The surest ways to ruin your life are to avoid responsibility, stop learning, work only as hard as you must, and let other people and your own bad habits make every decision for you. This is a sarcastic crash course in mediocrity. It lists 22 habits, written as instructions, that guarantee an unsuccessful, poor and miserable life, and the joke is that you should do the exact opposite.
Below, the 22 are grouped into six sets so you can see how they feed each other, from how you think about money to how you treat your sleep.
Watch the full video here, or skip to the breakdown below.
The 22 ways at a glance
- 1 to 4. Distrust money, mock effort, seek approval and lie
- 5 to 8. Work the minimum, complain, hide behind perfectionism and quit when it is hard
- 9 to 11. Binge more, stop learning, follow celebrity drama
- 12 to 15. Snooze, ghost the gym, set vague goals and compete in every conversation
- 16 to 19. Spend to impress, outsource your happiness, play the victim and refuse responsibility
- 20 to 22. Stress-eat, treat sleep as optional and lie to your doctor
1 to 4. Distrust money, mock effort, seek approval and lie
The first instruction is to believe money is evil. While others learn to build wealth, you sit on a high horse, decide that wanting financial stability makes you greedy, and treat investing as something for corrupt villains in overpriced suits. The second is to make fun of people who try: roll your eyes at a friend’s business, laugh at someone practising public speaking, and mock the person who studies for exams. If you never try, you never have to feel embarrassed.
Third, seek validation for every decision. Before quitting a job, moving cities or ending a relationship, text five people, open a poll, and never trust your own voice. If nobody replies, freeze. Fourth, lie. Tell your partner everything is fine, tell your boss you love the job, and tell yourself you are happy even when you are falling apart.
The logic underneath is the same each time. Honesty leads to discomfort, discomfort leads to change, and the point of the exercise is to avoid change.
5 to 8. Work the minimum, complain, hide behind perfectionism and quit when it is hard
Fifth, work just hard enough not to get fired. Show up but barely, do enough to keep the job but never enough to stand out, count the hours, and drop initiative and ownership because those are for people who want promotions. Sixth, complain about the job, the boss, the weather, the government and the Wi-Fi, and never offer a solution, since that would mean doing something.
Seventh, use perfectionism as an excuse to never finish anything. Rewrite the first sentence a dozen times, spend three weeks on the logo, and when you get bored, start a different routine, hobby or business idea. Momentum is overrated, apparently. Eighth, if it is not effortless, quit: the first fight with a partner means it was not meant to be, a business that does not go viral in a month should be dropped, and sore muscles mean fitness is not for you.
The pattern is that struggle is read as a sign to stop, when it is usually a sign that something is worth finishing.
9 to 11. Binge more, stop learning, follow celebrity drama
Ninth, forget education. The average millionaire reads two books a month, according to the script, but you have shows to catch up on. Stack streaming plans like trophies and call it unwinding, and spend $15 a month on subscriptions that auto-renew for five years instead of $15 on an audiobook that might change your mindset. Streaming is easy, learning takes effort.
Tenth, learn nothing after high school or college. Graduate once, tell yourself you know everything you need to, and treat courses, books and languages as someone else’s job. The mocking tone here is aimed at the hundreds of thousands of people who use the time to track habits and sharpen their minds.
Eleventh, stay on top of all the celebrity drama. Set notifications, watch three breakdown videos about what really happened, and defend a favorite star in the comments like they pay your rent. Your goals can wait.
12 to 15. Snooze, ghost the gym, set vague goals and compete in every conversation
Twelfth, set six alarms and snooze all of them. Wake up late, rush through the morning, start the day stressed, blame everyone but yourself, and repeat tomorrow. Thirteenth, ghost the gym. Buy the membership, the clothes and the supplements, go once, take a mirror selfie, then say you will get back into it next week while the payments auto-renew.
Fourteenth, set vague goals with zero deadlines. Say you want to get in shape, start a business and travel more without defining any of it, lean on words like eventually, someday and soon, and give up the moment it gets boring. Fifteenth, turn every conversation into a competition. Do not listen while someone talks, plan what you will say next, interrupt, correct and one-up, and never ask questions.
Between them, these four make sure the day is lost before breakfast, the plan never has a date, and nobody around you teaches you anything.
16 to 19. Spend to impress, outsource your happiness, play the victim and refuse responsibility
Sixteenth, spend money you do not have to impress people you do not like. Drop $700 on sneakers, finance a phone, rent a Lambo, take photos in hotel lobbies and put everything on credit. Forget assets and savings. As long as you look rich, the thinking goes, nobody cares that you are broke.
Seventeenth, make your happiness depend entirely on others: let a partner’s mood set yours, adopt your friends’ opinions, feel empty when they have no time for you and wait for permission to feel proud. Eighteenth, play the victim and blame your past, your parents, the economy, your ex, your boss and the stars. Nineteenth, refuse responsibility. Nobody taught you to save, so why learn now, and the last relationship was toxic, so communication is not on you.
The final line of this set is the one the script wants you to notice: stay exactly where you are and wait for someone to swoop in and rescue you.
20 to 22. Stress-eat, treat sleep as optional and lie to your doctor
Twentieth, eat when you are stressed. After a long day you deserve a reward, so scroll a delivery app for fifteen minutes pretending to want a salad, order something greasy, and call it self-care. Twenty-first, treat sleep as optional and run on caffeine: shows, arguments online and scrolling until 2 AM, followed by three coffees before lunch and energy drinks for the evening brain fog. The headaches can be cured by snapping at people.
Twenty-second, lie to your doctor, not on purpose but by believing you are doing everything right. You work out when you can (the basketball team’s group chat counts), eat pretty healthy despite a fast food habit, and sleep seven to eight hours if you round up from five. When the results come back serious, act confused and assume it will go away. If you do not admit it to yourself, maybe it is not real.
Do the opposite
The video’s closing admits the list was a joke and that the idea is to flip every item. Take responsibility, build some discipline, learn things and grow up a little.
If you have spotted yourself in more than a few of these, the fix is not a dramatic reinvention. It is picking one habit from the list and doing its opposite tomorrow.
FAQ
What are the worst habits that ruin your life?
The video lists 22, including believing money is evil, never learning after school, complaining without offering solutions, setting vague goals with no deadlines, playing the victim and refusing responsibility.
Is this list serious advice?
No. It is written as sarcastic instructions, and the video says outright that the point is to do the opposite: take responsibility, build discipline and keep learning.
Why does perfectionism ruin your progress?
Used as an excuse, it keeps you rewriting the first sentence or tweaking a logo instead of finishing. Momentum matters more, and starting something new each time you get bored means the old project never gets done.
How does blaming others hold you back?
If nothing is your fault, nothing is yours to fix. That mindset keeps you waiting for someone to rescue you, so you never try again.
What do millionaires do differently with learning?
The script says the average millionaire reads two books a month, while the person ruining their life stacks streaming plans and stops learning after school.
Keep reading
- 15 Bad Money Habits You Need To Break Immediately
- 15 Habits to Improve Your Life
- 15 Habits That Help You Balance Life Better
