How to be a Complete and Utter F**k Up, 3rd Edition

Step

31

Don’t ask, “How do you do that?” Don’t act ‘as if’. And don’t be naïve

Quote to avoid

“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.”

Cary Grant (formerly Archie Leach)

If you’ve never done something before, don’t find someone who has, and don’t ask them the question: “How do you do that?” And never add: “Oh, and can I take notes?” Having asked that question of loads of successful people, on planes, trains and automobiles, and anywhere else I come into contact with them, again purely for research, do you know what happens? Sometimes they tell me, in just ten minutes, something it took them 25 years to find out. You must never do the same.

I once asked Richard Emanuel, a young Scottish ...