Here we go again.

Since common sense was replaced by ignorance and pedantry, we’ve been beleaguered by all manner of lists, reasons, how-to articles, how-not-to articles, and sundry claptrap intended to convince us (or remind us) we have no idea what we’re doing and no right to think we do. To wit: “5 Reasons Why You Won’t Reach Your Fitness or Business Goals“.

I don’t know about you. But I can never get enough advice about things I can’t do, shouldn’t do, won’t do, or at which I’ll be a miserable failure if I even consider attempting to do them. Accordingly, I felt duty-bound to come up with a few more reasons for which you (or I) won’t reach some particular business or fitness goals:

  1. You consider yourself to be the Will Rogers of s’mores. It doesn’t matter if you’re hanging around the campfire or the boardroom. If your first inclination is to indulge your sweet tooth, you’ll be spending more time at the dentist or at Weight Watchers than you will be working or working out.
  2. You suffer from Anthropophobia. Chances are that an irrational fear of people, regardless of setting, is likely to be career-limiting, to say nothing of the probability that it’ll put a serious crimp in your gym time.
  3. You’re this guy. Whatever his goals are, they probably don’t have a whole lot to do with fitness or business, at least in any orthodox senses. My money is on his wanting to prove this notion from Malcolm Cowley: “There is a moment when individualism becomes a uniform in spite of itself.” It’s probably not too soon to start suspecting the dude’s in some fairly deep trouble.
  4. You think you’re the only member of Generation Me. People who think this way don’t usually have much free time. Most of their waking hours are preoccupied with trying to get their heads out of their posteriors, leaving little opportunity for much of meaning or merit.
  5. You’re more concerned with social media than you are with being social or sociable. If your chief modes of communication are Facebook and Snapchat — and if your primary means of expression are emoticons — you’re missing much, the least of which might be gainful employment and the gym.

Self-absorption isn’t the same as self-respect, kids. If you want to reach your fitness or business goals, you might start by (as the Irish say) getting a grip of your knickers.