Category: Thinking Clearly

Rebalance The Week

Published on December 2, 2023

When it comes to priorities and life balance, I’ve written a lot about thinking in terms of days.

If Sleep/ Work/Recreational Time are priorities, split each according to the hours of your day (e.g. 8 hours each).

If Family/ Friends/Health are priorities, split each inside the 8 hours of “recreational time” you have (e.g. one hour meal time with family, one hour happy hour time with friends, one hour exercise every morning).

If Growth and Contribution are priorities, maybe block out 20 minutes to read, 20 minutes to write, and 20 minutes to help somebody just because.

And then there’s four hours left inside your “recreational time” to account for commutes, screen time, fun, snoozing, procrastinating, spontaneity, etc.

I like the idea of daily because every day we do the things that are priorities… it’s a good day.

It’s usually on the days when we aren’t able to hit our top priority areas that we feel like the day is a wash.

However…

It never plays out as simply as it’s laid out, does it?

Life gets in the way.

And when it does, a simple solution to keep your life balanced and in tune with your priorities is to shift from daily to weekly thinking.

…Put more time in at work than you planned? Subtract it from another day or deliberately block time for the missed priority on your more flexible days.

…Get caught in another media rabbit-hole and lose some high quality sleeping hours? If you can’t add it to the morning, ban yourself from even viewing media at all the next day or two.

Rebalance the week if/when you can’t rebalance the day.

Hair-Pulling Issues

Published on November 29, 2023

I’ve been experiencing some hair-pulling email issues over the past few days.

Things that were supposed to happen when somebody opts in to get my daily or weekly emails, wasn’t. The plugins and forms that were supposed to fix the problems, weren’t. And when I invested $800+ for a Cyber Monday deal to switch to a new email service provider… I quickly realized that they came with their own set of new, hair-pulling issues that I’d have to resolve. And so it has gone so far this week…

But then…

I heard that one of my students’ mom got her finger broken by her autistic daughter…

And that one of my coworker’s sisters was in the hospital…

And that one of my students’ dad passed away…

And that another one of my students’ mom passed away which lead him to drop everything and fly to the other side of the planet to be with his family…

And I remembered…

Email issues are laughable issues in the grand scheme of things.

When you’re feeling like you’re about ready to pull your hair out over the issues you’re facing in your life… try zooming out from your micro perspective and soaking in issues from a wider lens.

…Not because we want to think about bigger, badder, more heart-wrenching issues… but, because we want to gain perspective.

…So that we can ease our way back into our lives with a deeper sense of understanding and so we can revisit our “hair pulling issues” from a new head space.

…One that maybe puts “hair pulling issues” in air quotes and no longer has them bolded and underlined.

The Cost Of Old Thinking

Published on November 26, 2023

When I first started building MoveMeQuotes.com in 2010, I was all about fancy and cool.

…Until speed came onto my radar as being a vital component of a search engine friendly website.

When I first started speed testing my (fancy/cool) website… I was pulling 15+ second load times.

…Which was/is AWFUL.

Thus starting me on the journey of simplification, optimization, and code cleaning… which eventually lead me to AMP.

AMP is a protocol that essentially strips your website of all complex code and boils it down to its most essential/clean version.

The problem is it often strips your website of so much code that it often breaks the site—like buttons, forms, comment section—nothing works breaks… like, bad.

But… if you stick with it and diligently fix the code, rework your layout, download the right plugins and get clever about how you do things… the benefit is lightning speed.

I opted in, spent hundreds of hours getting it to function properly as an AMP-based website, and eventually got it loading sub-second.

The problem was the ongoing work never got easier. Everything kept taking 5x more work than it otherwise should’ve/would’ve and simple things like allowing comments were ongoing issues.

But, I always kept my head down, put in the 5x more work, and told myself the speed was worth it.

This weekend, however, I finally decided to challenge that belief and reverted back to an updated (faster) version of an old website-theme I used to use.

And lo-and-behold… sub-second load times.

The lesson today is this: challenge old beliefs from time-to-time. 5x more work might not be the current reality our old thinking is making it out to be.

A Reminder From The Universe

Published on November 18, 2023

Driving home the other night, I got stuck behind a car that had its hazard lights on.

