My Eight Rules for Living

Important things I learned the hard way. Sometimes the very hard way.

Me. At dinner, usually.

Like, I assume, most people, I like to think I’ve learned some things in the course of my life. Some of it is trivial or applies only to me – remember to move slowly when reaching for something at the dinner table, because otherwise, you’ll knock it over, for example. I’m quite clumsy. But others have proven more important, and perhaps more universal. These are principles that have validated themselves over and over, and have had major consequences for me. Maybe they will for you, too.

By the way, I’m an utter minor-leaguer at this. If you want to explore the thinking of the Baller of Principles, take a look at Ray Dalio’s stuff. Dalio founded a hedge fund called Bridgewater Associates, and ended up making it the biggest in the world and himself $16 billion. He has written extensively, and amazingly, about his principles, which number in the hundreds.

Anyway, if I had observed my principles from the beginning of my life, I would have been endlessly rewarded – financially, interpersonally, professionally. Here they are:

1. Pay Very Close Attention to What People Do, and Completely Ignore What They Say

If I had to pick one rule for evaluating other people, this would be it. It’s not easy to implement – I am typically a complete sucker for people’s stories – but it never, ever fails.

The absolute bottom-line rule for judging someone is to look at what they have actually done, and to give no attention at all to promises, justifications, self-description, and so on. This is especially true when it comes to romantic relationships, but it applies in business, too. Results, outcomes, action are important. Words are worthless. People aren’t usually deliberately lying, but they often believe their own bullshit.

One of my favorite examples of this is an acquaintance who is all over social media going on and on about social justice (particularly for indigenous people, which she is not), compassion, parenthood and so on. She’s a self-professed kind of touchy-feely life coach, and is full of pretty aggressive advice about how one should live one’s life. Moral outrage is a specialty.

However, in reality – what she’s actually done – her life is a complete disaster, and her children are a mess. Each of them is from a different man, none of whom stuck around. She has never managed to have anything like a real career. She’s a human train wreck, has all kinds of self-described mental health issues, and what she says is just hot air.

This is what a badass actually looks like.

Conversely, one of the toughest, bravest, most moral people I have ever known is Father Joel Miller, an Episcopal priest who used to run the Red Church in Santa Cruz. During the pandemic, I got him to give me personal Communion in return for helping him move a very heavy safe. Having a priest perform the entire ceremony just for you is the closest I’ll ever get to being Pope. It’s amazing. Episcopal priests all have a portable, minimalist version of the things they use for sacraments, and when they bring and use these somewhere, it’s the Christian equivalent of having it done in church. In this case, my home, for about an hour, became a church.

Father Joel comes across as a mild-mannered, benign cleric. In fact, he lived in Africa for many years, has traveled the world, and absolutely puts his life where his mouth is. He’s the real deal and an authentic badass who has seen more shit than a hundred people combined, but you’d never know it from what he says. Actions, not words.

2. Intelligence is Overrated. Persistence is Underrated

Obviously, it’s helpful to be smart, but without more – a lot more – not only doesn’t it not get you anywhere, it can often get in the way. Other attributes – hard work, character, luck, persistence – can have a lot more to do with success than simple brainpower.

I have seen so many people who were ferociously smart – brilliant, really – flame out in any of a hundred interesting ways. Sometimes they literally go crazy, but often they’re horrendous judges of people, or can’t organize their lives, or otherwise just can’t make it happen.

Conversely, I have seen a lot of less-smart people accomplish incredible things because instead of endlessly thinking about something, they did something. A bias toward action is an incredible thing, and mind-bendingly effective. But brilliant people tend to get lost in their own heads, and wind up either chasing something foolish because the theory said it would work, or just ruminating instead of doing, which is worse.

Serious, hardcore intelligence is extraordinarily intimidating, and kind of irresistible. I experienced this in law school particularly. I’m pretty smart, but there were people in law school who were just off-the charts brilliant. And a lot of them were disasters. Because I was older when I went to law school, I became good friends with one of my professors, who had, among other things, a law degree from Yale, a doctorate in mathematical economics from Wharton, I think, and had done his undergraduate work at Stanford.

The White Dog.

This guy was also a complete emotional mess. More than once we would go across Sansom Street to the White Dog, a lovely establishment, and he would drink to the point that I’d have to put him to bed on the couch in his office with a trash can nearby for him to puke into. I wish I had his intelligence, but not at the cost of everything that went with it.

3. Persistence is Everything

I have heard this expressed several different ways, one of which is that you are only a finite number of repeated boring actions away from anything you want, and/or “Fall down seven times, get up eight”. All of these are true, true, true.

Although there are exceptions, almost no situation can resist someone who just will not stop, give up, quit or back off. This does not, by the way, apply to relationships – more on this point in a few paragraphs. But otherwise, this principle works for several different reasons. First, sheer repetition always makes you better at something, and over time, way better. You find yourself able to do the most complex stuff rapidly and flawlessly after you repeat it a thousand times. Here, for example, is a friend of mine making his morning cappuccino. Due to repetition, he is incredibly fast at it, and doesn’t even really have to be awake. Which is fortunate, because he usually isn’t.

Plus, you start spotting openings, or opportunities to do the things slightly differently that may make all the difference in the world. Finally – and I learned this in sales – eventually, if you keep at it, someone is going to say “yes” or you’re going to find the person who needs what you’re offering. It’s just a matter of time.

You don’t have to be perfect at what you’re doing, or even really good. That will come over time. But it is absolutely amazing what you can accomplish if you just. Keep. At. It.

