What Are Your Rules for Working and Living?

This article is part of my Mountain Minute newsletter on LinkedIn. If you haven't already, I hope you choose to hit the "subscribe" button.

The basic idea: Over the past week, several people have shared Jim Lehrer's Rules, following the death of the legendary newsman. That got me thinking: do I have the clarity to know (and share) my own rules?

You can see below my first attempt to state my "rules" so succinctly, but my intention is not to share any of my own "wisdom". Instead, I am intentionally planting the thought in your head that it may make sense for you to assemble and keep prominent your own personal rules.

A bit more background: Shortly after I shared my own rules as a post three days ago, I had a sobering thought: what are my actual rules, rather than this slightly idealized version?

For example, perhaps my real number one is:

Focus on the shiny object that most intensely grabs my attention

(I tend to get excited easily, so there are a number of times where I embrace a new idea and forget—at least temporarily—about the previous idea that still warrants my attention.)

Imagine that a completely impartial observer followed you around for a month, and then compiled a list of nine or fewer rules that s/he concluded you must be following. What rules would they guess that you follow?

Another one of mine might be listed as:

When you get hungry, drop whatever you are doing

I'd like to think that my totally realistic current list of rules isn't that different from my slightly idealized version. But to know this, I'll also have to give my best guess at what an outside observer might guess my rules to be.

To be clear, I'm suggesting you create two sets of rules. The first shows how you have been living; the second shows how you want to live. This time next year, I hope both of your lists are identical. Mine, too.

Bruce Kasanoff is a social media ghostwriter for entrepreneurs who helps his clients communicate what matters most.