While reassessing everything about my mental state and my OCD, I found that I needed to whittle down all of the various principles I try to adhere to into a succinct list. Succinct is very difficult for me. But as part of a reassessment project, one must edit heavily I am finding.

The goal here is a list of quick dictums that I schedule a time (it happens to be 8:30 in the morning) to look at and fully imbibe in an almost meditative sense. I say “almost” because I cannot approach things with full meditation. My brain is just churning way too much, and that would be an issue for another time.

The one issue is in editing. You see, I come up with phrases I feel I need to live by all the time. Heck, I fully admit to throwing in some I find from fortune cookies into the mix. Hey, I believe in omens, so it makes sense! But those won’t make the final cut. The final cut, however, has to be taken from around sixty phrases. No one can embrace this much compressed thought to act in any way that would be beneficial¹.

I was going to write a paragraph about each one of these, but I now look at the list and I find it may be best to just offer them up without annotation. Take them as you will, because that is what I do every morning. I apply them to the now. Yes, one is labeled “A” and the rest enumerated by numbers. That is because “A” is what I need to do before I jump into the rest of them.

So here you go, compact. Brief. Edited. Succinct. Everything I am not, in terms of presentation. But this works for me. And just this, that is the important part. I don’t add or subtract from this. (For now, my OCD abhors the idea of a “final draft.”)

A. Stop overthinking now.

1. Remember your mortality.

2. No greed, just productivity.

3. Know all things organize, pass.

4. Drama never wins.

5. Think: To what end? Is this useful?

6. Do what you want.