I wouldn’t dare defile Douglas Adam’s memory by not mentioning that you should keep a towel with you at all times, but my second contender is a surprisingly short three-parter:
- never lie.
- never tell the whole truth.
- never pass up a chance to use a real bathroom.
No-one has ever said on their deathbed, “I only wish I worked more”
I like to turn that one around and say: nobody says on their death bed that they regret spending so much time with their kids.
I know of at least one person who might have actually said that, were he not busy working from the hospital when he died. People don’t say that because no one who enjoys working somehow failed to find work to do.
I’m not sure what you’re saying, but if a person worked with saving other peoples lives, then perhaps I could be wrong.
I don’t think that this makes it wrong. As I see it, the meaning of your advice is to prioritize self-care over work. It surely helps with mental and physical health. And I think this also applies to people saving lifes of others like medical doctors. They are also still people, they can also suffer from that kind of work. And I always prefer a doctor who thinks about getting enough sleep and quality time in life over someone who drives themselves mad and makes themselves sick by burdening the whole world on their shoulders.
If they can’t help themselves, how can they help me?
Or, 101 of car crashes, first save yourself before you attempt to save others.
There are also others who help. It’s not one single person’s job to save everyone.
What I meant is that there are people who genuinely enjoy their work above all else. Those are the people who might say they wished they spent more time at work. However, there is rarely anything keeping them from work that they don’t also value. If a person enjoys working, there’s very little preventing them from working.