Five Principles to Live By
Build, test and refine five simple principles — then decisions get made automatically.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 93%
Everyone already runs on principles; most are unexamined and bad (getting likes, avoiding disapproval). Hudson's method is to make them explicit, cap them at five, define each by what it is AND what it isn't, test each one for five days, and refine. Once the set is stable, decisions stop requiring deliberation — including the decisions you actively don't want to make.
Origin
Joe Hudson, taught in Art of Accomplishment's Decisions course (run roughly once a year). His own principles include 'embrace intensity', 'connection first' and 'everything's an iteration'.
Core principles
- 01You are already living by a set of principles — the only choice is whether they're chosen or inherited.
- 02Cap the list at five. Not six.
- 03Define each principle by what it is AND what it isn't — a small distinction with major consequences ('embrace intensity', not 'create intensity').
- 04Test each candidate principle for about five days before keeping it.
- 05The bar: if I live by these five, I am close to 100% confident they create the life I want.
- 06Keep them simple and short enough to fire in real time.
- 07The payoff is automaticity — decisions get made even when you don't want to make them.
How to run it
- 1
Audit the principles you are already running
Look honestly at what your decisions are actually optimising for — likes on Facebook, appearing to want wealth, avoiding disapproval. Write down the real ones.
- 2
Draft candidate principles against the guarantee test
Ask: what would be the five or six things that, if I made decisions by them, would guarantee success? Keep them simple and phrase them as short imperatives.
Pro tip Hudson's own: 'embrace intensity', 'connection first', 'everything's an iteration'.
- 3
Define each principle by what it isn't as well as what it is
This is the nuance Hudson calls minor but decisive. 'Embrace intensity' is not 'create intensity' — it means welcoming the more intense sensation already present, and leaning into the thing nobody wants to say.
Watch out Skip this and a principle drifts into its own caricature within weeks.
- 4
Test each one for five days
Live by a single candidate principle for about five days and see whether it works for you. Keep experimenting until you have five that hold.
- 5
Apply the confidence gate, then let them run your decisions
Look at the final five and ask: am I nearly 100% confident that living by these creates the life I want? If yes, you have a good start. From then on, decisions execute automatically even when you don't want them to.
Pro tip Revisit and refine periodically — principles are iterations, not tablets.
In the wild
Because 'embrace intensity' is one of Hudson's five, some of his company's meetings open with the question 'what are you scared to say?' And when someone tells him he's ruining the business, he doesn't deliberate — he says 'oh, cool, tell me what I'm missing.'
→ The response is immediate and requires no willpower, even on a bad day. Worst case he asks for a day and comes back to it — but the decision to engage was never in question.
Hudson points out most people's operative decision principles are things like 'what do I have to do to get likes on Facebook' — never written down, never tested, running everything.
→ Making the principles explicit turns an invisible, borrowed decision engine into a chosen one.
Common mistakes
Having more than five
Hudson is emphatic: keep it to five, don't even do six. A list you cannot fire in real time doesn't automate anything.
Defining a principle only by what it is
It looks like a trivial omission and turns out to be major. Without the negative definition, 'embrace intensity' quietly becomes 'create intensity' and the principle starts producing harm.
Adopting principles without testing them
A principle you haven't lived under for five days is an aspiration. The five-day test is what converts it into something you'll actually obey when you don't want to.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and executives making high-frequency judgment calls who want to reduce deliberation cost and stop deciding by mood
Not ideal for
Someone unwilling to be bound by a principle on a day they don't feel like it — the automaticity IS the mechanism
From the transcript
“the main thing I would say is keep it to five. I wouldn't even do six.”
“And and I would test each one of them for like five days. So make your principle and then see if it works for you…”
“one of the nuances is defining the principles not just by what it is, but what it isn't is a really significant very minor thing,…”
“But all of a sudden my decisions get made automatically if I live by a set of principles.”
“And and make them simple. They're like mine mine are things like embrace intensity or connection first or everything's an iteration.”
From the episode
How embracing emotions will accelerate your career
Joe Hudson (executive coach, Art of Accomplishment)