Principles act as shortcuts to help you make choices that you’ll be satisfied with, and they serve as beacons to guide you toward a better version of yourself. They also serve as an encapsulation of important lessons you’ve learned throughout your life.

We recently released an interactive module to help you determine your principles. It also makes it easy to save or print off a beautiful depiction of your principles to help you keep them top of mind. You can use the module yourself here.

A big shout-out goes to Adam Binks who created this module!

Here are the principles I attempt to live by as of Jan 3, 2023:

1. Seek the truth on important topics, even when it’s difficult. Listen carefully to all plausible sides. Aim to avoid all self-deception.

2. Aim to have opinions on most topics that are important to you, but view your beliefs probabilistically. Be quick to update your view as you get new evidence.

3. Always strive to become a better version of yourself. Take constructive feedback with grace and use it to improve.

4. Try to understand your intrinsic values and avoid confusing them with instrumental values. Aim to be highly effective at generating what you intrinsically value.

5. While capable, devote a substantial percent of your time and effort to improving the world.

6. Try to always be kind.

7. Try never to tell lies. White lies are okay only when they’re what the recipient would prefer.

8. Don’t let anyone of low moral character be a recurring or substantial part of your life.

9. Try to be grateful for all that you have. Take pleasure in simple things.

10. Take care of your physical and mental health.

11. Always have a self-experiment running to find new ways to better yourself and your life.

12. Aim not to avoid anything valuable just because it makes you feel awkward, anxious, or afraid.

13. Remember that you will usually fail many times at any difficult thing before you succeed. Try, fail, learn from your mistakes, and try again.

This post was first written on December 31, 2022, was edited slightly on January 3, 2023, and first appeared on this site on July 26, 2023.