Successful People Have Rules For Themselves That They Take Very Seriously

Rules apply in almost all areas of life.

Over the course of your life, you’ve learned from personal experiences, your family, smart friends, colleagues, authors, people you admire.

At this point in your life, you probably have certain key “nuggets” of wisdom that you hold on to — rules, values, morals, ethics, and principles that increase your chances of success in life. Those are your personal life rules.

“Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behaviour that gets you what you want out of life,” writes investor Ray Dalio in his bestselling book, Principles: Life and Work.

These are some of the principles that shape and guide my life as I pursue the life I want and the best version of myself:

• Life is an endless series of experiments and learning opportunities.
• Question existing perceptions, assumptions, principles at all times
• Read for at least an hour a day — grow 1% every day.
• Work on high-value tasks first thing in the morning
• Spend the last 30 minutes of each workday planning for the next day.
• Invest at least 5% of income in low-cost index funds
• Turn off all notifications that that distract “focus mode”.
• Exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes each time.

These are rules, not goals. Rules are about taking action. The right rules can help you achieve your goals — and through the process, you become the best version of yourself. Rules can help you build better habits.

The most successful investors, entrepreneurs, athletes, charismatic leaders, and global influencers take their personal rules very seriously.

They’ve learned over the years what works or feeds their purpose and what doesn’t. And they keep learning and improving their principles in life.

Paul Tudor Jones, self-made billionaire entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist once said, “Intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.”

Warren Buffet built his personal investing principles over the years.

He had mentors, teachers and other smart colleagues that helped him develop his smart investing style over time.

People like Benjamin Graham, David Dodd and Phil Fisher helped him develop the best investing rules necessary to build his empire.

Buffett often describes his investing principles as 15% Fisher and 85% Benjamin Graham.

Buffet once said, “A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

Buffet reads to invest. “Rule №1: Never lose money. Rule №2: Never forget rule №1,” is one of his investment rules. Successful investors tend to hold themselves to certain rules about money.

Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey and many other successful people also set aside at least one hour a day for deliberate learning.

Elon Musk values self-directed learning. He is a polymath and learns beyond his industry. He reads to lead.

“You don’t know what you don’t know. You realize there are all these things out there,” Elon Musk once said.

In the course of his career, Elon Musk has dominated online payments, rocket flight, electric car manufacturing, and a host of other industries.

In a conversation on Reddit, Musk discussed his approach to learning and the structure he uses as such: “One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

If you are constantly finding ways to feed your mind to become a better writer, investor or entrepreneur, learning is likely one of your important personal values or rules.

Jeff Bezos understands that failure is feedback when you have a big vision to achieve. He has used this principle to launch dozens of projects.

When he sets his mind on a project, two things can happen: he either achieve his desired result or get feedback. Everything is an experiment in progress.

“You really can’t accomplish anything important if you aren’t stubborn on vision,” Bezos said in 2016. “But you need to be flexible about the details because you gotta be experimental to accomplish anything important, and that means you’re gonna be wrong a lot. You’re gonna try something on your way to that vision, and that’s going to be the wrong thing, you’re gonna have to back up, take a course correction, and try again.”

If you take the time to study the most successful people you know, you will notice a pattern. Wherever they excel, they tend to have personal rules that inform their actions or decision-making process.

“These uncommonly capable people have figured out something that should be obvious: your quality of life improves when you set clear standards for how you live. You gravitate back towards “so-so” in any area where your standards are unclear. It works — both ways — like magic,” writes David Cain of Raptitude.

Clear rules about life and living it, how you work, what you feed your mind and body, how you relate with others, how to build a better career or generally how to become a better version of yourself can increase your odds of success in any field.

Jim Rohn once said: “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom.”

You need rules to lead a principles-centred life to get what you want — rules that can be applied, measured and improved. They don’t have to be the same ones, you can add to them as you grow.

Keep an open mind about your experiences, lessons and always keep measuring and improving your “nuggets”.“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And always remember to create rules for better and smarter living not to restrict how you live or limit your experiences in life.

What are your life and career rules?