Rules? Nah.

There are rules of law. If you break them, you end up in prison.

There are rules of physics. If you break them, you end up in Stockholm meeting the king.

Then there are unwritten rules, rules of society.

The unwritten rules you should absolutely follow. Most are bullshit; some are there to control the little guy. But you won't get officially punished if you break them.

Make your own rules.

You see, when we cruise through life, we can do exactly to the teeth what other people tell us to do. Or we can adopt the "rules" to fit our own life. For a lot of things in our life (way more than we think), we can decide how we will do them.

We can listen to others about how to run our lives. Or we can take into account the context of our life (which we know the best) and decide what works for us.

We can make our own rules. We just need to give a damn.

Follow the rules mentality.

I'm always amazed when people say, but they said you should do it like this.

Well, does do it like this make sense to you?

If no, then approach things differently.

In his YouTube video Casey Neistat says it best:

Do what you can't!

To the haters. To the doubters.

To my 7th-grade vice principal.

To everyone who's ever told anyone with a dream, they can't.

This video is for you.

Keep your head down.

Follow the rules.

Do as you're told.

Play it safe.

Wait your turn.

Ask permission.

Learn to compromise.

This is terrible advice.

If I wrote an autobiography, a book about my life, one title that would work would be:

Do what you can't.

Rest of the YouTube video here .

So the next time someone tells you: You can't do that. Think very carefully that this is actually the case. I almost fell under this trap with my career aspirations.

Rules of academia

There's common agreement that if you want to pursue a research career, you need to embark on the research grant hamster wheel. Then if you are lucky enough, you maybe have a stable job by the age of 40.

No thanks. I'm 26. Still doing my PhD so I have time before I need to enter the endless cycle of stress.

But I'm taking a different route. For 3 years in my free time, I've been actively working on a side business that would sustain my life. And allow me to do research on topics that interest me. Allow me to do research with no strings attached.

I have three more years to make this whole idea work.

Will it work? No clue. Ask me in 10 years. But I'll sure as hell try.

And no, no one told me to do it this way. I sat down and started to think:

How can I do this differently?

So, how will you defy the rules of this world?

Will you end up in Stockholm?

Will you end up doing things your way?

Whatever you do. Just don't break the law and get in trouble.

But remember you define the rules of the game, the game called your life.