Don't Push Too Many Trolleys

6Do Your Due Diligence

The term “due diligence” is a legal term for the steps a person or organization can take to investigate, thoroughly, any prospective business deal or transaction in order to ensure that what they propose to do is legal and commercially viable. You can think of due diligence as the research you conduct to get the best possible outcome for any venture you undertake. When you put it like that, it's clear that you should conduct due diligence into any important decision you take. If someone suggested that you took an exam without researching the subject, or bought a car without viewing it, you'd think they were rather reckless; yet people take far bigger decisions without doing enough research. I'm always stunned when I discover people who have bought property or started a business without doing essential research and planning.

It's Only Homework

We all have our first taste of doing research at school. We are given tasks and problems that we have to solve, working either in class or for homework. My parents and sister helped me adopt a very healthy attitude towards doing schoolwork. They always impressed upon me that it had a purpose; that it was useful in its own right beyond being a requirement enforced by my teacher. I didn't just do homework because I had to hand it in the next day, I did it to give me the knowledge and tools I needed to get ahead in life. (That is not to say that, like most kids, I didn't resent doing it half the time!) That's something ...