Steal, drink, lie, and cheat: skills for a happy life
Today: Moving out of my aunt's house. This is a more involved process than it sounds, since I have to pack - in one carryon suitcase - equipment and clothing for business meetings in San Fransisco, winter gear for Chicago, formal dress for a Christmas party in the hot, tropical Philippines, and everything for a jaunt through China... plus research books and all the junk I'm schlepping back to my parents' house to return to them and/or leave there. And then I have to take that suitcase and the associated stuffed backpack through several miles of walking and an hour of public transport and changing trains...
By the way: the four most useful things I've learned this summer are how to steal, drink, lie, and cheat - and I highly recommend you learn them, too. Here's why.
Steal. There are a lot of great ideas out there, many of them free for the taking. Why duplicate work? Take advantage of what others have done - thousands of people standing on the shoulders of those who have come before create giants in their own right. (Corollary: Make your own stuff steal-able - open-license or public domain your work when you can.)
Drink. It doesn't need to be alcoholic, but it needs to not be alone. There's more to life than work. Getting to know folks is fun, makes it easier to work with you, and spurs plenty of random ideas for new collaborations. You get more done if you're not thinking about productivity all the time. (Corollary: Stay spontaneously grab-able. If someone announces they're going out, you want to occasionally - not always, but occasionally - be able to pick up and waltz out the door.)
Lie. A better word for this might be "just-in-time truth." If someone asks you a question, it's not dependent on a physical law of nature, you don't know the answer, and you're pretty sure nobody else does, then make it up - someone's going to have to eventually. "Do you know where we're supposed to meet for the party?" "Ah... Harvard square!" Improvise. (Corollary: Publicly. Invented truths don't do any good if they're not spread.)
Cheat. In the video games sense - the fact that your character can jump only so high is an arbitrary line of code you can punch in a few symbols to modify. Most rules aren't actually. Know which "oh, we're not supposed to!"s or "but we can't!"s are actually "most people don't, but nothing actually prevents us from doing so"s. (Corollary: Publish your cheat codes so others can take advantage as well.)