serious business dilemma. What it will do is waste time and resources, two things that most startups don’t have a huge amount of. When faced with a frustration, look for solutions and keep your tantrums to yourself.

Play Nice

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People disagreeing with you goes hand in hand with thinking outside of the box. You have to learn how to hear others without getting defensive. Also, learn to share information with those who you are supposed to trust. Keeping it all to yourself might buy you a bit more praise, but it is a terribly inefficient way to actually get things done.

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And the biggest lesson? Keep an open mind. The best thing you can do for yourself is to be willing to learn from your surroundings and use that information. Keep your eyes open, your ears sharp and your mouth shut when others are saying their piece. More often than not, you’ll get a lot more out of your conversations this way.

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