Most of us have some general rules we live by, and I’ve often thought it would be a lot easier to get along with people if we had them printed and shared with everyone we met! I think we could do worse than to just live by the Golden Rule, but in real life it’s often more complex than that. Off topic but related, I’d say it would also be nice if you could easily identify people who see things as black & white or gray – the oil and water of personal philosophies!
I searched for a few lists and omitted the ones that were just for fun, and had to grab the partial one from NCIS.
- http://www.garthbigelow.com/12%20Rules.htm (has a couple of not safe for work words)http://www.mikeweatherly.com/2009/07/gibbs-rules-50-rules-but-only-these-have-been-revealed.html (NCIS/Gibbs list)
- http://www.helium.com/items/701364-10-rules-to-live-by
- http://www.louisbeam.com/rulesto.htm
- http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/jeffs/archive/2006/03/14/9289.aspx (SQL)
Equally, when it comes to business it’s interesting to try to discern the rules that people (companies) play by. Google has “don’t be evil” as a public policy (I’ll let you decide if you agree). I know several people in business that believe winning is all and that money is the ultimate scorecard.
Rules aren’t right or wrong, they just are. What’s more interesting to me is whether people live up to their own rules or not. We all want to be better than we are, but how hard do we try?
I thought I might try to write down some of my rules. How many? Seems like 50 would be too many, 10 might not be enough. No real schedule planned, maybe try to do one a month as I think about making a decision based on the way I live. I’ll probably get the order wrong, and will fix that as I go.
What about you, could you write down your own list of rules to live by? How succesful are you at doing so? How much have the rules changed over the years?
