Many years ago, I started reading Kevin Kelly's advice on life. Last year, I read his book "Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier" and carefully selected ten pieces of advice that I found most valuable to keep close by and reread often.
- Very few regrets in life are about what you did. Almost all are about what you didn’t do.
- There is no perfection, only progress. Done is much better than perfect.
- You are as big as the things that make you angry.
- Spend ⅓ of your time on exploring and ⅔ on optimizing and deepening. As you mature it is harder to devote time to exploring because it seems unproductive but aim for ⅓.
- When you feel like quitting just do five more: 5 more minutes, 5 more pages 5 more steps. Then repeat. Sometimes you can break through and keep going but even if you can’t, you ended five ahead. Tell yourself that you will quit tomorrow but not today.
- You have to first follow the rules with diligence in order to break them productively.
- If your goal does not have a schedule, it is a dream.
- You can reduce the annoyance of someone’s stupid belief by increasing your understanding of why they believe it.
- Rule of 3 in conversation: To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and then once more. The third time’s answer is the one closest to the truth.
- Whenever you can’t decide which path to take pick the one that produces change.
In his book "Principles," Ray Dalio writes, "Every day, each of us is faced with a blizzard of situations we must respond to. Without principles we would be forced to react to all the things life throws at us individually, as if we were experiencing each of them for the first time. If instead we classify these situations into types and have good principles for dealing with them, we will make better decisions more quickly and have better lives as a result."
Inspired by this, I also started to summarize my own advice and principles. My goal was for each principle to be a guide that I could follow mechanically whenever a certain situation came up. After some time of summarizing and recording, I've compiled ten rules that I can follow blindly:
- Don't be an early adopter of software updates unless they are for security purposes.
- That thing you think you'll never forget? You will. Write it down.
- Learn skills and knowledge that seem useless right now.
- Record your clothing, pants, and shoe sizes for different brands and check your notes before buying new ones.
- When the seasons change, go through your closet and donate anything you haven't worn in the last three years.
- Get a haircut every three weeks, even if you don't have any major plans for the next week.
- Don't overestimate your productivity at home. Don't plan to work or read there. If you do get work or reading done, consider it a bonus, not the norm.
- If you have several phone calls to make, try to schedule them all in one time block and get them over with at once.
- For things that you have to do eventually but not right now, do them now.
- When you don't know what to eat in an unfamiliar place, ask a local where they last ate with friends.