13 Life Lessons Learned From Mad Men’s Don Draper

8) If there’s not a cigarette in your hand, you’re doing life wrong

Smoke up! How can you expect to be the biggest badass the 60’s has ever seen if you don’t sweat nicotine? Smoke in the shower, smoke while you’re putting the kids to bed – hell, you should probably give smoking in your sleep the old college try. Who needs lungs really anyway? Losers, that’s who.

And you’re not a loser, you’re a winner, and winners contract lung cancer at the age of 25 – fact.

7) It is never a bad time to abuse Peggy

There’s no support like the kind of support that leaves your budding protégé with crippling emotional trauma. Respond to her puppy-dog like earnestness with a combination of vitriol and muted grumpiness. When she comes to you with a good idea, either tweak it and claim it as your own or throw it in the trash so you can feed off her grief.

She looks up to you, and therefore must be made to feel like crap. It’s for her own good, of course. It’s a cut-throat world out there, and she needs to be reminded of that every second of every day.