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.
Predicting Unhappiness Pretty soon, I’m going to be less happy. I realize that’s an odd thing to say, so let me explain. My partner is a middle school teacher, and after a year of teaching remotely, she’s going back to working with students in person. (For those of you reading this in the future, it’s currently the beginning of April 2021.) Meanwhile, I’ll still be working from home, so I’ll… Read More »How to Prevent Depression
If you struggle with self-confidence, you’ve probably already heard all the bad advice out there. You’re told to pump yourself up with can-do platitudes and just “fake it till you make it.” But this just creates a façade of false confidence that you can temporarily hide behind. What you really want is true confidence. And as I’ve explained before, true confidence comes from self-efficacy. In that article, I focused on… Read More »Why Better Sleep Makes You More Confident
I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with to-do lists over the years. On the one hand, I need them. They lighten my cognitive load and remind me of tasks that I would otherwise forget. They provide a menu of productive options when I’m unsure what to do with my time. But on the other hand, I’ve found them to be unwieldy and even overwhelming. I used to just collect all possible… Read More »Organizing Your Tasks With To-Do List Categories
Planning your day the night before has long been touted as a keystone habit of highly productive people (by, for example, Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). But there’s another reason to plan your day the night before, one that might be more important to you than getting things done: It will make you happier. 1. Mental Offloading Planning tomorrow tonight reduces your cognitive load, which… Read More »4 Reasons Planning Your Day the Night Before Will Make You Happier