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.
“It’s OK to suck. It’s not OK to skip.” –Brian Johnson1 We’ve all been there. Too tired to have a “good” workout. Too stressed to have a “good” meditation. Too busy to write a “good” blog post. These are all perfectly legitimate reasons to do a short workout, have a distracted meditation, or write a mediocre blog post. They are not legitimate reasons to skip. The key to sticking with… Read More »The Most Important Rule for Sticking with a Habit
Some people avoid self-improvement because they believe that devoting time to becoming better is inherently selfish. The world has so many problems and the people around us have so many needs that it’s selfish to devote energy to self-care and personal growth. After all, any time spent helping yourself is time not spent helping others. In this view, things like meditation and yoga are self-indulgent, frivolous luxuries, hiking should be… Read More »Is Self-Improvement Selfish?
I used to be terrible at remembering names. I believed that this was just how I was, no more changeable than the color of my eyes. But then it occurred to me that this was a fixed-minded way of thinking, and I had been witnessing the power of a growth mindset in most other areas of my life. So I said to myself, “Hey, I know a lot about learning… Read More »How to Actually Remember Names
In my original willpower article, I described how certain willpower-using behaviors provide a return on investment greater than the initial input. In other words, there are things you can do that cost willpower but which give you back more willpower than you put in. Today, I want to dig deeper into that topic and explain how you can choose to spend willpower in ways that maximize your return on investment.… Read More »Willpower Virtuous Cycles