principles i keep
the ideas i reread more often than anything else i have written. some borrowed, a few mine.
i keep a folder in my vault called quotes and principles, and a short rule book next to it. both are small on purpose. these are the ones that survived.
the peter principle. anything that works well will be used in progressively harder conditions until it causes a catastrophe. the better-known form: in a hierarchy, everyone rises to their level of incompetence. the more people a system has at that level, the lower its standards fall. the work is done by those who haven’t got there yet.
the hedgehog. isaiah berlin split people into foxes, who chase several small goals at once, and hedgehogs, who pursue one large goal with discipline. jim collins turned it into three questions: what can you be the best in the world at, what drives your economics, what do you actually care about. where the three overlap is your hedgehog.
buffett’s 5/25. write down the twenty-five things you want to achieve. circle the five that matter most. the other twenty are not a backlog. they are the list of things you avoid at all costs, because they are what will pull you off the five.
occam’s razor. do not multiply entities beyond necessity. when explaining something, reach for what is already known before inventing something new. most conspiracy theories fail this test. so does most software architecture.
roosevelt. get action. do things. be sane. don’t fritter away your time. create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody. get action.
the four agreements. from don miguel ruiz.
- don’t take anything personally.
- be impeccable with your word.
- don’t make assumptions.
- always do your best.
deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. the short version of 5/25.
action kills anxiety. the short version of roosevelt.
the rest are mine.
breathe for three seconds before saying yes to small things. big requests get thought through. small ones get a reflexive yes, and they are what fills the week.
not carelessness, but a conscious choice of worries. you don’t get a life without worries. you get to pick which ones.
attention is the main resource. everything else on this list is a way of protecting it.
okudzhava said it better than any of them: the whole world is built out of limits, so that we don’t go mad from happiness.
i also keep steph ango’s forty questions and answer them every year. the answers change. the questions don’t.