Career & Work
Four Agreements That Would Save Your Career
Don Miguel Ruiz wrote four rules for a better life. Translated for freelancers, they cut more career nonsense than any business book.
If you’ve never read The Four Agreements, the short version: a Toltec-inspired teacher named Don Miguel Ruiz lays out four simple rules he claims will quietly fix most of your life. They sound suspiciously easy. They’re not.
I read it years ago, dismissed it as soft, and have been quietly running freelance experiments on it ever since. Here’s the freelance translation, with the actual work behind each one.
You don’t need to read the book. You need to commit to one of these by Friday.
1. Be impeccable with your word
Ruiz’s version: don’t lie, don’t gossip, don’t use your words against yourself or others.
The freelance version is brutal in a different way. Don’t promise what you won’t deliver, and don’t bluff in client calls.
Here’s what actually changes when you take this seriously:
- You stop saying “I’ll have it Friday” when you know it’s a Monday job.
- You stop overcommitting in pitches to land work you’ll resent.
- You stop talking trash about other freelancers. Even subtly, even when invited.
- You stop bullshitting in discovery calls when you don’t know something. (“I don’t know, but I’ll find out by tomorrow” beats winging it every time.)
This is the agreement that saves more careers than the other three combined. Most freelancers I know who blow up their reputations don’t do it through one big lie. They do it through a hundred small mismatches between what they said and what showed up. (The freelancer’s guide to saying I don’t know is the whole post about why bluffing kills you.)
Do this today: find one open promise in your inbox where the deadline is slipping. Send the email. Reset the date. Don’t add excuses. Just reset cleanly.
2. Don’t take anything personally
Ruiz’s claim: what other people say is about them, not about you. Their words are a mirror of their own state.
Freelance version: client feedback is about the work or about their own pressure, almost never about you as a person.
The “almost never” is real. There’s a tiny number of cases where a client has a personal issue with you specifically. Most of the time, the angry email is about the demo they have tomorrow, the budget that just got cut, or the boss who chewed them out. You showed up and got the splash.
Practice separating what they said from what they meant. The angry email usually translates to “I’m scared this won’t work and I don’t know who else to talk to.” The rude Slack message usually translates to “my CEO just yelled at me about timelines.”
You’re not making excuses for bad behavior. You’re refusing to take a wound from a sword that wasn’t pointed at you.
Do this today: the next time a client message lands wrong, wait 30 minutes before replying. Ask yourself what’s going on in their world, not yours. Respond to the underlying situation, not the surface message.
3. Don’t make assumptions
Ruiz: most of our pain comes from assuming we know what others mean, want, or feel. And then acting on those assumptions as if they were facts.
Freelance version: ask before you build.
Almost every freelance disaster I’ve watched (or lived through) started with an assumption. The client probably wants the homepage to feel like a tech startup. They probably want the deliverable in a Google doc. They probably want weekly updates. They probably approved that revision in the last email.
Probably is expensive. Asking is free.
The work to do here is uncomfortable because it makes you feel like a beginner. You have to ask things you “should already know.” You have to repeat back what the client said and confirm. You have to send a one-line message that says “to be clear, you want X by Y, correct?” before you start the work.
It feels slow. It saves entire projects.
Do this today: pull up your current biggest project. Find the place where you’re guessing what the client wants. Send the clarifying question. Right now.
4. Always do your best
The trickiest one because it sounds like a Pinterest quote. It isn’t.
Ruiz’s actual point: your best is variable. On a sick day, your best is much smaller than on a good day. Doing your best means matching effort to what’s available today. Not punishing yourself when today’s best is smaller than yesterday’s.
Freelance version: show up at the actual level you have, every time, and stop comparing today’s output to your peak.
Most freelance burnout comes from confusing this. We compare today’s energy to the day we wrote three brilliant pages and conclude we’re slipping. We’re not slipping. Tuesday is just smaller than Thursday was.
But also. Your best on a Tuesday is still your best on a Tuesday. Not “just enough.” Not “phoning it in because I’m tired.” The level of effort matches the day, but the integrity of the work doesn’t. You still send your best work. It’s just smaller.
This agreement is the one that prevents the death spiral where one bad day becomes one bad week becomes one bad month. You show up at whatever level you have, every day, and you let the work compound. (Why consistency beats intensity every time is the long version of this idea.)
Do this today: look at your week so far. If you’ve been comparing your output to a fictional version of yourself who has unlimited energy, stop. Look at what you actually delivered. Was it your best given the day? Then it was enough.
One agreement. Not four.
Don’t try to install all four this week. You’ll fail.
Pick the one that hit you hardest reading this. For most freelancers I know, it’s number one, the gap between what they say and what they deliver. For others it’s number two, they take every client edit as a personal attack. For me, it took years to get past number three. I assumed clients wanted what other clients had wanted, and I lost work to it.
Commit to one. Run it for 30 days. See what shifts. The other three will be easier to pick up after that.
You don’t need a Toltec teacher to live a better freelance life. You need to keep your word and stop guessing. (How to negotiate without being a jerk is what the four agreements look like when they hit the contract stage.)
Now go pick yours.