The Rules of Life

Look After Yourself Yo u a r e t h e B o s s , t h e C a p t a i n , t h e D r i v i n g F o rc e. I f y o u a r e sick, who is ...

Rules Players eat well, sleep well, relax a lot, exercise. (And no, computer games don’t count.) They also stay away from potent ...

Maintain Good Manners in All Things In her wonderful book Watching the English,* Kate Fox observes that in any small transaction ...

Keeping a promise Keeping a secret Keeping basic table etiquette (oh, come on, you know this stuff: no elbows, no talking with ...

Prune Your Stuff Frequently Why? Because collecting clutter clutters your home, your life, and your mind. A cluttered home is sy ...

There is an “unburdening” effect that comes with pruning. Yo u h a v e m o r e s p a c e i n y o u r h o m e , y o u h a v e a f ...

Remember to Touch Base Before you can touch base, you have to know where base is. Base is home. Base is where you belong. Base i ...

Of course, we might not all know where we came from, and we have to make allowances for that. You might be adopted, but you were ...

Draw the Lines Around Yourself Personal boundaries are the imaginary lines you draw around yourself that no one should cross eit ...

behavior, it gets really easy to say, “No, I don’t want to be treated like this/spoken to like this.” Probably the best way to s ...

Shop for Quality, Not Price I have to admit my wife taught me this one, for which I am eternally in her debt. To me it seemed a ...

Going for quality doesn’t mean we’re stuck up or living beyond our means—if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. Going for quality ...

It’s OK to Worry, or to Know How Not To The future is uncertain, scary, hidden. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t worry about th ...

getting older, there is simply no point—it’s happening whether you worry or not. If there is nothing you can do about your worry ...

Stay Young I did say earlier that if you were worrying about getting older, you should stop because there wasn’t anything you co ...

going for the safe option; it’s staying abreast of what is hap- pening, not giving up stuff like cycling because you think you’r ...

Throwing Money at a Problem Doesn’t Always Work Ye a r s a g o w h e n I w o r k e d i n o n e p a r t i c u l a r i n d u s t r ...

Throwing money at things makes us feel powerful and grown- up when instead we might need to stand back and see if we couldn’t do ...

Think for Yourself Yo u ’ l l t h i n k t h i s o n e ’s s o o b v i o u s y o u ’ l l b e w o n d e r i n g w h a t i t ’s doin ...

Whatever line it takes on a particular issue is the same line she will come out with. She trusts her paper implicitly and is una ...