33 Simple Rules to Live By (or At Least Try Your Best Not to Break)

1. ✍️ Be the writer. With every decision, ask yourself, “Which action is most likely to make for the better story?”
2. ✂️ Be the editor. If your life story’s no good, it’s up to you to do something about it.¹More: Hold yourself accountable and take control of your life story.
3. ✏️ Be editable. “The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.” – Muhammed Ali.²More: Open your mind and keep it that way, steer clear of the self-justification vortex, and keep a minimalistic identity.
4. 📝 Be coherent. You’ll have a hard time finding meaning in your life if nobody can understand it.³More: Find a purpose or personal mission and focus on the good FOMO.
5. 👍 Be positive. Anything that goes wrong is a plot twist that makes your story more exciting.⁴More: How to make your life more exciting.
6. 🔗 Be balanced. Your life is only as strong as its weakest link.⁵More: Train your comfort zone with a “life workout plan.”
7. 🏋️‍♂️ Be proactive. Creating your own discomfort leads to a lot less discomfort in the long run than letting discomfort come and push you around.⁶More: Now’s the time to push yourself to keep your comfort zone from suffocating you.
8. 🙏 Be grateful. “If you aren’t grateful for the things in your life, you shouldn’t bother getting more things in your life, because you also won’t be grateful for them.” – Tynan.
9. 🥅 Be inner-scorcarded. Rather than play others’ games, shoot for your own definition of winning at life.⁷More: How to define it and measure it.
10. 🏆 Be competitive. But be slightly more cooperative to win at life.⁸More: Win life without competing.
11. 🌻 Be inoffensive. Seek to unite and never separate with your actions and beliefs.
12. ⚔️ Be disagree-able. Be able to constructively disagree because “The only thing worse than having toxic arguments is not having arguments at all.” – Ian Leslie.⁹More: Seek demotivational speakers and be one, don’t argue like a Neanderthal, change minds strategically, and reap the benefits of conflict.
13. 👂🏾 Be advise-able. “The advice you don’t want to hear is often the advice you need.” – Oliver Burkeman.
14. ⛑ Be unselfish. Happiness, however you choose to define it, comes not from pursuing it for yourself, but from helping others (including your future self) find it.¹⁰More: Solve problems for a career and a purpose, be nice to Future You, and let other people help you.
15. 🤩 Be a role model. Lead by example and don’t do things you wouldn’t want everyone else to do.
16. 👋 Be social. Using introversion as an excuse not to work on your relationships is the same as not being physically active because of a handicap.
17. 🚰 Be successfilling. There’s no such thing as being fully successful, so focus on the act of succeeding over the state of success.¹¹More: Definition of success.
18. 👀 Be a vicarious learner. “You shouldn’t have to try it to learn not to pee on an electric fence.” – Warren Buffett¹²More: Learn the less-hard way.
19. 🔮 Be decisive. “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.” – Jerzy Gregorek¹³More: Game-changing decisions.
20. ⚙️ Be systematic. “We don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the levels of our systems.” – James Clear.¹⁴More: Have systems over goals and organize your life.
21. 🎬 Be regret-able. Have a bias toward action that may increase short-term regret but decreases it in the long term.¹⁵More: Don’t minimize regret.
22. ⚒ Be a doer. “It’s easier to act your way to a new way of thinking than think your way to a new way of acting.” – Jerry Sternin¹⁶More: Avoid diabetes of the mind and try new things like these.
23. ⏳ Be impatiently patient. “Impatience with action, patience with results.” – Naval Ravikant.¹⁷More: Urgently be more patient and develop the habits of a gardener.
24. 🦚 Be rationally unconventional. Be willing to act differently from the norm if first principles lead you to believe it makes sense.¹⁸More: Live an unconventional life.
25. 🏇 Be in control of your emotions. “Feeling is for doing,” so if your feelings are out of control, so are your actions.
26. 🩹 Be unoffendable. The only identities worth keeping are anti-fragile.¹⁹More: Identity vs. Personality.
27. 👅 Be seriously unserious. Take great care to avoid sticks up your butt, which make it impossible to move freely.²⁰More: Release your handbrakes.
28. 🤷‍♂️ Be realistic. You can’t do anything you put your mind to, so make the most of what you’re made of.²¹More: Understand your wiring, nurture your nature, and beware false growth mindsets, then apply these strategies to be your best self.
29. 🧬 Be Homo sapiens. Move a lot in fresh air, eat regular foods at irregular intervals, rest when needed, and spend quality time with other Homo sapiens.²²More: Ditch the gym, eat intermittently, and periodically escape into the wild.
30. 🔬 Be curious. Learning is more rewarding than knowing.²³More: Ignorance isn’t bliss.
31. 💎 Be perpetually perfecting. Fill your day with presently enjoyable challenges that make your future days even better.²⁴More: Make your perfect day perpetual.
32. 🏴‍☠️ Be a rule-breaker. The only set-in-stone rule to live by is that nothing is set in stone.
33. ⚡️ Be unfollowable. Lead an extraordinary life only you could live. Follow all of these rules to live by, and it’s inevitable.²⁵More: Get featured in The Unfollowables interview series.

Next: What Are Your Strategies?

For how to apply these rules to have a great time in the game of life, you might enjoy one of these: