Today I’ve been asked to attend an event designed to provide mentoring to young people. The format of the event puts me at a table with 2-3 people for 20 minute sessions to answer questions and dish out advice.

It got me thinking… what do I wish I had known before I started my career? My first thought was… everything! But that’s not really true. Some of the fun in life is the journey. Without the ups and downs we wouldn’t be the people we are today. Still, there are a lot of things that would have been useful to know.

So, I decided to jot down a few ideas based on my own experience. Some items from this list are things I wish I had known, and some are things I wish other people would have known. By all means, I hope you’ll add to the list if you think of something I missed.
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People ask me for advice nearly every day of my life. And I’d say that 95% of the time I have to give vague answers like “…in most cases…”, or “…usually…”. But every once in a while I’m able to hand out some advice that I feel is absolute. This is the best kind of advice, and Baz Luhrmann dished out some of this advice back in 1999 with the release of Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen.

“Wear Sunscreen” or the “Sunscreen Speech” are the common names of an essay actually called “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997.
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From a reader:

Dear Mr. Man,

I’ve been at my job for a long time, and everyone loves me, but I keep getting passed up for promotion. What should I do?

Sincerely,
Sponge Bob

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