Personal Rules

I have a few

I read this wonderful blog post recently: Wise People Have Rules for Themselves. Go and read it quickly, it’s worth it.I really agree with the underlying premise. Simple rules of thumb to reduce or eliminate decisions are a great way to improve your life.

I have a number of personal rules that automate certain bits of my life, but I’ve also failed to create rules in other parts of my life. Notably, I have so far failed to establish strong exercise habits, and my diet could still use a bit of fine-tuning. I don’t have decent productivity rules, and still spend far too much unstructured time online.

However, the rules I do have work quite well. The problem is that while writing this I found I only have two of them.

Clearly this is a less-than-ideal situation. I think I need more of these rules. Tynan explains it well in this post: a good rule allows you to eliminate decisions, and it is thinking about decisions that taxes your willpower. If you have a rule that you follow there is nothing to think about.

Here are my two rules:

1. Drink water or black coffee

I’ve been doing this for a long time now. In most situations, almost all of the time, I only drink water or black coffee. One benefit of this is that neither has any calories. Another is that they are both cheap.

I don’t like the taste of tapwater and disapprove of bottled water, so we have a water filter machine thingy at home and at work. They are wonderful.

2. Put money away every month

As I described in this post, I save about 2 million yen a year and invest it. This is both a habit and a rule, I guess. I started with very small amounts and increased them very gradually. After a while it feels completely normal.

I also have a few new ones that I am just rolling out:

* Don’t touch my phone when I am driving

This is a new one. I used to glance at my phone when I stopped at red lights, but I think that is basically a stupid habit, one with little upside and a lot of downside. Now my rule is that when I get in the car I plug my phone in to charge and don’t look at it again until I stop the car. So far (a few weeks) it’s working very well.

* If possible, take the stairs

My office is on the fifth floor, and I will normally have to go up and down 3-4 times a day -a good way to get low-level exercise and save on electricity for the elevator. At home we live on the third floor. I manage to keep to this rule almost all the time.

Now, I have lots of almost-rules that come close, but they are not embedded as firmly as the ones above. Something to work on perhaps. I particularly need to come up with some more rules for exercise, food, productivity, and socializing.

How about you? Do you have any personal rules?

8 Responses

  1. Try to walk at least 40 minutes every day (a proper walk, not just pootling around).
    Sit down while teaching as little as possible. This is being made easier by either crappy chairs, or an impossible small space space between blackboard and high chair.
    Eat broccoli every day.
    Only drink good quality gin.

    1. The gin is a good call -been really pleasantly surprised the last few times I’ve stuck to gin while drinking 🙂

    2. >>Sit down while teaching as little as possible.
      Teaching at little as possible is ok, but I try to stand up 🙂

  2. I prefer Bombay Sapphire Gin on ice mixed with lemon juice and Fever Tree Tonic Water. With all those mossies in Japan you need the quinine! My rule is simply 2 x G&T’s on Fri and Sat and only after dinner.

  3. One of my “rules” is to avoid speaking in rules. When talking to people, anyone, I avoid saying “I always…,” or “I never…,” or anything similar.

  4. My beveage/food rules are
    1 Don’t drink black coffee. It scrapes the inside of your stomach and produces acid.
    One of the best ways to facilitate stomach cancer, gastric problems of magnitude.
    2 Eat very little seafood especially sushi in Japan. The fish are loaded with toxic substances and the effects are chillingly long-term such as dementia facilitation, cancer causing agents etc.
    But as I see it it is self-inflicted karma for the Japanese as Japan is a rogue over-fisher and destroyer of marine eco-systems with no apology or intelligent assessment of what it is doing.
    You demand to over-fish and destroy resources – you get in return all the toxicity and death that your industrial policies created.
    But let them do it. Be wiser and smarter.