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I should have realised this particular truth when I was 18, but somehow it didn’t dawn on me until years later.

I’m talking about how many famous sports stars and other successful people in specialist walks of life depend on just one particular skill for their success and reputation.

This applies to lesser mortals as well lower down the ladder. When I was 18 my favourite sports were swimming and water polo. I spent hours each week swimming up and down a swimming pool, and playing water polo. The club I was with had three teams – the first eleven, second eleven and thirds.

I was in the thirds as I wasn’t particularly good at water polo, though I enjoyed playing it immensely. I occasionally got a game with the second team, and once, I believe, actually played a quarter for the first team.

But I wasn’t very good. I looked at the members of the first eleven and wondered how it was that they were so good (at least, compared to me). I watched them playing whenever I could. One of them, in particular, was the leading goal scorer. He was around 30 years old (pretty ancient, to me) and not particularly fit or fast in the water. In match after match I would watch as, at the start of each quarter and after each goal, he swam slowly up to the 2 yard mark, just in front of the opponents’ goal.

Then he would do very little for most of the time. Just tread water, facing back up the pool to where most of the action was, and keep a wary eye on his opposite number, who was treading water behind him and whose job it was to try and stop him scoring if he got the ball.

When a team mate managed to drop the ball in front of him, he would manoeuvre to avoid losing it to his opposite number, and then, in the blink of an eye, he would take hold of the ball and do a back shot “blind”, shooting with his back to the goal. The ball seemed to travel at the speed of light into the back of the goal. The goalkeeper seldom stood a chance.

That’s the only thing he knew how to do, but he did it so skilfully, and so fast, that the tactic worked nearly every time. Yet if he had been placed elsewhere in the pool, say midfield, or in defence, he would not have known what to do. Just that one skill, developed to such a degree, was all he needed.

Years later, I came across another person with a similar kind of skill. He was a karate champion who represented his country on many occasions, and won dozens of championships. Although he was a teacher of karate as well, the truth was that he was only really expert at a couple of moves. But he used those moves with such devastating effect that he was able to be as successful as he was without having to be very good at anything else.

Too often in life I have tried to be expert at too many things. Probably most of us have done the same. You only need to be outstanding at one or two things, and that will ensure you become an “expert”, and even, perhaps, a world-famous celebrity.

Philip Gegan

Another thing I wish I’d known when I was 18 is this. Work, jobs and careers are all completely different things.

I wasn’t clever enough at the time to get a place at university. Unlike these days, you actually had to be outstanding in your academic abilities to get enough decent “A” level scores here in old England to get into even a nondescript university. So I accepted that when I’d finished those exams I’d have to get a job.

My mother thought I’d be best suited for office work, and we both had some hazy idea that I ought to embark on a career. The result was that I spent over a year working as an insurance clerk, doing probably the most boring work I’ve ever had to do.

In that time things became so bad that I took the chance presented to me of entering the legal profession, in spite of having realised at an early stage that I was hopeless at organising files. This was back in the 1960s, before computers in the workplace was the norm. Everything was done on paper.

For the next few years I regarded qualifying as a lawyer as a kind of challenge – passing the onerous exams and surviving the low-paid and complicated work in the office until I reached the end of the rainbow and claimed the pot of gold.

Of course there was no pot of gold. There was just the grim reality that I’d spend most of the rest of my life in an office working with people, some of whom I liked and some I didn’t, and trying to satisfy clients, some of whom were pleasant and some horrible.

The money wasn’t too bad, though it could have been better. But the thing that I hated about it was the fact that, in order to progress up the ladder, you had to conform. And be polite to people you despised. I never was any good at acting at school, and that never changed, so you can imagine how well I handled the situation.

Things were completely different from what I had envisaged when I entered the law. I felt I had lost control. Yet had I but realised it I had in my hands the means to jettison all of that, take my life back, and incidentally earn more money than I ever would carrying on with what I was doing.

You see, work, jobs and careers are all different, yet I didn’t really want any of them. I don’t suppose I was alone in that. How many people hate their jobs, yet, because they are poor, live in fear of losing it?

