# Life Style Guide * [[When you ask for intros, say why]] * [[All introductions should be double opt in]] * [[When you ask someone to “look at something” you should specify what you hope to get out of it]] * [[As the communicator it’s your job to make sure they understand.]] * [[If you’re pulling a lot of data, always save intermediate steps]] * [[“There’s a thing for that” is a bad signal]] * [[There is value to forcing yourself to just sit with something]] * [[Every stage in a pipeline needs to have an associated action]] * [[It’s a natural human tendency to talk to someone about all the things you want to talk to them about at once, but it’s more important to trickle]] * [[Always show the most searched for thing first is a good principle of UX]] * [[Always show the shortest option first is a good principle for autocomplete]] * Whenever possible [[Explain it like I’m Five]] * [[When you communicate you should strive to demystify the world]] * [[People who have done a thing should be in charge of a thing]] * [[People should be more open to small discrete questions]] * [[Emails should have explicit social norms]] * [[Notes and statements should be bloody]] * [[Write down your hypotheses]] * [[How to ask for help]] * It is not classy to make someone sign up for a new service to talk to you. (A new slack channel counts) * Endnotes are always terrible, footnotes are ok, popups or sidenotes are best * Don’t ask for five minutes of someone’s time - just ask them the question * https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1361359049846001666?s=20 * When you ask a question in a question and answer session in a talk/seminar/lecture you get *one* (1) question. It must end in a question mark. It must not be a speech followed by a question. * [[Be serious but not solemn]] * [[Make living documents]] * [[Taking something off someone’s plate is one of the greatest gifts]] * [[Having someone’s back is underrated]] * [[Make friends with people before they’re useful to you]] * Don’t start emails with “hello my name is X” — I can see your name both in your signature and generally in the from: line. * [[Organizations don’t do anything, people in organizations do things]] * [[Intros should be double opt-in]] * [[When you communicate you should strive to demystify the world]] * [[Work with people you like working with, not the ones who are the most qualified]] * [[Mary Kondoing the people you know is underrated]] * [[When you ask someone to “look at something” you should specify what you hope to get out of it]] * Ask tight, well-framed questions and answer other people’s questions quickly * [[Credit actually matters a lot because its the difference between someone writing a blog on the side and getting to do it as their job]] * [[People with veto power should not be part of a core gameplay loop]] * [[Management not to dos]] * [[Being a good friend is expensive]] * [[You need to treat human interactions probabilistically]] * [[It’s impossible to know what’s going on inside someone else’s head]] * [[Work with people’s existing tools and workflows]] * [[Describing work as ‘fundamental’ is bullshit]] * [[Good teachers go to where a student is instead of making the student come to them]] * [[How to tell if someone is going to waste your time]] * [[If you reference an organization or person on your website, have links to them]] * [[It is more useful to point out areas where a system fails than to point out that a system is broken]] * [[Lookahead should heavily weight items by their frequency of use]] * [[Never use a naked this or that does not refer to a noun in the current sentence]] * [[People in support roles need to be more precise and action-oriented not less]] * [[Precise Communication is careful with pronouns]] * [[Say ‘X is more important than Y’ instead of ‘X is important’]] * Raise other people’s aspirations * [[When people help you circle back with them]] * [[You can’t evaluate pens independently of the paper you’re writing on]] * The term ’Talent’ is both vague and dehumanizing when used in the context of “We need to find more talent.” Instead you should be specific: “talented engineers” etc. * [[Accept invitations in public and decline them in private]] * [[Asking for extraneous information when helping someone can actually make things worse]] * When drawing diagrams, circles are for state machines and other discrete graphs; rectangles are for continuous systems * [[Curate people based on who gives you energy]] * [[Thoughts should be written, Questions should be verbal]] * [[Writing style guide]] * [[Dweebling — concept]] * Don’t go into debt unless you’re already very wealthy * [[Turn communication around in 24 hours if you are in a management or coordination position]] * Always label your axes * [[Unless you give people a hard deadline things will always slip]] * [[Examples over adjectives]] * [[If you want people to respond to more than 200 characters put it in a doc]] * If someone asks you a yes or no question, respond with yes or no *before* you give the explanation. * “Yes” “no” “A number” “I don’t know” are the best openings to the answer to questions ### Other People’s Life Style Guides * [[Laura Evans]]: [30 Things I’ve Learned in 30 Years](https://www.lauraevans.io/30-things-ive-learned-in-30-years/) * [[Kevin Kelly]]: [The Technium: 99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice](https://kk.org/thetechnium/99-additional-bits-of-unsolicited-advice/) * [[Michael Girdley]]: https://twitter.com/girdley/status/1409139969646596099 * Now a life style guide per se but [[Purported Tesla rules about meetings]] are pretty good * [George from 🕹prodmgmt.world \(@nurijanian\) on X](https://x.com/nurijanian/status/1794420863992725972) <!-- #list --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Life+Style+Guide) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Life+Style+Guide)