How to run for a political office

1. Since in our times a successful politician is a product of well-organized professional media efforts, the personal qualities and accomplishments of a candidate are of no importance.

2. The personal qualities, necessary to succeed, will be determined by the professionals. It is therefore better to present oneself to their efforts as a clean slate with a good haircut.

3. The goal is to attract the financial support that will pay for the professional services that enable candidates to be elected.

4. Identify the issues that will garner support. This can be done by locating one of the two following groups in population:
a. large, vocal group with grievances
b. small but financially well-endowed group with unpopular project

5. Absorb the issues of the chosen group. They will always be more modest than the deep-seated aspirations of the group ideologues, who will want to appear realistic for the time being.

6. Locate the deep-seated aspirations of the ideologues.

7. Advocate something rather more ambitious than the stated issues of the group but less outrageous than the deep-seated aspirations. This will garner enthusiastic support of rank-and-file for you as a “visionary”. It will also give hopes to the ideologues with the deep-seated aspirations.

8. The hopes of ideologues supported by the enthusiasm of rank-and-file will translate into financial support to buy the professional services.

9. Maintain the good haircut. Follow the professional advice. Be elected.

10. Upon reaching the chosen office, satisfy some of the cravings of the group that supported you on the way, taking care to always stay somewhat short of realizing the deep-seated aspirations to ensure the continuous support.

How to find spouse/partner

1. Observe desirable but attached or otherwise unavailable individuals. (A)
2. Find general traits.
3. Observe spouses/partners of the above pool. (B)
4. Compare to self.
5. Narrow the pool to individuals, similar to self. (C)
6. Select subset from A that intersects with C. (D)
7. Locate a number of available candidates similar to the ones from D
8. Narrow the field to manageable dimensions:
a. Determine your sexual orientation
b. Limit geographical proximity
c. Reject _ (place any criteria here)
9. Consider the remaining candidates. (F)
10. Romantic Primer: read love poetry, see sappy Hollywood productions, listen to popular music.
11. Make 2-3 selections from F, utilizing current emotional state achieved by application of the Romantic Primer.
12. Send flowers, do series of lunch/dinner dates. Since the candidates went though rigorous selection process, no special effort will be required to woo.
13. Observe responses of candidates and self.
14. Make final selection.
15. Keep records of subset F. Since the prevailing mode of affiliation is serial monogamy, you will need the records in the future.

How to be creative

1. Learn skills.
2. Locate area of application.
3. Establish area of incompetence.
4. Locate narrow area between the two.
5. Operate in that area.
6. It is difficult to operate energetically within a narrow area, therefore take care not to increase your skills or incompetence in chosen field.
7. Establish new areas of other skills.
8. Find new areas of incompetence (this is easier than #7, so concentrate here).
9. Combine all into a complicated arcane system.
10. To make navigation easier overlap areas of skills.
11. Overlap areas of incompetence.
12. Expand the system until it encompasses all kinds of activity.
13. Once all areas are included, the system will become stable and self-sustaining.
14. Take time to enjoy the results.
15. The system will eventually self-distract as level of your skills inevitably increases, while the passage of time renders them irrelevant thus increasing your incompetence.

How to become successful artist

1. Avoid learning skills.
2. If already learned, choose different field.
3. Find similarities in popular artists.
4. Find similarities in radical underground artists.
5. Find similarities in financially successful artists.
6. Combine above subsets.
7. Find general similarities.
8. Select similarities, duplication of which does not require skills.
9. Utilize to gain prominence.
10. Choose mind-altering substance to abuse.
11. Use insights, gained from abuse, to tweak the guiding principles.
12. Tweak just enough to cultivate enigma.
13. Choose comfortable margin of deviation from the guiding principles.
14. Every now and then produce random results, taking care to stay within the margin.
15. Constant low amplitude fluctuation will make you appear unpredictable and difficult to categorize.
16. Periodically repeat the entire process, factoring yourself in an appropriate subset (see #7).
17. Enjoy rewarding career that will end early when you loose control of the fluctuations or late when you loose ability to fluctuate.

How to be exceptional.

1. Almost anything is easy to accomplish on respectable average level. The challenge is to accomplish it on the par with the best practitioners in the field.

2. Since self-improvement invariably brings mixed results, striving to be the best in any chosen field is usually fruitless. There is always someone, who seems “natural” and is better at it.

3. The energies, therefore, should be concentrated on the selection of the right field of application rather than one’s progress in the field.

4. If you have any exceptional talents, the choice of the field should be easy and in time rewarding.

5. If you do not have any exceptional talents, choose a field that appears to lack exceptional practitioners, i.e. avoid music or sports, and concentrate on dry cleaning or politics.

6. In the absence of the best practitioners the criteria for excellence is unclear. Define criteria the best suited to your own qualities.

7. Direct all energies into popularizing these criteria in the field.

8. Only when the criteria are universally accepted in the field, it will become suddenly apparent to all the practitioners that you are indeed the most successful practitioner.

9. This suddenness will help the stunned field to avoid the inevitable resentment, which builds up as one of the practitioners laboriously moves to the top.

10. Upon reaching the top, immediately begin to increase the complexity of the criteria. The goal is to reach the level of arcane complexity that will discourage the imitators.