Ask Lemmy

Only break one law at a time.

For example; If you have an AI executive tied up in the trunk of your car, make sure the tail lights all work.

I have several that I live my life by. Being prompted has caused me to forget all of them

It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there is a way to solve problems without using violence.

Here's a few that stuck with me over the years:

"A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle." --Jeff VanderMeer

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." --Gustav Mahler

"If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy." - - Sir Terry Pratchett

In short: Don't worry about it.

In long: If you have a problem, you can either do something about it or you can't. If you can do something about it, do that thing instead of worrying. If you can't, worrying just gives you an additional problem.

If you wait till the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.

The US signs contracts in pencil.

Perfection is the enemy of progress

The classic weekend/party safety brief

• Do NOT add to the population.
• Do NOT subtract from the population.
• Do NOT end up in the newspaper, hospital or jail.
• • If you do end up in jail, establish dominance quickly.

We have a few addendums in my circles.

• A man should be in the newspaper three times, when he is born, when he is wed, and when he dies. (Ron Swanson)

• Never do anything you would be afraid to explain to the paramedics.

(Addressed to my college age relatives, I would always pick them up, the folks dont need to know, you do have to tell the guy scraping your sorry ass off the pavement what you broke)

There's a saying in Chinese. It rhymes in Chinese (which makes it so much cooler) but the translated version is this:

Given equivalent units of gold and time, it is easy to trade time for gold, but it is challenging to trade gold for time.

Essentially, be wary of how much you're devoting to your work, because it doesn't matter how successful you are, you will never get your life back

There's another one that I find to be very relevant with the times:

a boat with naturally straighten itself when it nears a bridge

It's a descriptivist version of the English saying "we'll cross that bridge when we get there." Essentially, problems have a way of sorting themselves out when things get desperate enough

Here's a random weird one that stuck with me for some reason. I was a young child whining about getting ready, how I hated socks. And I grumbled, 'who even invented socks, and why??'

My dad responded "Mr. Socks, and his feet were cold." Which is 100% false, but I feel like that silly answer told me a lot on how to think about stuff.

The purpose of a system is what it does. Or The wizards 5th rule: Mind people's actions over words.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

And last: Trust your gut.

Edit bonus after reading others responses;

Don't let perfection get in the way of good enough.

If it's your job to eat a frog every day, eat it for breakfast. If it's your job to eat two frogs, eat the big one first.

All you can do is your best, and your best will always be good enough.

Just because something is old doesn't mean it's obsolete, and just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it's ineffective.

Ignore negative people, they have a problem for every solution. When the wind changes, some will build walls, others build windmills. When God created man, she was only joking.

Moving the body moves the mind.

It could always be worse.

The future will always surprise you.