Principles

Hey - It’s Michael.

Spending the late summer days with intense & freeing processing. Enjoy the newsletter.

You figured out your goals and where you want to go in life - yet you notice that your behavior is contradictory to what you set out to do. You often think about what to improve to actually achieve this or how to behave to get that.

You’re in this meeting - longer than you want. You have that conversation, responding without thinking X through. You’re doing Y even though you wanted to do Z.

There’s an easier way. One that frees up a lot of energy. One that increases the likelihood to achieve what you want - in a healthy & effective way.

Life seems complicated but it really is not. It is just a series of situations that are somewhat similar. It’s really “another one of those” and then one more.

All you have to do is decide beforehand how to behave when situation X arises. Or even better, how to behave regardless of which situation arises.

This is, what a principle is.

A decision how to act, or what to do.

Your personal playbook for life & work.

Instead of always spending energy figuring out what to do get what you want, you create a set of principles for life & work, big & small.

Ideally these principles derive from your values. Your values are what is important to you. Literally: what you value. Principles are what to do - the guide for your behavior.

And of course - these principles should always deal with reality as it is.

I’ll share a few my personal principles to guide you in getting started.

Start small:

Think of meetings or how to interact with colleagues. Write down what you will always do.

Or start big:

Think of big life & work goals and how to achieve them.

Take a minute and reflect on your last few days - how often could you have used one of those few principles to make your life a lot easier?

The magic of course lies in the work itself.

By writing down principles you

A) Figure out what is truly important to you

B) Think & assume about how to get what is important to you

C) Can compare whether your behavior actually gets you what you want in life

If you don’t achieve the results you want - update your principles!

This issue is inspired by Ray Dalio who wrote a whole book about it (and became billionaire creating, following & updating his own set of principles). He - and countless others - say: No need to follow their principles - but follow your own!

“When you think in a principled way everything is simpler.” - Ray Dalio

What is one principle that would make my work noticeably simpler?

See you next week - Michael