4. You Cannot Help Someone Who Doesn’t Want to be Helped, and Almost Nobody Wants to be Helped

When I lived in Santa Cruz, I worked with a trainer three days a week. In the beginning, occasionally we’d run into a fellow trainee who I’m not going to name because he can pull my arm off if he gets mad. I’m 6’2. This guy was around 6’4”, built like a linebacker, and oh, yes, about thirty years younger than me. He had unbelievable potential. But he kept fucking up.

He would go home and drink bourbon until he passed out, or eat an entire pizza or get in a fight (again). And our trainer would patiently explain to him, for the fiftieth time, that he could be one of the strongest people in California, phenomenal, really, but he had to start eating better and not drinking so hard. He’d skip workouts, which is suicide in that process. He just couldn’t stop damaging himself. Nobody could help him. Eventually he stopped coming altogether, and now this guy, I’m fairly sure, is just a very large fat guy doing a menial job somewhere.

This situation comes in all flavors. You can see that someone needs help with something – academics, their emotions, their tendency to keep dating DJs, toxic women, their career, drinking, fitness, money and so on. You know exactly what work they need to do, and how it will help. But in my entire sixty-plus years of life I have never, ever seen this work until the person buys into it. People are incredibly resistant to change, and it is really, really easy to pour endless time and effort into fixing someone who, deep down, doesn’t really want to be fixed no matter how dire the consequences. There’s a wonderful quote in A River Runs Through It, the Bible of fly fishing, that speaks to this:

Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true, we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted.

When someone does want to change – really, seriously, wants to get better – they’ll demonstrate it. Good mentors make them prove it first. This is the basis of the trope of the martial arts teacher requiring a potential student to spend a year demonstrating their commitment first by doing menial chores. But you absolutely cannot help anyone unless they seriously want to be helped, and really mean it.

5. Only Give As Much as You Receive

This is more of a relationship principle, and it sounds Machiavellian. Perhaps it is. But one of the surest ways to get endlessly punished in a love affair, a family relationship or a friendship is to miscalibrate your commitment, and to pour way more into it than you’re getting back. This can be due to hope, or need, or whatever (usually need, actually) but it always ends the same way. Unbalanced emotional investment is a recipe for disaster.

If you call someone once or twice and they don’t call back, stop. They’re demonstrating that they’re not interested. If you text someone, and they take a day to get back to you, back off. If they’re genuinely interested, they’ll up their game and respond, and if not, they won’t. In either case, it’s useful information. But trying harder and harder without a corresponding reaction is both really common and really pointless.

This is especially typical in romantic, or potentially romantic situations. The idea is that if you just keep trying, you’ll win them over. No, you won’t. Or if you do, it will be for as long as you’re useful, following which they’ll lose interest once you stop delivering the goods they want.

Which leads to another related principle:

6. Any Relationship is Under the Control of the Person Who Cares Least

I got this from a terrific book called Too Soon Old and Too Late Smart, by Dr. Gordon Livingston, a therapist who did a lot of marriage counseling. Here’s what he wrote about that:

As marriages enter the long slide toward alienation, it is seldom a symmetrical process. One party typically feels and expresses less affection and respect than the other. This appears to be a bid to seize control of the relationship. That this effort has been successful can be seen when one spouse has a greater investment in reconciliation and is much more upset at the prospect of ending the marriage. When I point out to people that much of the distress they are feeling is not shared by their partner, and that this is the source of their feeling “out of control,” they are usually quick to recognize their predicament. While it takes two people to create a relationship, it takes only one to end it.

The tone, the value, the nature of any relationship, whether it’s romantic or a friendship, is governed by the person with the least emotional investment. You can’t make people care, and you can’t make them want to care. That’s just how it works. Sorry about that.

7. Understand What’s Symbolic and What’s Real

People often conflate things that look good, or send the right message, with things that actually matter and make a genuine difference. For my money, the current encampments on college campuses regarding the war in Israel over Gaza are a classic example, but there are all kinds of examples in business too.

Years ago, I hired someone to custom-build a bookshelf for me. Given my line of work, I have a LOT of books, and I needed somewhere to park them. So, I made a deal with a young woman who was newly apprenticed to a furniture maker. She was going to build me a bookshelf. It was her first real project. She was thrilled, and there was a steady stream of news and anecdotes – “Tomorrow we cut the shelves”, “I’m going to sign it!”, “The finish is going to be beautiful” and so on and so on. All stuff that indicates a great project. But “indicates” is not the same as “is”.

Until I actually received the piece – months late, by the way. The edge of one of the shelves was visibly damaged, by a sloppy cut. Oh, and it also didn’t fit properly. See? This was supposed to be first-class, custom work done under the supervision of a master furniture maker. Flaws like this are not okay.

Not. Okay.

My young friend had thought, I guess, that the symbolic stuff would mean more than what I was actually paying for, which as a high-end, first-class piece of furniture. In the end, she didn’t deliver the thing that really mattered, and apparently didn’t understand the difference between that tail and the dog. This is like an actress whose jaw-dropping beauty doesn’t change the fact that she can’t act, or the startup that has great vanity metrics but isn’t generating any revenue. It’s essential to pay attention to the fundamental purpose of something, and not get distracted by symbols.

Really, really cannot act.

The thing about these seven rules is that they have to be learned the hard way. If I had known all this when I was, say, twenty, my life would have been very different. So why bother writing them down here? If they can’t be taught, and have to be learned, what am I doing? Well, perhaps they’ll make your life a little better, a little easier, incrementally. Maybe by reading this, you’ll be reminded, and won’t have to go through quite as much to get these concepts into your head, and life. So, I’m going to add one final principle, without explanation. It’s from The Shawshank Redemption, and I’ll bet I think about it at least once a week:

8. Hope is a Good Thing – Maybe the Best of Things.

I’ll leave you with that.