Leo Tolstoy’s [Writers’] Rules For Life

I would imag­ine these changed for him, as he orig­i­nally wrote them when he was 18, but Tolstoy’s cer­tainly got some good guide­lines here.

1. Get up early (five o’clock).

2. Go to bed early (nine to ten o’clock).

3. Eat lit­tle and avoid sweets.

4. Try to do every­thing by yourself.

5. Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one sec­tion of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for every minute, and sac­ri­fice the lesser goal to the greater.

6. Keep away from women.

7. Kill desire by work.

8. Be good, but try to let no one know it.

9. Always live less expen­sively than you might.

10. Change noth­ing in your style of liv­ing even if you become ten times richer.

(via The Hap­pi­ness Project)

Tagged as: Art, Life, Writing