My number one rule while shaving
Obviously its all important, but if you skip a strop you can shave, if your blade is steep/shallow it'll cut, if you lather bad you can still shave, if you use your left or right hand, it'll shave, if you shave a little rough rather than gentle,........
But my number one rule is short passes.
First of all with short passes most of the other advices take care of themselves. If your constantly using short passes you invariably will shave gently. Without knowing your angle to the face will change appropriately. That constant lifting action makes it easy to readjust your blade. If you use short passes you are constantly changing the portion of your blade that touches your face (toe/tip), so you don't take a stroke that needs eighty percent of the blade and go into a section of the face that needs twenty percent and get cut. With short passes you can constantly reposition your tauting hand and get better leverage when you shave.
Obviously with short passes it allows you or reminds you to take it slow. By doing so you become more detailed in your work and you enjoy it.
Also when you use short passes each previous shaved section almost gets reshaven as you lift and go back a little to start your next pass, so its like two passes in one. Having just finished a pass your skin for a second or so will still have some residual gliding affect because its still a little wet and slick before it drys.
Most importantly, doing short passes puts you in the proper mindset for difficult areas which in my opinion are best tackled with not so much short passes, but short/small sections which are short passes. Chin, jawline, neck.. places where achieving a large flat plane is difficult, you just make small flat sections and work it little by little.
