I read Craig Mod’s new book, Things Become Other Things, earlier this year, and I’ve been sitting with it ever since. It’s the kind of book you don’t race through. It asks for space for you to think about how you’re structuring your time, your attention, your output — and what it all adds up to.
I’m also a member of Craig’s subscription program. I joined because I admire his work, but I’ve stayed because the structure of it feels unusually honest. It doesn’t try to overdeliver. It’s not filled with hacks or urgency. It’s built around clear, calm rules — the same ones he laid out in his now well-circulated essay about how he designed the program in the first place.
The rules are simple, but they’re intentional. They reflect a person who knows what he’s building and how he wants to do it. More importantly, they reflect what he won’t do, what’s not for sale or on the table, no matter how loud the internet gets.
And it made me pause.
Because even as someone who works with leaders and coaches and high performers, I’ve seen how easy it is to live by rules you never consciously chose. Things like:
- Say yes quickly so you don’t lose the opportunity.
- Keep growing or risk becoming irrelevant.
- Work late — success requires sacrifice.
- Don’t slow down, or you’ll get left behind.
Most of us never write those rules down, but we follow them and optimize for them. And eventually, we build businesses and lives around them, even if they’re quietly draining the very energy we started with.
That’s why Craig’s essay hit so hard. It’s not just about building a membership. It’s about building a life and documenting the principles that shape it. Not as performance or as branding,
but as a way to stay aligned when the world wants you to contort.
Reading those rules made me want to write my own to serve as a compass as I continue to grow and develop as a business owner. To serve as a reminder of what I’ve learned the hard way.
Mine sound like this:
- I don’t take clients just because they can pay me.
- I coach to help people grow something bigger than themselves, not to chase ego-driven goals.
- I build slowness into my life on purpose, because I’m naturally fast-paced and impatient and the world rewards that until it breaks you.
- I don’t spread myself thin to prove I’m “top tier.” I show up where I make a real impact and say no to everything else.
- I believe success is freedom, not achievement.
These aren’t ideas I’m aspiring to, they’re guardrails I’ve already chosen. They shape how I lead, who I work with, how I show up, and where I put my energy. And when things get noisy, I come back to them.
Your rules will look different. They should. But the act of writing them, of putting language to the life you actually want to live, matters. Because when you don’t write the rules, you default to someone else’s. And if you’re not careful, you’ll spend years chasing goals you don’t even recognize as your own.
So here’s the invitation:
Take an hour. Step back. And write the rules you actually want to live by.
Not the ones that get applause. Not the ones that look good on Instagram. Just the ones that make your life feel like it’s yours.