van Belle book
Note an entire book: Statistical Rules of Thumb by Gerald van Belle.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9780470377963
I guess anybody with experience would rate some of van Belle's rules as bang on and some as misguided or beyond their personal experience; and that would apply too to anybody else's book.
Parker book
I like this book from some years back.
Parker, Tom. 1988. Rules of Thumb. Wellingborough: Equation.
I have selected some of its rules that seem to apply either to statistically-based research or to this community. It was first published in the United States. The numbers are as given to rules in the book: there are 1406.
266 Predicting behaviour The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.
442 Offending people The people who offend others most easily are often the most easily offended themselves.
157 Measuring things The first joint of your thumb measures about 1 inch, your foot measures about 1 foot, and your pace measures about 1 yard.
415 The library rule of 20/80 Twenty per cent of a library's patrons account for 80 per cent of the library's use. Twenty per cent of the books in a library account for 80 per cent of the library's use. (Also applies to contributors and funds, products and profits ... cf. 492, 493.)
1298 Looking for engineering correlations If you are trying to describe a phenomenon rigorously, correlate aggregate variables in such a way that the units cancel out. For example, don't study the effect of changing pipe diameter, which has units of distance. Study changes of pipe diameter divided by pipe length, which has units of distance divided by distance. The result is dimensionless. These correlations are more resilient to changes in materials and scale.
31 Measuring snow One inch of rain would make ten inches of snow.
61 Determining the age of a spruce tree You can determine the approximate age of a spruce tree by counting the layers of limbs on its trunk. A tree that has ten layers of limbs is roughly ten years old.
626 Cleaning a park The number of people and the amount of litter decrease with the cube of the vertical distance and the square of the horizontal distance to the trailhead.
880 Protecting your data In the computer world, make a copy of anything that's important. If it's really important, make two copies.
1209 Looking over a computer manual If a manual's table of contents lists names of programs or components instead of tasks, the manual isn't user friendly.
350 Picking a programmer Never hire a computer programmer who knows only one programming language.
373 Writing computer software A software writer can be expected to generate about ten lines of debugged, high-order language a day.
1253 Writing a computer program 1 When writing a long computer program, figure out the data storage first, the input and output next, and only then write the parts of the program that actually do the work.
1254 Writing a computer program 2 Write the documentation for a program before you write the program itself. In other words, figure out how you are going to explain the program to the user, then write the program to fit the documentation.
1255 Writing a computer program 3 To write a good program, write and debug the entire program, get it documented and working perfectly, then start over again from scratch based on what you learned the first time through. This process can be repeated as many as four times and still be cost-effective, but you should always do it at least once.
1256 Writing a computer program 4 In most computer programs, 10 per cent of the program accounts for 90 per cent of the processing time. Finding and re-writing this part of the program so that it runs fast is always cost-effective.
1257 Writing a computer program 5 No good computer program can be written by more than ten people. The best programs are written by one or two people.
1338 Illustrating your data If your data include fewer than twenty pieces of information, a graphic presentation is unnecessary.