Towards My Personal Manifesto on Life and Work

I hear manifestos help you clarify things.

Manifesto - a public declaration of policy and aims

To help me clarify things, I thought it would be helpful for me to publish a manifesto with my views on life and work.

You get what you give, so I thought I ought to give it a try.

A brief caveat first: this is incomplete. It does not cover my philosophy completely. Things I believe in are missing.

...here's the "but".

This has been sitting in my Drafts for 98 days now, and I don't intend to hit 100. Thus, I am starting with this incomplete version, which I will update over time.

Last brief caveat: I figured I'd start with a "Top 10." These are the rules I aim to live by.

My Personal Manifesto on Life and Work

1. Add value in every interaction I have with another person.

2. Leave my community greater and more consonant than I found it.

3. Learn every day.

4. Improve almost every day. (Yes, almost. Not every day. I need cheat days. I am not Dwayne Johnson.)

5. Humor is a necessity. In almost every moment of every day.

6. Help other people solve their problems.

7. Whatever you do, do it with excellence. (If it's unimportant and nobody is relying on it, cut yourself some slack and have some fun with it. While you pursue excellence, don't forget how to have fun with things. Really, you won't want to forget this part.)

8. You get what you give. To get more, you're going to have to give more.

9. Your most important relationship is with yourself. That relationship seeps out naturally, automatically, to everyone around you. So be kind to yourself.

10. Try your darndest to follow Feynman's Principle: "“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” So challenge your assumptions. Work to disconfirm your beliefs. And have strong opinions, weakly held.

If you wrote your own manifesto, what would make your top 10?

Till next time my merry band of intentional creators,

Jacob