Most personal websites follow a predictable pattern: an "About" page (who you are), a "Contact" page (how to reach you), perhaps a "Now" page (what you're currently doing). These pages answer the obvious questions visitors might have, but they sidestep another important one: What do you actually stand for?
That’s where a principles page comes in. It's not your resume, your story, or your current projects. It's your public declaration of the standards you've chosen to live by — the beliefs that shape your decisions, the values that persist through career changes and life transitions.
Think of it as setting your coordinates rather than broadcasting your signal.
How That Changes Things
This isn't about personal branding or thought leadership. Those games are exhausting and, frankly, most of us aren't very good at them anyway. A principles page serves a more navigational purpose: it's a tool for orientation in a world that feels increasingly scattered and loud.
When you articulate what you stand for, you create clarity for yourself and others. You stop drifting through decisions based on mood, convenience, or whatever feels optimal in the moment. Instead, you have something to navigate by — not rigid rules, but considered guidelines that reflect who you're in the process of becoming.
The act of writing these principles down calls for precision. Vague notions like "be authentic" or "work hard" transform into specific commitments with implications. The act of publishing them creates accountability. When your principles exist only in your head, they're easy to rationalize away. When they're visible to others, they become harder to ignore.
This is the digital equivalent of public vows — adapting an ancient human practice for modern life. Marriage vows, oaths of office, professional codes of ethics — these traditions exist because declaring your commitments publicly shifts how seriously you live them.
What Makes This Different
Your principles page isn't another "me" page dressed up with different language. An "About" page tells your story; a principles page declares your intentions. A "Now" page captures your current focus; a principles page articulates your commitments.
The difference is temporal and philosophical. Stories change as you accumulate experience. Current projects shift as opportunities arise and fade. But principles — done well — represent something more stable: the through-line of character that persists across contexts.
This doesn't mean your principles are carved in stone. Life is complex, and thoughtful people evolve. The goal isn't to create a perfect moral framework but to practice the discipline of clarity about what matters to you right now, in this phase of your thinking and being.
The Practice, Not the Performance
Here's what's radical about this: a principles page is primarily for you, not your audience. Yes, others will read it, and yes, it might spark meaningful conversations or collaborations. But the real work happens in the writing and the living.
The writing forces you to articulate values that usually remain implicit. The living tests whether those articulated values hold up under pressure. The publishing creates a feedback loop between intention and action that most private reflection lacks.
This isn't virtue signaling or moral preening. It's practical philosophy — taking the beliefs that already influence your decisions and making them explicit enough to examine, refine, and live by more intentionally.
Getting Started
If you already have a website, add a new page and set the URL to /principles. If you don't have a website, this might be the reason to finally create one. The technical barrier is lower than ever — platforms like BearBlog.dev make it trivial to claim your own corner of the internet.
The harder part is the writing it. What standards do you actually try to live by? Not the ones you think you should have, or the ones that sound impressive, but the ones that genuinely guide your decisions. Start there. Write them down. Be specific enough that someone reading could understand what these principles mean in practice.
Don't worry about perfection or completeness. Principles worth having are principles worth refining. The page can evolve as your thinking does. The point is to begin the practice of articulating what you stand for, rather than only what you do or who you've been.
Your principles page won't make you famous or get you hired. It might, however, help you navigate decisions with more clarity and connect with others who value the same kind of intentional living. In a world full of noise, that's not nothing.