If you really want to do something with your life, and have a great time with it, then decide at an early stage exactly what you want to be. Then work out how you’re going to get there.

Whatever you do all day, even if you find it uninspiring, work to make yourself the best there is at it. By doing that you’ll make sure you quickly move on to the next rung of the ladder. Establish if the knowledge you have acquired is enough to help other people with a problem they have.

If you can articulate other people’s problems and provide a solution then you have the makings of an information product that you’ll be able to sell over and over again. Then you’ll be rich, and you won’t need a job or a career.

Philip Gegan

As George Bernard Shaw said, the trouble with youth is that it’s wasted on the young.

When you’re 18 you seem to spend all your time either working, studying, out with your friends or engaged in activities – sports, hobbies, or pastimes – that will probably bring little lasting benefit to you. There just doesn’t seem to be time for anything else.

Oh! the time that I wasted when I was 18! Didn’t you waste time when you were 18? We all did. Just a few years out of childhood, we suddenly have this adult body and brain that we don’t know what to do with.

Yet it would only have taken a little time to sit down and think. To think about what we wanted to do with our lives. To plan things out. To decide what kind of things we were good at and what kind of things we weren’t. What things we liked and what things we didn’t.

Research has shown that graduates of 21 or 22 that sit down and write what they want to accomplish in their lives are generally more successful than those who don’t.

Yes, a little planning ahead, a little concentrated thought and self-assessment, taking up just a couple of hours at the age of 18 can make a big difference to your life. The trouble is that by the time you realise that, you’re probably in your thirties or older.

I was way past the age of 18 when I read that you can get anything you want if you simply help other people get what they want.

If you study the lives of anyone who became successful in business, and consequently very rich, then there is a definite pattern that proves this to be true. From Andrew Carnegie to Richard Branson, and all the others in between, they have all helped other people get what they want, and in doing so they got into a position where they had all they ever wanted themselves.

To know something like that at a young age is to have a tremendous head start in life. Instead of going into a boring job just for the sake of earning enough to pay for a modest lifestyle, you can realise the possibilities in front of you.

Just look around and establish what it is that thousands of people seek. Often it’s simply the solution to a problem. Find that solution and present it to them. They’ll thank you for it and happily pay you enough over and over again to ensure that you always have enough to get whatever it is that you want from life.

Philip Gegan

That’s what most people are thinking most of the time. And if only I’d known that when I was 18 I’d have done a lot better.

When they’re reading the paper – what’s in it for me? When they’re watching TV – what’s in it for me? When they’re doing their shopping – what’s in it for me?

Once you understand this very simple fact of life everything else falls into place. Well, nearly everything, because there are some things in life we just won’t get, of course.

So when you approach someone to try and interest them in something, or you write something to persuade people to do something, like buy your product, they’ll be thinking – What’s in it for me?

Philip Gegan

The full title of this category should be “Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 18″, but that would probably be a little cumbersome for the hyper-links in this blog.

Can you think of anything you wish you’d known when you were 18? Or even a bit older, going into your 20s? Of course you can. We all can. To have a wise head on such young shoulders would have been a tremendous advantage . . .

Like most young men of that age, one of the foremost topics on my mind was girls. And when I think back to some of the occasions when I messed up with a girlfriend, and the way it happened, I still cringe in embarrassment. If only I had known then what I know now.

I don’t want to sound like someone who thinks they know it all, because I don’t. Not by a long way. But I’m pretty sure I know a damn sight more now than I knew then. [And so you should, you've been around long enough. - Annon.]

Perhaps the main thing I wish I’d known back then is this. Girls aren’t generally interested in being made to feel that their boyfriend is the most fantastic boy in the world. They’re interested in being made to feel that they are the most fantastic girl in the world.

There must be thousands of other things, but that’s one that came off the top of my head. Let’s hear from anyone with a contribution to make to this question – What do you wish you’d known when you were 18? Or even 20?

Philip Gegan