A Better Way to Live by Og Mandino: 4 Rules I Actually Use

I picked this up right after I finished a video on Mandino's other book, The Greatest Salesman in the World. That one's fiction, and fiction isn't really my lane — I want the point, not the parable. But what hooked me on Mandino as a writer wasn't either book. It was his own story. This is a guy who was broke, divorced, barely speaking to his kids, drinking too much — nowhere close to the buttoned-up, self-actualized author you'd assume wrote one of the bestselling books of his era. And he did it at a time when self-help wasn't a category anyone respected yet. How to Win Friends and Influence People was already out. This came after. Mandino wasn't chasing another bestseller when he wrote it — he was already established. He sat down and asked himself one question: what would I live by if I got to do this over again. Then he wrote down 17 answers and handed them to us, because by the time this published he wasn't going to be around to explain them in person.

I gave it 4 out of 5 stars. It's 115 pages. I read it in one sitting.

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Count your blessings, then outwork your paycheck

Rule one is count your blessings, and he spends real time on the how and the why of it, not just the instruction. Rule two, right after it, is deliver more than you get paid to do. I didn't expect that order, but it makes sense: gratitude first, effort second. You can't out-hustle your way into feeling good if you're not honest first about what you already have.

Don't look back too long

There's a rule about what happens when you make a mistake or get knocked down by life — don't look back at it too long. The advice itself isn't new. What I liked is that Mandino actually breaks down the difference between people who dwell on failure and people who don't, and what that difference does to the rest of their life. It's the kind of thing that sounds obvious until someone shows you the fork in the road.

Two rules that sound the same and aren't

This is the part that stuck with me most, because it's easy to collapse into one idea if you're not paying attention. Rule one: treat everyone you meet — friend or foe, loved one or stranger — as if they're going to be dead by midnight. Rule two: live this day as if it's your last.

Those are not the same thing. One is about how you treat other people, like you may never see them again, so don't waste the interaction. The other is about how you spend your own hours, like every second actually counts, because you're a blip and you will be dead soon too. Steve Jobs used to talk about wanting to leave a dent in the universe. Same instinct, split into two separate disciplines instead of one vague mantra.

Never clutter your days out of a real challenge

The rule that hit closest to home: never clutter your days or nights with so many menial, unimportant things that you have no room left when a real challenge shows up. I had exactly this test not long ago. Someone approached me about a reality show — three months of filming, meaning three months where I couldn't run my business day to day. Can my business survive that? Can my clients? I ran the numbers in my head. Then I came back to the other rule, pretend today's your last day, and I said yes. I don't know if they picked me. Doesn't matter. The point of the rule isn't the outcome — it's making sure you're not so buried in menial stuff that you can't say yes when it counts.

Who should read it

My one knock: I wished the examples were more concrete in a few spots. It's a short book, and I think it assumes you'll sit with each rule longer than the page gives you. It's from 1990, which surprised me — I'd have guessed the '70s or '80s. If you want the substance of self-help without a parable wrapped around it, read this before Greatest Salesman. It's a quick, practical list from a guy who earned the right to write it.