subscribe
/ Sign Out

The six secrets of spectacularly unsuccessful people

EVER wondered how some people amble through life never getting anywhere? They know these secrets – and you can too: 

Never try to get anything done in less than an hour

Got to get the washing out in 45 minutes? Then there’s no time to start that email, or indeed to imagine you can do anything productive without being forced to abandon it and start again. Better scroll mindlessly through Twitter instead.

Believe that life will come to you

You once read this on a mug and embraced it as an easy way to never chase your dreams. If you’re meant to be a theatre producer, the RSC will knock on your door one day. And if destiny intends you to slump on the sofa with a multipack of Crunchies watching A Place in the Sun, so be it.

Trust clickbait

The best careers aren’t out there advertising on jobsearch websites. They’re hiding at the bottom of articles and sneaking into unregulated comments sections. You’ve just signed up for a position where a woman’s making $4,800 a week working from home. Beating the system.

Don’t listen

Other people tend to say really boring stuff that’s about them, not you. Perfect the art of nodding and saying ‘mmm-hmm’ while preparing your next glittering conversational contribution. That’s what the bits where they talk are for.

Never write anything down

Like a smug waiter, explain that it’s all filed away up there in your brain, which is why everyone gets shit they didn’t order and you’re two grand overdrawn because you can’t remember your online banking login.

Live for today

It could all end tomorrow, so live for the moment. Even if it leads to you being hopelessly unfaithful, never saving a mortgage deposit and never having loo roll. It’s all about the journey to you, which is why you’re working nights as an Uber driver.

English woman with Scottish parent convinced it makes her exotic

AN English woman with a single Scottish parent is under the impression that it makes her thrillingly exotic, it has emerged.

Eleanor Shaw was born and raised in Swindon but considers herself to be of dual nationality, though she has a British passport and Scotland is part of the UK.

She explained: “Growing up Scottish is so different from growing up purely English, like my friends. I’m between two cultures, yet part of both. They’ll never understand.

“But because my heritage isn’t obvious from my skin colour – my skin’s not pale blue, like many Scots – people mock Scottish culture in front of me. I can’t tell you how many blazing rows I’ve got in when someone impersonates Lorraine Kelly.

“Everyone’s amazed when they discover I’m bilingual, like when I understood and fluently replied to that drunken Glaswegian on the train. At the same time I feel they judge me.

“I plan to raise my children with the same deep connection to the country that I have, celebrating Burns Night and enjoying Drambuie. I hope, like me, they’ll realise how special it makes them.”

Mum Cassie MacDonald said: “I’m from the posh bit of Edinburgh so I consider myself English. I don’t know where she gets this shite from.”

Next story ›