It seems that for any discipline, art, or profession you engage in, if it's more than just a superficial dabbling, you'll start to form a set of guidelines or rules for yourself before long, whether half-consciously or deliberately.

Some of these you may have learned from others, and found them to be proven by experience. Some occur you to vaguely at first, and solidify over time, as they're informed and reinforced by new examples. Others you may not realise you chose, until you witness with horror someone else in the same discipline not following them.

This process seems basically unavoidable, but how well it's done varies a lot between people, and within the same person over time. The quality and clarity of the guidelines you follow makes a big difference to how rewarding you find the pursuit in question, and how good the outcomes are, much of the time.

Taking this idea to its logical (absurd?) conclusion, I've attempted to make a list of guidelines for making lists of guidelines. Please let me know what you think. I'm also very interested in seeing sets of domain-specific guidelines that you have judged to be the best, or most useful you've seen in that domain (or have made yourself).

Guidelines for writing guidelines for any job, art, or discipline:

- To be used, guidelines need to be remembered, so a longer list is not always better
- Don't try to cover 100% of all cases. You'll fail and end up with a very long list
- Prioritising is a useful exercise: What are the best, most important 5, 10 or 15 rules to include?
- Guidelines aren't formulas: They're to assist decisions, not replace them. You needn't include every little detail
- Guidelines need to be accepted to be used: Give at least some reasoning if the reasons aren't especially obvious
- Saying "always" and "never" is rarely warranted. Give your reasons and let people use their judgement
- Try to make each guideline specific, brief, and clear. This makes it easier to remember
- If you don't normally follow your own guidelines, they need to be refined or replaced
- If a set of guidelines isn't worth the time to write down, then it's not worth using
- When editing guidelines would mean acknowledging an earlier mistake or ignorance, the alternative is deliberate error