Chris Bertulli - Software Engineer & Entrepreneur

You must learn to navigate life's challenges to have a good life. Your ability to navigate challenges determines the quality of your decisions.

To make good decisions you need a set of rules, or models, or guidelines about how the world works. These are your principles. Principles are malleable and can change. But should not change often.

To be a principled person is to chart your path through the world with confidence not certainty. There is an upper bound to the number of principles a person can have. At a certain number of principles they will start to conflict with each other.

Build your principles early and often. You should refine and revisit your principles each month. As you evolve, new facts emerge, or the world changes.

I keep a separate Business Principles list.

I update this list monthly and look forward to a good debate on anyone.

Principles for Life:

Life is a perpetual state of chaos. Change is the only constant. - Learn to deal with change at a young age. Most change is out of your control. What's in your control is your response to it. Remember it's ok to not want things to change.
Humans have a moral obligation to reshape the universe. What makes us different than all other living things is that we invent technologies. Technology shapes our reality. We should always strive to invent more, not less.
The only purpose of work is to improve your life. There are many ways work can improve your life. If your work doesn't improve your life, stop. No one type or way of work is correct. There is such a thing good work and bad work. The work you do defines you.
Hard times create strong humans. Strong humans create good times. Good times create weak humans. Weak humans create hard times.
We know less than we think. All science changes over enough time. It is likely that what we believe to be true now will be wrong in the future. We get things wrong, because we ask the wrong questions.
Model the world as 500 people, not 8 Billion. 99% of the time you need to rationalize something it's a more accurate heuristic of the world. Nothing applies to all 8 billion people.
How you walk through the fire matters. It's less about what you do, and more about how you do it.
Model the world as 500 people, not 8 Billion. 99% of the time you need to rationalize something it's a more accurate heuristic of the world. Nothing applies to all 8 billion people.
There are 1000's of ways to live. No one way is right. Learn and try many different ways before you pick.
The paradox of life is that everything is a disaster and yet everything is fine. Where you focus your time and energy is the difference. Whatever has your attention owns you.
Become a time billionaire. Retirement with money is a bad goal, a stupid optimization. 31 years = a billion seconds. The healthiest 31 years of your life should be optimized, not the worst.
Value experiences not things. You live your life with your brain. Enjoy it. Fill it with magic memories. Revisit those memories all the time. Tell tales, sing songs, make videos, never forget them.
Essentialism & Minimalism are the ways to live. "Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them." - Seneca. It's not about nothing. It's about removing the excess.
Smart people are less happy. Knowing too much can make you sad and lonely. If you're smart enough you'll learn how to undo this, by seeking deep truths. The deep truths can set you free.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. There are 100's of religions, current, new, old, and dead. This should tell you everything you need to know about religion.
Hell Yes or No. If it's a Maybe it's a No.
Occam's razor is useful. When presented with competing solutions to a problem. The solution constructed of the fewest possible elements, is the best. Sometimes a big problem has a small solution. And people hate to hear it because their big problem deserves a big solution.
Fate Loves Irony.

Principles for Work:

Work Like a Lion. 9-5 work hours resemble a cow ,walking around and grazing nice and slow. Another option is to follow a lions playbook. Wait, wait, and wait some more. Chill out. Then when you see something to eat.... Sprint. Kill. Eat. Rest. Repeat.
Action first. Study Second. Organize third. Creating long to-do lists is an advanced form of procrastination in disguise. Take action, gain forward motion, then reflect, then recalibrate. Nothing causes more anxiety than lack of action. Go !
Find Work that is Positive Sum. The more people win, the better.
Play to win. If you're going to do anything. Play to win. Participation medals are for the weak.
Dare Mighty Things. Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure…than to rank with those poor spirts who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat.
Create more than you consume. Consuming is fun, creating is hard. If all you do is consume, you will learn to hate it. Creating brings joy, creating fills the soul, creating brings satisfaction to your life. Create.
You can engineer serendipity. It's called building good habits. Your daily habits can put you in a position where "luck" is more likely to strike. It's possible to increase your serendipity surface area and engineer your own luck.
You can't have everything you want, but you can perfect a small amount of things.
In science, if you know what you are doing, you should not be doing it. Science only exists on the fringes. If it's not crazy, it's not true science.

Principles for Relationships:

If you cannot be corrected without being offended, then you'll never truly grow. Mistakes are what shape us. Not success.
Treat people as they treat you. Demand respect, and only give it, when it's deserved.
How you walk through the fire matters. It's less about what you do, and more about how you do it.
Do not punish people for their success. Be stoked for them. Learn from them.
Have a code (an Ethos), and live your life by that code. Walk straight through hell with a smile and wear your code on your sleeve for everyone to see.
You are the product of the 10 ppl you spend the most time with. Choose your friends, who you work with, and the people that teach you wisely. This include things you read, videos you watch, podcasts you listen to. Time together is what influenes who you become.
When people show you who they are, believe them. Second chances can be earned, but not freely given.

Principles for Health:

Hard Choices Easy Life, Easy Choices Hard Life.
Civilize the mind, make savage the body, beautify the soul. It will take a lifetime. Start young and the rewards will compound.
The worst prison lives between your two ears. Master your thoughts, master your reality, master your life. Let your thoughts run free, and you'll be in prison forever.
Control your attention to control your destiny. Paraphrasing Lao Tzu: Control your attention to shape your thoughts. Control your thoughts to shape your actions. Control your actions to shape your habits. Control your habits to shape your character. Control your character to shape your destiny.
The most addicting drug is comfort. Life exists on the edges. The edge of being scared and the edge of comfort. Seek to push out of the comfortable. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. This is where life happens. Too much comfort will sedate your mind. Focus comes from a place of discomfort.
Comparison is the thief of Joy. Get inspiration from others, not jealousy or anger. Only compare against the person you were yesterday. Get 1% better every day. Remember we were once apes.
Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Pain is what the universe does to you, suffering is what you do to yourself. Don't seek pain, but don't feer it. Conquer suffering as soon as you know it exists. Better a hard truth than a comfortable lie.
The cure for envy is gratitude. Master envy, and you mast happiness. The world is driven by Envy, not greed. Play a different game.
Do not, under any circumstance, depend on a partial feeling. Mindless actions are typically stupid ones. Mindless experiences are typically forgettable ones.
Do not pursue the taste of good food. Food is consumed for nutrition. Taste is secondary. Man cannot live on ice cream alone.