Do’s

Inspired by Erick Arjaluoto and Derek Sivers, I’ve decided to keep an updated list of things I try to do, and things I try to avoid, in order to live the life I want to have. Some of these are aspirational. Updated 2021-10-11.

Learning

• Write down new things you learn. Review the ones you want to remember.

• Have you reached every goal and dream you have? If not, be prepared to change how you do everything, throw it out, learn and try a new way of doing something.

• Work on the hard thing. When there’s a choice between a quick fix, and hard work, hard work will teach you more and give you more options.

• Share it. Write about it, record a video, just share it with someone. Good ideas can resonate, and create ripple effects.

Finance

• Invest asymmetrically. That is, if you can lose 100%, there must be a good chance of winning at least 3x that. This way you can afford to be wrong many times. If you only earn 2-10%, you can never afford to be wrong.

• Pay yourself first. Always save a % of all income (currently I’m at 46%).

Health

• Strength is key to mobility, especially as one ages. Lift heavy things.

• Meditate, however works for you, but find stillness of mind. Often.

Productivity

• Optimise tools/process/plans and schedule only if there’s a clear way of freeing up a lot of time. It’s so easy to get stuck in optimising, and picking the right tools, instead of doing the work. Just do the work instead.

• Don’t plan more than you have the energy to do. Be really honest about how much that is, when you run out of energy, realised that you’ve planned badly and start removing things from future plans.

• Create a system or process when something needs to be done more than once. This frees up a lot of mental energy and strain.

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Don’t

• Don’t hide or hoard knowledge, believing it gives you and edge. You’ll just forget it. Publish and share.

• Don’t over-optimise. Before you have the basic foundations of anything nailed down, there’s not reason to go looking for optimisations and short cuts. You’re only procrastinating. Do every first without thinking.

• Invest in hype.

• Don’t follow special food diets. You can calculate how much you should eat, make sure its enough protein and fibrous veggies, stay away from sugar. You’ll be fine.

• Don’t engage in dopamine hit behaviour. Avoid becoming an addict by deliberately spending time being bored.

• Don’t be serious, have fun. Fun means you’re engaged, active and creative.

• Don’t engage in politics, or fights. There’s no need to prove anyone wrong, that’s just ego.

• Don’t seek validation or rewards. Do the work, because it is worth doing.

• Don’t jump on every idea.

• Don’t commute.