Life Principles

TL;DR -

Overview

This page holds a non-exhaustive list of principles I hold about life. I have a lot of these so I wanted a place I could hold them for posterity.

Mains:

• Do good, have fun, and improve each cycle. That's it. You do this over a lifetime and you'll end up in a good spot. It might not be where you had in mind and it may not be your full potential in any one dimension but you'll end up somewhere reasonable.
• Atomic Cycles for everything. Iteration is key for achieving good outcomes and improving yourself. For everything you do, Observe your goals and make a plan to attain them, Create action / impact in pursuit of them, Reflect on how that went and improve your cycle. Apply this to everything for continuous improvement.
• Simple Systems Scale. They may not be the most efficient or flexible or powerful. But simple systems are by default easy to use, implement, and change. Start simple, scale up as necessary. Simplicity is a perspective - simple on the outside can be complex on the inside.

Others

• Simple > Complex - Simple Systems Scale. It's better to get a simple thing out that we can test and iterate on than iterate on the perfect thing in darkness. It will never get shipped and the odds are it's not perfect - nothing is perfect.
• Test in prod - At the end of the day prod is what matters and reality always diverges from the model to some degree. So no matter what we do we're always testing in prod. Prepare for the worst and ensure you have backups / observability for when it happens.
• Everything's a hypothesis - All knowledge is built on hypotheses. Some has been tested for millenia so we have a high degree of confidence about how they behave in reality but that's no guarantee that's actually true or will remain true.
• 3 Constants are Death, Taxes, and Change. Death comes to everything - Make peace with that and enjoy it as best you can. Taxes are necessary - if we want nice things we must pay taxes, those who avoid them shirk their duty to their neighbor and society. If you don't pay taxes (and are able) then you shouldn't benefit from their works. Change is constant. Plan for it, enjoy it.
• To get good at something, you must do it 100 times. To get really good you must do it 10k. I see this over and over again from coding to writing to making youtube videos to photos to games. You are going to suck at whatever you try but if you keep at it and research how to be better, reflect on what you've done each cycle then you'll inevitably improve over time. This doesn't mean it's always worth it to invest more but you will improve.
• Focus on Impact. Every activity has a leverage point. That leverage depends on your situation, what tools you have, and what you're trying to accomplish. But if you focus on impact then you can best allocate your efforts where they matter.
• Good > Perfect. Perfect does not exist, it's impossible. But we can approach that limit. The best way to do this is to set constraints on your inputs (time, energy, resources), set a goal you want to approach, and iterate the best you can through that. Small cycles with Observe, Create, Reflect loops typically win. Getting something out there and testing in prod early then iterating on the results will beat a single "perfect" iteration every time. Plus you'll have actually shipped smth whereas perfect will never see the light of day.
• Follow your curiosity - One way to look at strengths is what you're good at. Another is what you're interested in. Over time, the thing you're most interested in is likely going to be where you find you're best at over time as you'll be more willing to put in more cycles for that thing even outside of work hours. It will also be more fulfilling long term so you'll keep at it for more years. And if you can find a thing like this that also overlaps with your existing / potential strengths / talents then you've got a good setup long term.
• Learn from others. Do research, see what others have done, learn from those. Keep a healthy skepticism (everything's a hypothesis, trust but verify) but also don't reinvent the wheel unless you have an edge there. This can save you LOTS of time.
• Hours of coding can save you minutes of planning - Always start with a plan. Start with a hypothesis of what you want to do (what, for who, so that or problem, context, solution). Then direct all energy through that lens. This will save you so much time working on things that don't matter because it's easier to spot where the impact is.
• Writing is knowing what you think. If you don't write, it's likely you don't fully know how you think about things or your thoughts on a subject. Writing is similar to trying to teach smth and has similar benefits to understanding, memory, and developing your ideas.
• Be happy, make happy. At the end of the day, life is meaningless. You make your own purpose in life. So if nothing matters you might as well enjoy it while you've got it.
• Be rigid in your systems so you can be spontaneous in life. Life is better when you have things together - well rested, no existential crises, base maslow needs taken care of. By keeping a rigid system that fits your ideal cycles, you can take care of all these needs and thus open yourself up to truly enjoy everything else. You won't have this large weight over your head regarding survival as that's taken care of, now you can focus on enjoying it.
• Spend less than you earn, invest the rest. Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. But too often people live above their means, digging large holes of debt and missing out on years and years of compounding. Living over your means is not cool, it's foolish. So get your budgets in order, spend less than you earn, build up an emergency fund of 3-6 months to ensure your reasonable survival, and invest the rest into indexes to participate in compounding. This is not financial advice, just my opinion but I think you should shoot for a 40% savings rate after taxes or higher to balance having money to spend today, building up buffer in case of emergencies, and compounding hard so that you can reach financial independence while you can still enjoy it.
• Live your rich life. On the opposite side of things from saving money is learning how to spend your money. There's such a thing as being too frugal where you don't allow yourself to do the things you want and therefore end up living a life worse than you oculd. An example is a millionaire that buys the cheapest flights and thus has to take them at odd hours and with many layovers - that's a net negative for their lives and those around them for essentially no gain. Living your rich life does not mean spending above your means, it really means figuring out what matters to you and examining what levers you could pull to get closer to your ideal life within your current means. This often means cutting back on areas you don't care about and expanding in areas you do.
• Minimalism is prioritizing by value. Minimalism doesn't mean living a frugal, barebones life. It means cutting out things that don't bring you value and increasing those that do.
• Knowledge without action is useless. Knowledge is only useful if you do something with it.
• Be your own protagonist. This is your story and typically only antagonists will try to write it for you, in their own best interests. Take control and write your own story, the way you want it.
• Be kind. You can be infinite things in the world but you might as well be kind. If you don't have the time / will to do even that you need to rethink your priorities. You might just be the bad guy in these stories.
• No one thinks they're evil. Okay some people do and they get a high on it but the vast majority of people doing bad things think they're doing it for a good reason. So be open to feedback, avoid yes men, and be humble - if you aren't you could be the next evil person doing things with good intentions.
• Stick to your values - We will never find 100% alignment with others. The beauty of life is that it's so varied but this also means there will always be people who disagree with you. When in doubt, revisit your values and what you stand for and how your goals / actions align. If they're well aligned and you've considered the disagreements and they haven't changed your mind, push through.
• Murphy's Law. Anything bad that can happen will happen (and likely at the worst possible time). So prepare for the worst and then go play the odds.

SECTION

Todos

• Continue adding principles / sayings
• Fill out main sayings with more