Lexicographic Rule

The Lexicographic rule asks very little of you, which is exactly why so few people follow it.

The rule protects you from your future self — the fellow who will be tired, hungry, and full of reasons to make an exception. Rules exist for the days when reasons are cheap.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

Every January, the gym fills; by March, the regulars have the place to themselves again. The calendar changed nothing. The people who stayed simply stopped asking the calendar for permission.

Time is the one currency the Reserve Bank does not print more of. Do not memorise it. Notice it. Noticing is the senior discipline.