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30 Cheat Codes for Life

Daniel Pink's condensed list of 30 rules across five "levels" - decisions, people, productivity, work, and living - collected from his behavioral-science books and decades of trial and error.

Level 1: Decisions​

  1. Decide based on an ordinary Tuesday, not a fantasy Saturday - judge a house, job, or city by its routine day-to-day, not its best moment.
  2. For reversible ("two-way door") decisions, decide fast; save deliberation for irreversible ("one-way door") ones.
  3. Ask "what would change my mind?" - if the answer is nothing, you're defending, not thinking. Find one smart person who disagrees and hear them out.
  4. Before deciding what to do, ask what happens if you do nothing - inaction has consequences too, but some problems resolve on their own.
  5. Make lots of small, bounded bets: upside that could change your life, downside that won't ruin it. Most of life is shots on goal, not one heroic leap.
  6. Judge decisions by the process, not just the outcome - a good decision can produce a bad result and vice versa.

Level 2: People​

  1. Before solving someone's problem, ask what they actually want from you - advice, help, or just to be heard.
  2. Assume incompetence before malice - most "hostile" behavior is distraction or a bad day, not an enemy.
  3. Notice who asks you questions - genuine curiosity is an underrated signal of real friendship.
  4. Don't keep score in relationships you want to keep; generosity stops being generosity once it's tallied.
  5. Build recurring infrastructure for friendship (a standing dinner, walk, or call) instead of vague "let's get together sometime" - and make specific invitations, not open-ended ones.
  6. Eliminate toxic people, even relatives - shared DNA isn't a license to be treated poorly.

Level 3: Productivity​

  1. Define "done" before you begin, or the project quietly becomes infinite.
  2. Make the first step embarrassingly small - the odds of starting are inversely related to the size of the first step.
  3. Let it be easy - difficulty isn't evidence of virtue; take the shortcut when it actually works.
  4. Prepare tomorrow's first move tonight, since willpower is unreliable but appointments aren't.
  5. Keep a "waiting for" list of things other people owe you (a nod to David Allen's Getting Things Done) - separate from your own to-dos.
  6. Treat constant busyness as a warning sign, not a status symbol - when everything feels urgent, subtract instead of adding.

Level 4: Work​

  1. Send a recap email after important meetings - writing it down forces you to actually understand what happened.
  2. Make your boss's life easier, not harder - especially early in your career, that's how you become indispensable.
  3. Ask for the deadline, then ask for the real deadline (when this will actually be used) - fake deadlines create unnecessary panic.
  4. Lead with the request and bring a recommendation, not just a problem - diagnosis is useful, prescription is essential.
  5. Get good at something valuable that everyone else avoids - neglected territory has little competition.
  6. If you lead people, be the boss you should have had, not the boss you had - give others what you needed and never got.

Level 5: Life​

  1. Design your environment around your behavior - store things where you use them, and duplicate items (chargers, glasses) rather than relying on discipline.
  2. Spend money eliminating recurring misery before buying occasional pleasure - fix the mattress before booking the vacation.
  3. Create traditions on purpose - rituals turn passing time into a life you actually remember.
  4. Stop trying to be normal - ask "is this right for me?" instead of "is this normal?"
  5. Compete with yourself, not others - social comparison pits their curated outside against your messy inside.
  6. Avoid unnecessary suffering, not necessary suffering - anything worthwhile costs effort and discomfort; don't assume that cost means you're doing something wrong.

Applying It​

Pink's own advice: don't try all 30 at once. Pick two - one that would remove hassle from your life, one you've been resisting - and use both in the same week.