12 Rules for Life

Three of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of 12 Rules for Life pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first three.

1. Fix your own posture and your own life first: stand up straight, clean your room, and take responsibility for your immediate world before you try to reform anyone else's.
2. Treat yourself with the same care you'd give someone you're responsible for, instead of neglecting the one person you'd never abandon.
3. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today, so progress replaces envy as your measure of success.

The other 4 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 10 chapters

The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.

1. Order, Chaos, and the Case for Rules
2. Rule 1: Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back
3. Rule 2: Treat Yourself Like Someone You're Responsible for Helping
4. Rules 3 & 4: Choose Good Company, and Compete Only With Yesterday's You
5. Rule 5: Don't Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them (Rule 11 Too)
6. Rule 6: Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World
7. Rule 7: Pursue What Is Meaningful, Not What Is Expedient
8. Rule 8: Tell the Truth, or at Least Don't Lie
9. Rule 9 & 10: Listen as If They Know Something, and Be Precise in Your Speech
10. Rule 12: Pet a Cat When You Encounter One, and the Bigger Picture