Eight Rules for a Progress-Driven Life

Nothing happens unless someone does it. You can be that person. Plant the tree. Water the existing one. Make the art. Start the company. Organize the outing. Help the child. Everybody can do these things. Society assigns too much weight to the critic, the cynic, the obstructionist. Though sometimes right, vetoes are cheaper than achievements, and hence overly common. It is much harder, and much more important for human well-being, to make new things happen.

The best response to things that don't work as well as they could is to create ones that do. You can choose to do more ambitious, more valuable things than you are currently doing. Choose projects that matter. Develop the abilities to achieve them. Surround yourself with ambitious people. You will sometimes fail.

Over 100 billion humans have lived on the Earth. The peaks of art, music, urban beauty, writing, and creative problem-solving that they have created are available to you, in many cases for free. You are not starting from zero. Take advantage of that: listen, read, travel. Develop your taste, skills, and ambition by learning from the past.

You don't know everything. Good news: you never will. But this means that other people have ideas that will interest you and perspectives you weren't aware of, and you have ideas to share with them. Not all these ideas are good! But some certainly will be. Improving society takes hard work, made easier by relying on others with the same goal.

Take care of your body, develop your mind, keep your word, and earn a good reputation. If you are rigorous, thoughtful, and take responsibility for your own actions even when you fail, people will often trust you with more resources and more important decisions. Even if they don't, honesty and reliability are inherently moral virtues.

Humans have intrinsic worth, whether homeless or a billionaire. People differ in ability, achievement, character, power, and circumstance. They are equal in human dignity. Choose to treat them as such.

Life is more than self-expression. Spend time, in person, with friends, family, and strangers. Their desires are as real to them as yours are to you. Develop abilities other people need. Solve problems for people you will never meet. Ambition is valuable when it improves society.

Optimism is not a prediction. It is a mentality that the world can be yet better. Optimistic, high-agency people solve problems. Find the upside in new situations, and in other people. Doing big, new things is hard: you will need optimism to finish what you start.