Chris Loper has been writing about self-improvement and helping busy adults with habit formation since 2017. He also writes an education blog for parents and students for Northwest Educational Services. Along with Greg Smith, Chris is the cocreator of Parenting for Academic Success, a series of transformative classes that create empowered parents, confident students, and harmonious families. His most recent endeavor combines his academic and habit-formation expertise to help students thrive in college. Visit SmartCollegeHabits.com to learn more. In 2021, Chris published a humorous memoir titled Wood Floats and Other Brilliant Observations, a book that blends crazy stories with practical life lessons. He lives in Issaquah, WA where he is the owner of South Cove Tutoring.
A couple of years ago, I went to a bachelor party in Alaska. The location could not have been more epic: our friend Luke’s cabin on Chandalar Lake in the Brooks Range, which you can only get to by small plane (Luke flew us in). Certainly, the location alone would have been enough to make everyone feel like they were at a true Alaskan bachelor party, but someone had a… Read More »The Uniform Effect
This year, instead of changing you, focus on changing your setup – your physical environment, the various spaces in your life. And instead of committing to maintaining some new behavioral regimen, commit to maintaining your improved setup. This is the most important principle of smart willpower strategy. Get your physical space right, and the behaviors you want to do in that space become massively easier. James Clear recently explained why… Read More »A Better Type of New Year’s Resolution
Brené Brown has a helpful metaphor for understanding relationships: the marble jar.1 Whenever you build a relationship with someone (a romantic partner, a friend, a colleague) imagine that you and the other person are working together to fill up a jar of marbles. With every interaction, you each have a choice: You can add to the marble jar, take from the marble jar, or break the marble jar. Adding Marbles… Read More »The Relationship Marble Jar
To-Do List Trouble I used to put things on my weekly to-do list like “write next week’s blog post” or “practice calculus” or “redo homepage for website.” To-do lists are great, but for tasks like these, I was having a problem: They weren’t things I was going to do in a single sitting. Writing next week’s blog post takes multiple sessions of writing and editing. Practicing calculus is something I… Read More »The To-Do List Checkbox System