James' World 2

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The holidays may be the most wonderful time of the year, but entertaining during them is stressful. “Sometimes the moment overwhelms people, and they forget to focus on the important thing, which is human connection,” says Daniel Post Senning, co-president of the Emily Post Institute and great-great-grandson of famed manners expert Emily Post. “The point of etiquette is to focus on relationships, and if you can do that during the holidays, you’ll be in good shape.”

In October, Senning and his cousin Lizzie Post marked the centennial of Emily Post’s Etiquette with the release of the guide’s 20th edition. It covers everything from thank-you notes (still relevant!) to how much to tip in a ride-share (10% to 20%). Senning spoke with Bloomberg Pursuits about avoiding common mistakes during festive entertaining.

The only wrong response to an invite is no response.

Hosts can take a no, but the guest who doesn’t reply is the biggest challenge. The place where people get into trouble is anxiety about coming and going, so be clear about expectations, both as a guest and a host, especially for overnight invitations—when am I supposed to arrive and when am I supposed to leave? The old expression that fish and house guests start to stink after three days is worth keeping in mind.

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Illustration: Tomi Um

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For some reason, negotiation tends to be considered a specialized professional skill instead of a basic life one. Business school students and salespeople learn tons about how to work out deals, but most of the rest of us never learn much about how to negotiate. That’s one reason why buying a major asset like a house or car is so stressful for regular folks—negotiating is mysterious to us.

But everyone negotiates on a constant basis, and learning some of the fundamentals of banging out a mutually-beneficial deal is a crucial skill we should all acquire. The challenges of learning how to bargain is often the mixture of emotion, psychology, and math. Leverage can swing back and forth between parties, and emotions can play as much of a role as finances (as anyone who has overpaid for a house because they “fell in love with it” can attest). That’s why learning some basic negotiation skills is essential—starting with why you should always seriously consider making the first offer.

The Anchoring Effect

You’ve probably heard that you should always make the first offer when negotiating, possibly with some vague explanation about setting the terms. This is, in fact, generally good advice—because of something called the Anchoring Effect.

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Photo: vchal (Shutterstock)

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Walking across spongy tundra, among bonsai shrubs on fire with autumn colors, I came upon a river too wide to cross. Gazing up the valley from which it flowed, I saw that the obstacle blocking my path was just one strand of a broad, braided system spread languidly across a floodplain in Denali National Park in Alaska. I watched the McKinley River’s fluid columns shift apart, then twine together. Although at that time I knew little about hydrology, the science of water, on some instinctual level I understood that this was a free river. Every other river I’d known was markedly subdued.

What does it mean for a river to be free? Today, most water is not in its natural state, especially in industrialized countries. It sounds obvious, but I hadn’t before given it much thought. Humans have filled in or drained 87 percent of the world’s wetlands. We’ve dammed and diverted two-thirds of the world’s largest rivers. What many of us think of as ‘river’ is a restricted, straightened canal that no longer wanders across its floodplains, depositing nutrient-rich, land-forming silt as it goes. The streams and wetlands that first attracted us to settle and build cities have long since been encased in pipes or filled with trash and dirt. In fact, the area of land, streams, and wetlands covered by cities’ pavement has doubled since 1992. In rural areas, too, we’ve uncurled creeks, drained and filled wetlands and lakes, and blocked off floodplains to create more farmland or real estate for new developments. These attempts at control affect not only where water flows, but greatly increase the speed at which it moves. Water is sped through our cities, and prevented from sinking underground where it could refill aquifers and cycle through local ecosystems.

The scale of our efforts to control water is vast. But control is illusory. Water does what it wants, as we are seeing increasingly often, as people around the world grapple with severe floods and droughts.

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Denali National Park, Alaska. Photo by Christian Vorhofer/Getty

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We spend a lot of energy looking for shortcuts to save time, and sure, those shortcuts add up. But when I look back, my biggest time regrets aren’t spending too much time on Twitter or mismanaging my daily tasks. Those are bad habits, but there are bigger, more systematic time wasters that have really gotten in the way. Fixing these will free up a massive amount of time and energy.

Not Asking for Help

My first week on my first job out of university, my boss handed me a huge spreadsheet. He told me to organize it in a way that made zero sense to me. Being a quiet, timid person, I simply nodded, walked back to my desk, and stared at that spreadsheet for like an hour, hoping to make some sense of it (yep, just like George Costanza and the Penske file).

Finally, my coworker came in, and I confessed I had no idea what to do. He broke it down for me, then dropped some advice that’s stuck with me ever since: “You might feel dumb asking questions, but you look dumber when you don’t get it because you failed to ask.”

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Wasting time

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An insurance policy for your home doesn’t just pay for necessary repairs when disaster strikes, it also can protect you in case of an accident on your property, such as a slip and fall. Peace of mind for major repairs and bad accidents is important—but there are some things you might be doing that can void your insurance that you might not even be aware of. Here are some things to avoid doing to keep your policy intact.

Running a home business

A common mistake you might be making is running a business out of your home. While side hustles abound, if you bring clients into your home, keep inventory there, or have expensive equipment, you might not be covered if something goes wrong. Damage or theft of any property pertaining to a business won’t be covered by your average policy, and liability for guests who are a part of your business operation is also likely not part of your coverage. If your insurance company discovers that you have made this mistake during the course of a claim, they could fine you or even cancel your policy altogether.

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Photo: Justin_Krug (Shutterstock)

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