How to Live Guide

🚧 Backlog material imported from the notebook (~/src/me/notebook/ideas/how-to-live-guide.md, 2024-05 → 2024-09), 2026-08-29. Not yet worked into the Tao proper — raw notes for a "how to live" guide.

Thought about for a long time. An accumulation of notes on how to live: how to earn money, what career to choose, where to buy clothes (Muji), and so on.

Analogy: the Pragmatist's Guide to Life (Collins & Collins). A more specific framing could be: "How to create a life for spiritual warriorship."

Structure (2024-09-01)

• How to choose purpose — what to live for
• How to work
  • Structures for planning and analysis
    • SCQA
    • The 5-step planning of Getting Things Done (Allen, 2001)
• How to live
  • Making choices for freedom — what you prioritise; "what's your number"; links to life purpose
  • How to earn a living
  • What to consume (what to buy)
  • …
• How to parent …

On doing SCQA (and plans) — 2024-09-01

Again and again in planning (e.g. with Boaz) it's clear how valuable it is to actually do an SCQA or a plan and have it done. A huge amount of time is spent "generating" inefficiently in meetings — think of all the recordings where a part would be useful but never gets captured.

An SCQA with a proper question tree lets us see structure, and lets work be allocated to a specific point. Underlying micro-principles:

• Pyramids — structure questions and knowledge into pyramids (DAGs). Cf. Minto pyramids.
• Atomization (zettelkasten) — splitting information into appropriate atoms so each can be assigned against a given leaf (or leaves) in the tree. The leaves are themselves examples of atomization.

See also

• Principles (to perhaps incorporate)