There wasn’t anything evidently wrong with the car, the driver probably just parked it on the side of the road to run inside their (or someone else’s) house, do something quickly, and put the hazards on so they didn’t get a ticket.

…Understandable enough and something I’ve certainly done before.

It didn’t, however, stop me from feeling a quick rush of frustration as I waited for several cars to pass in the opposing lane… delaying my journey home by an appalling 10-ish seconds.

…Here’s the crazy part though.

Just as I was passing the car, about 10-ish seconds down the road in front of me, a cat BOLTED across the street.

Like, unhesitatingly from behind a car, completely unseeable from the road until it was already in the road, full blown sprint… kind of bolted across the street.

And it was an instant reminder from the universe that sometimes… things happen for a reason.

And sometimes… you just need to chill the heck out and trust it.

Channeling Your Inner Golden Retriever

Published on November 13, 2023

The group I’ve been playing basketball with on weekends has grown as of late.

And a lot of the additions to the group are much better than me.

If I’m not careful, this could make me want to stop playing.

But, if I’m mindful, this will continue to have zero impact on my playing long-term.

Because what I have to remember is that I’m not there to be the best basketball player (I gave up that dream when I got cut from my middle school basketball tryouts decades ago). I’m there for the killer plyometric workout and connection.

And so I use the presence of increased talent and experience as motivation to practice and learn… and do my best to channel my inner golden retriever the rest of the time and run around, jump up and down, and just be happy to be there.

…An excellent strategy, I must say, when learning anything new while in the midst of talented and experienced practitioners.

Room To Breathe

Published on November 12, 2023

With each reflected upon experience, we learn something about ourselves.

…Something goes well and we make a mental note to try and repeat that experience.

…Something goes wrong and we make a mental note to try and not repeat that experience.

The more we do this, the more self-aware we become. Until eventually, we get to a point where we feel like we know ourselves pretty damn well.

…We know what boosts us up and we know what brings us down. We know what makes us cheery and helpful—and we know what makes us irritable and withdrawn. We know what keeps us calm and we know what ticks us off.

And while there’s no doubt that this type of insight is invaluable to a person… it can also slowly become a crutch.

Oscar Wilde once said, “To define is to limit”—and this is precisely what we do to ourselves the more we “define” ourselves. The more sure we are that we’re “not a morning person”—the more we limit our ability to experience joy in the morning. The more sure we are that we “can’t function without food at a certain time”—the more we limit our ability to perform if we ever aren’t able to eat at that certain time. The more sure we are that we “aren’t the person who does that—whatever “that” is—the more we limit ourselves from ever trying.

Self-awareness is a superpower—don’t get me wrong.

But, try not to be so self-aware that you leave yourself no room to breathe into any new/fresh identities or take on any new/fresh experiences.

One Of Those DAYS

Published on November 10, 2023

I had myself A DAY today.

You know, one of those days where nothing seems to go right.

Like when you try and print stacks of really important papers… and they come out on 11×17 paper instead of 8.5 x 11 paper.

Or when you try and print a different stack of really important papers… and they come out on 8.5 x 11 paper instead of 11 x 17 paper—even though you triple checked the settings.

Or when you try to hurry past barriers set up in an open room by unhooking, swinging, and limboing under the poles… and you cause the entire barrier wall to tip like dominoes leaving each pole and draped cloth spanning over 100 feet collapsed on the ground.

(…All true stories from today).

Yeah. One of THOSE kinds of days. Ever have one of them? Well, here’s something I did that helped turn it around…

When I caught myself mentally complaining (it’s a rare moment that that actually happens)… I decided to consciously try to reframe my perspective with the question: what can I find that’s going right…?

Because, as is the case 99% of the time in life, there’s PLENTY going right.

…My health was in tact. I didn’t have a toothache. My friends and family were well. I wasn’t throwing up sick. It wasn’t snowing and icy. I woke up on time. Heck, I woke up. My tire wasn’t flat. And so on…

Remembering to count your blessings each and every time you catch yourself complaining about your problems is the secret to creating more blessings than problems in your life.

And the best part is: the former ALWAYS outweigh the latter.