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One hundred and one rules of effective living

mitchhorowitz.substack.com

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Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#41

Post by mindtricks »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #23
snide wrote: post #11

I've always like Ben Franklin's 13 virtues. It's a short list. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to…

That sounds like a very boring and miserable way to live. To respond with one of my own: --- When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells And run my stick a…

I think it's fair to have principles and still have an interesting an active life. The best example of this would have to be, well, Ben Franklin.

Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#42

Post by os2warpman »

snide wrote: post #11

I've always like Ben Franklin's 13 virtues. It's a short list. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to…

Having read quite a bit about Franklin, his life was defined by an extremely generous interpretation of some of those virtues.

Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#43

Post by bwfan123 »

corry wrote: post #21

101 rules? Too many. I vastly prefer not a rule but THE life challenge with thanks to Mary Oliver: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

these 100 rules are missing an important one. step back, and simplify. these rules are a result of overthinking which is something to avoid.

far simpler rules have been laid out numerous times in the classics.

such as: the golden rule of ethics, ie, dont do unto others what you dont want done to you, and the serenity prayer etc.

Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#44

Post by xivzgrev »

I like how these kind of lists get us talking and thinking about our own experiences. What do you agree with, not agree with?

“Those who bill by the hour work not for you but for the hour.” Strikes me as cynical. Yes some people can run up the clock, but paying by the hour is also fundamentally the most fair work arrangement. You are asking for someone’s time, you pay for that time.

Flat rate work gets into their own issues. For example, suppose you want your home deep cleaned and someone charges you $x to do so. A great deal!

Except you find after the fact they missed a lot of stuff. Technically they followed through on the letter of what you agreed to but they did the bare minimum. There’s no pride in the work. If you had paid by the hour, you could’ve asked them to stay and focus on some areas that matter more to you.

Or conversely, there’s lots of horror stories here about devs accepting flat rate work and getting endlessly dragged thru change requests

Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#45

Post by dole »

os2warpman wrote: post #42
snide wrote: post #11

I've always like Ben Franklin's 13 virtues. It's a short list. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to…

Having read quite a bit about Franklin, his life was defined by an extremely generous interpretation of some of those virtues.

"Franklin did not try to work on them all at once. Instead, he worked on only one each week "leaving all others to their ordinary chance." While he did not adhere completely to the enumerated virtues, and by his own admission he fell short of them many times, he believed the attempt made him a better man, contributing greatly to his success and happiness, which is why in his autobiography, he devoted more pages to this plan than to any other single point and wrote, "I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit."

[0] https://www.ushistory.org/franklin/autobiography/page38.htm

Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#46

Post by reverendsteveii »

xivzgrev wrote: post #44

I like how these kind of lists get us talking and thinking about our own experiences. What do you agree with, not agree with? “Those who bill by the hour work not for you but for the hour.” Strikes me as cynical. Yes some people can run up the clock, but paying by the hour is also fundamentally the most fair work arrangement. You are asking for someone’s time, you pay for that time. Flat rate work gets into their own…

>I like how these kind of lists get us talking and thinking about our own experiences. What do you agree with, not agree with?

I panned this list in a different comment but I like it a lot better from this perspective. It's not necessarily there to be right. Sometimes it's there to say things to which your immediate response is "That's bullshit" but in a way that forces you to articulate why, or (and this is even better) to admit that you can't. Like when I read Heinlein.

Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#47

Post by reverendsteveii »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #23
snide wrote: post #11

I've always like Ben Franklin's 13 virtues. It's a short list. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to…

That sounds like a very boring and miserable way to live. To respond with one of my own: --- When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells And run my stick a…

while I like redhatting as much as anyone the interesting wrinkle to this criticism of franklin in particular is that this is much more like the way he actually lived than the principles he listed were. in fact, I dare say the only thing he missed on this list was making up for the non-existent sobriety of his youth.

Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#48

Post by CompoundEyes »

These things remind me of the book “My Year of Living Biblically” by A.J. Jacobs. In our lives if we stopped to consult a list of all the platitudes we’ve ever come across one by one each time we did or experienced anything it would be similarly as absurd full of contradiction paralyzing.

Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#49

Post by reverendsteveii »

hnthrow90348765 wrote: post #25

>1) Do your work—do it on time and fully, if not early and overabundantly. I cannot overstate how absolutely hollow it must be that work is your #1 rule of living The next saddest thing is that the only mention of love is a fucking Machiavelli quote

Work != job

One of my greatest pleasures has been orienting my life toward projects and away from pleasures. I now find myself doing a lot of what other people consider work, but self-directed and self-paced in a way that brings me incredible, deep satisfaction. No one, including me, forces me to do these things. I do them because I like doing them. Bodybuilding, maintaining my home, lawn and garden, cooking/brewing/fermenting, building software. I'm not an extraordinarily wealthy man but if I woke up tomorrow with "comfortably live the rest of your life based on interest alone" money I don't suspect my life would change all that much.

Once you're doing that sort of work, the meaning of this rule will become clear as will its meaninglessness.

Re: One hundred and one rules of effective living

#50

Post by PaulRobinson »

hnthrow90348765 wrote: post #25

>1) Do your work—do it on time and fully, if not early and overabundantly. I cannot overstate how absolutely hollow it must be that work is your #1 rule of living The next saddest thing is that the only mention of love is a fucking Machiavelli quote

If these are in priority order, sure. If not, it's 0.9909% of the rules of living.

That Machiavelli quote is a poor take on love as part of life, I agree.

In defense of TFA though, it is titled rules of effective living, not necessarily happy living.

The rules on avoiding cruel people and who treat others badly are kind of like an anti-rule that works here though: if you're judicious and conscientious about that, I think you just end up with loving people around you, in every type of relationship: acquaintance, familial, friendship, intimate...

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