The scope of the project is about right when what you're planning to do starts to feel too small, simple and narrow.

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

-- Peter Drucker, management consultant

In other words, when you're thinking about the best way to accomplish an unpleasant task, never forget that not doing it is an option, too.

"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack."

If you're trying to do something you've never done before, and it involves multiple steps, something will go wrong.

Nobody is stupid, nobody is evil, and everyone is crazy.

Distrust any claim or story that is entertaining enough to be passed on based on its entertainment value alone.

Before I get a tattoo, I have to have continuously liked a design for a full year. This hasn't happened yet so I'm ink free, but it has been a year since I decided I wanted to get magnetic finger implants so I'm moving forward with that.

Other rule of thumb I use a lot: most times, the wrong decision is better than no decision than all.

If some step of a process which you expect to repeat can be automated, automate it, even if this takes ten times longer than just doing it "by hand."

When consistently applied over a long period of time, you eventually end up with webs of interlocking automatic steps which allow you to not only do the impossible, but iterate on the impossible a couple of times to make it look cleaner.

"Try to make it better." This is to counteract my tendency, when in conflict with someone, to default to the goal "Make myself seem right and make the other person feel bad." Which, if I stop and think about it, is never what I actually want.

Try to ask two questions every so often:

• Is what I'm doing useful (including enjoyable)?
• Is there a better way I could be doing what I'm doing?

If my inhibitions regarding a certain course of action seem entirely internal, go through with it because I'm probably limiting my options for no good reason.

Don't make an effort to be clever until you know that being naive won't be sufficient.

Arguments can prove too much as well as too little.

Selection bias doesn't explain everything, but it explains more than it seems like it should!

I notice an annoying empirical regularity. (The films I want to see at the cinema are the ones most likely to be sold out. Buses take too long to arrive, and when they do they come in twos or threes. Things go wrong most often when I'm trying to get something done in a hurry.) Chances are it's neither coincidence, nor reality magically conspiring against me — instead there's usually some mundane, obvious-in-hindsig... (read more)

-Hanlon's razor - I always start from the assumption that people seek the happiness of others once their own basic needs are met, then go from there. Helps me avoid the "rich people/fanatics/foreigners/etc are trying to kill us all [because they're purely evil and nonhuman]" conspiracies.

-"What would happen if I apply x a huge amount of times?" - taking things to the absurd level help expose the trend and is one of my favourite heuristics. Yes, it ignores the middle of the function, but more often than not, the value at x->infinity is all that matters. And when it isn't, the middle tends to be obvious anyway.

A good way to find flaws in arguments: Take the argument to it's logical extreme, this likely results in an absurd conclusion. Now figure out why this conclusion is absurd and see if the same problem applies to the argument in the case under consideration.

When considering an abstract argument, it helps to keep a concrete example in mind.

Criticism is not censorship. (It's amazing how many flame wars seem to occur because the participants can't make this distinction.)

• If something sounds certainly correct, check it up on Wikipedia anyway - it takes less than a minute. Likewise if it sounds almost certainly wrong.
• If I don't know why exactly someone went to his conclusion, do not assume he thinks it for the wrong reasons.
• If I can predict I will be too busy to go to gym in the next few days, do a 5-minute (1-set) exercise - this is at least 50% of the efficiency of a normal exercise.
• When I feel the drive to argue, do careful judgement on whether it's efficient to do so.
• Never blame people for their biases. If they don'

Assume that whatever social interactions I have are going to come back to me in twenty years, so try not to make my future self too embarrassed; be as polite and respectful as feasible.

This is true but tricky; Many of the behaviours that I have previously thought of as polite or respectful I've later learnt come off as detached, dismissive, or abrupt. And asking people about what politeness or respect means to them is surprisingly uninformative.

So I personally find this useful only once it's simplified to essentially Right Intent -- ie. act out of inte... (read more)

From lessons I learned in HPMOR before making an important decision ask yourself "What do you think you know, and why do you think you know it?" I have found that this not only shows you what knowledge you have is sound enough to make decisions on but shows which pieces of knowledge you're emotionally attached to and would therefore lead to a biased conclusion.