The Rules of Life

Have a Plan for Your Career So where are you going at work? Have you a plan? A goal? Even a humble aim? If you don’t have any of ...

working hard while you’re waiting for the luck to turn up doesn’t mean that it won’t, or that when it does you aren’t free to th ...

Look at the Long-Term Ramifications of What You Do for a Living Just as your community has an effect, so, too, does what you do ...

Every job, every industry has some ramifications—good and bad. Everything we do at work can have great benefit or cause harm. We ...

Be Good at Your Job How we behave at work has an effect on our colleagues. We need to have standards—and stick to them, of cours ...

Understand the politics of office life—and don’t get involved of course—but use it to your own advantage. Don’t be frightened t ...

Be Aware of the Damage You Are Doing This Rule doesn’t mean, as yet, that you have to do anything. All it means is a conscious d ...

This goes back to the big theme underpinning all of the Rules, namely that we need to go through our lives with our eyes open, c ...

Be for the Glory, Not the Degradation We can work for the glory of humankind, or we can try to bring it all crashing down into d ...

Well, being good, being for the glory is a private thing. You don’t have to tell a soul. If you keep it quiet, you are being goo ...

Be Part of the Solution, Not the Problem This goes further than just being good, being for glory not degradation. This is about ...

So the Rule is to start looking for ways we can personally con- tribute to the solution. We have to take part, get involved, fin ...

Check What History Would Say About You So what is history going to say about you? What do you feel in your heart of hearts is go ...

How will we point at the polluted oceans, the dried-up rivers, the melted ice caps and say to our metaphorical children, “One da ...

Not Everything Can Be Green I’ve just heard about a man* who invented shoes that recharge your mobile phone battery while you’re ...

expect everyone to be as green as we want to be. We can’t expect everything to be as green as we would have it. If we all manage ...

Put Something Back I firmly believe that none of us asked to be born and that this world doesn’t owe us a living, or anything. B ...

wildlife patch in our garden. We don’t have to become totally organic, but we could recycle a bit more or just ask questions abo ...

Find a New Rule Every Day—or Occasionally at Least So, that’s about it—106 Rules for a successful and fulfilled life. Phew. But ...

Tr y t o f i n d a n e w R u l e e v e r y d a y — o r a t l e a s t o c c a s i o n a l l y. A n d I am quite genuine about wan ...