When I first started daily blogging in 2009, every post I queued came with a little bit of fear.

What if people don’t like this?

What if I feel stupid about what I wrote?

What if someone criticizes me?

It feels ridiculous to admit those things out loud, especially more than 3500 daily posts later. But that’s one of the differences between doing something for the first time and the 3500th time. The unfamiliar becomes routine. A few other things I’ve learned about fear along the way:

1. Actually acknowledging what you’re afraid of takes the fear away.

2. People aren’t paying as much attention to you as you might think. I’m lucky to have as many regular readers as I do, but most of those readers have plenty to occupy their lives without sending me emails. Forge ahead and do your work.

3. When I do get occasional criticism, it never does any lasting damage. It’s easy to say, “Thanks for reading—I guess it’s not for you” and then move on to writing the next post.

The next time you resist doing something because you’re afraid, something that actually isn’t putting you in any real potential harm, consider those three things. What specifically are you afraid of (be honest—and write it down so you have to see it in front of you)? Is everyone as focused on you as you think they are in this moment? Would it be so terrible if what you’re afraid of actually happened?

Whether it’s raising your hand in class, running for a club office, or applying to a dream college, putting it to the test of three can help you push past those fears.

My high school graduation featured an unexpected guest star—a clarinetist and fellow classmate most of our school had never heard (or bothered to hear) play before.

He’d spent his entire high school career immersed in music. Not just a member of the jazz band and the orchestra, but an influencer who drove both those groups forward to produce better music. He played in community orchestras and took advanced music theory courses at local colleges. If you were a musician who played in one of those groups, you knew and appreciated him. If you weren’t, you weren’t just unaware of his skills. You were probably only vaguely aware of him at all. That’s the way high school often works, and why so many adults claim that people barely even knew they existed back in high school.

He played a solo piece in front of 270 fellow graduates that included several flourishes at lightning speed, the kind of skill that you didn’t have to understand to appreciate.

And after he played the final note, the entire auditorium full of graduates and families leapt to their feet and gave him a well-deserved standing ovation.

He went on to study music at Northwestern and later earned an advanced degree from Yale. And nobody in that auditorium would be surprised to learn today that he’s thriving as a very successful musician.

Everyone has a craft, something you work at that matters to you. If your fellow high schoolers don’t understand or appreciate it, forge ahead. Maybe they just haven’t been given the wisdom or the opportunity to understand it yet. And even if they don’t, that’s OK. The right audience will stand when you get in front of them, literally or figuratively.

Students who are planning on using college to prepare for a specific career might consider asking: Will that job still exist ten years after I graduate?

There’s nothing wrong with using college as career prep. But the time, money, and energy you expend in college is an investment. And no savvy investor would put money into a business that’s about to become obsolete.

If a machine can—or could one day—do it, chances are there won’t be many job openings. But the human stuff, the ability to sell, to listen, to lead, to communicate, etc.—that’s never going to go out of career style.

Everyone should leave college qualified to do something. And the more timeless your investment, the more somethings you’ll be qualified to do.

Jason Fried is the CEO of Basecamp and the author of the recently released It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (which I highly recommend). I just finished listening to a podcast interview with him where he shared this gem:

“Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is home because she figured out a faster way.”

The real measure of your work is what you have to show for it, not how many hours you worked for it. Fried isn’t advocating relaxing on the job. In fact, he’s relentless about putting the quality of the finished work first. He eliminates distractions for himself and his employees, gives them the time and quiet space to get work done, and then sends everyone home after a good day’s work so they can be fresh, rested, and ready to produce more great work the next day.

Celebrating how busy you are just invites more busyness. And busyness almost never leads to great work.

Students, think of an adult—famous, not famous, someone you know personally, it’s up to you—who’s achieved a level of success that you admire. It might be a famous athlete, writer, or musician. It might be your boss at your part-time job. It might be a teacher, your parent, or a coach. Someone you respect and might strive to emulate.

Now ask yourself: Did they get where they are today by being good at everything?

They might be good at everything within their chosen domain, like the musician who can play different styles, the athlete without weaknesses in her game, the coworker who seems to know how to do everything well when he’s on the clock, etc.

But they couldn’t easily swap areas of greatness with your other heroes. That athlete might not play the cello at the same level she can play her best game. That author might not write computer code with the same ease and results as he can write fiction. That philanthropist who’s improving lives might not make the same impact as a personal trainer or therapist or financial planner.

Sure, not everyone is reducible to just one area of greatness. But nobody is capable of universal greatness.

So why spend all of your time trying to be good at everything in high school?

This is one of the worst symptoms of the obsession with highly selective colleges. Perfection-on-paper does exist in the college application population. It’s a tiny percentage, but they’re out there– those kids who somehow found a way to get perfect grades and perfect test scores and all the other off-the-charts accolades that make them stand out on a college application at 17. And most of them apply to the same prestigious colleges. There’s just no way around it. If you want to compete with them for a coveted spot, you’ll need to find a way to be perfect-on-paper, too.

Or you could take a different approach.

You emulate the way people become successful in the real world, not by trying to be great at everything, but by combining your natural interests and strengths with the right attitude and qualities, like curiosity, character, and work ethic.

You could reject the idea that GPAs, test scores, and summaries on a resume encapsulate you and instead focus on doing, earning, and emulating things that make you feel both happy and proud.

You could pick colleges that are predisposed to appreciate you for who you are and what you’ve done in high school, places where you could continue to learn, grow, and make discoveries about your talents and your potential.

Even the greats aren’t great at everything. And that’s something worth emulating.

Here’s a list of my favorite reads for 2018. Your mileage may vary, but I honestly don’t see one book that wouldn’t offer useful insight for a student, parent, or counselor.

Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being
Shawn Achor

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
Michael Bungay Stanier

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact
Chip and Dan Heath

This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See
Seth Godin

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
Daniel Pink

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
Matthew Walker

This week, a 17-year-old kid made a decision he’ll probably regret one day. He dramatically quit his part-time job at Walmart using the store intercom system, laced his message with profanity, and then posted a video to his Facebook page.

There is absolutely nothing unusual or wrong about an employee of any age quitting a job. If he really had been treated poorly by management, good for him for refusing to put up with it. You might even chalk it up to the kind of teenage decision making we all recall getting wrong at least once during those years of our lives.

But he probably wasn’t anticipating that the video would be picked up by the press, and that the articles would include his name. And now whenever anyone in the future Googles him—including colleges and potential employers—this is what Google is going to serve up.

Students, nobody expects you to be perfect. You get to make mistakes. In fact, you should make mistakes. That’s part of maturing. You learn the consequences of behaviors and actions and adjust if the outcomes don’t work for you. The teenage years should include some actions that make you shake your head later in life. Be a kid, because you are one.

But please remember that unlike any generation before, you’re living much of your life out loud, with photos and posts and other digital snapshots that will live on. I don’t have to answer for a single thing I ever did when I was 17. But whenever you bring something to the internet, you lose control of that story.

If I was him, I’d write an apology post. Not for quitting, and not one that excuses any mistreatment he believes he was subject to. Just something that acknowledges that he could have made the decision and expressed his complaints in a more appropriate way.

I don’t think what he did is so terrible, and I don’t want to muzzle the kid. I just wish he wouldn’t have to live with this story longer than he might like to.