If you’re paying attention to the world around you, it becomes pretty clear pretty

fast that nobody’s perfect. Our leaders, our businessmen, our athletes, even the

characters on screen who count as our brightest lights are carrying around enough

bad habits to make Duke Nukem go rosey. So Tiger Woods stuck it in anything

with two feet and a wonder bra, he’s also, thanks to an extreme work ethic and

dedication, the best virtuoso golfer in the universe. General Petraeus had one or two

affairs after a lifetime of service and reigning in the biggest gong show in the world,

Wesley Snipes may have cheated on his taxes, but Major League was pretty funny.

But that’s the problem, the world doesn’t seem to understand a man can have

qualities worthy of emulation despite his vices (however slight or serious). The

other problem is what lead these guys to pretend they were perfect in the first place.

Why sanitize this stuff? Who is it good for? We shouldn’t strive towards perfection,

we should strive towards improvement. It’s always possible and you’ll be heading in

the same direction anyway.

Daniel Craig’s incarnation of James Bond wears his vices on his sleeve. He’s

brooding, an borderline alcoholic, a murderer many times over and even if you were

his best friend he’d probably sleep with your mom, sister and girlfriend the second

you left the room to pull some hor dourves from the oven.

Lucky for us, we rational men are blessed with the ability to cherrypick the

strengths and traits we want to cultivate in ourselves, while passing on the crazy

parts that would likely land us in jail forever or on the business end of an honour

killing.

So in the spirit of Skyfall, the movie everybody has apparently already seen three

times, we bring you the Do’s and Don’ts of England’s coolest spy.

DO: Take care of yourself. For every hour Bond spends moping, drinking and

shooting, he spends two at the gym pounding out the free weights. His predecessors

proved that you don’t have to have an Atlas body to get the girl (looking at you

Pierce), but when the protagonist coming out of the ocean outshines every Bond girl

ever, you know you’re doing something right.

DO NOT: Dick over your friends. James is so dead set on catching the cats

responsible for his double crossing Vesper Lynd, that he tags his pal Mathis with a

taser in his own house and gets him sent to wherever they torture English secret

prisoners nowadays. You don’t have to trust everybody, but you have to trust

somebody, or you’ll be miserable.

DO: Dress Well. The first thought on Bond’s mind when he jumps from one burning,

exploding train car to safefy is to straighten his suit. Why? Because he still has

things to do, and when you look sharp, everything else comes a little easier. If you’re

gonna make it, make it look good.

DO NOT: Be violent. Your bones would be ground to a fine powder after half the

sustained beating any Bond takes in any of his movies. We’re not built for it and

when it’s absolutely necessary it shouldn’t be glorified as anything more than it

is. Scrapping looks awesome on camera, but in real life, in the parking lot outside

the movie theatre for instance, you just look like a bunch of drunks dropping their

IQs one punch at a time. This goes so much more for playing with guns. Bullets

are notoriously difficult to dodge. Most of the time, when professional soldiers are

shooting at you, you get shot.

DO: Be the best at your job. Any job worth doing is worth doing well, and James

Bond is very good at being an agent. He’s “M”’s go-to fella when it comes to mopping

up messes, he’s efficient and tenacious at getting his job done, and we’ve yet to see

him ultimately fail at anything. JB isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty and he’s not

hung up on getting recognition from his co-workers, in fact he’s not keen on them at

all, (except that one new kid in R&D).

DO NOT: Sleep with every single woman you meet. There’s nothing wrong with sex,

certainly there’s nothing wrong with having a long list of sexual partners, but it’s a

real dumb idea to look at the world like it was a meat market. You’ll always do much

better in life when you can approach 50% of the people you meet without working

out a way to undress them, and discretion is always the better part of valor.