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.
Self-improvement is driven by behavioral change: quitting bad habits, starting good habits, or simply doing more of what works (thank you James Clear). And if behavioral change is going to stick, then your new ways of acting will need to become ingrained deeply into your sense of self. You’ll need to change your identity. But how do you change your sense of self? The answer is spaced repetition. Spaced repetition… Read More »How To Make Change Stick
Every morning, I get up way earlier than I need to and practice a self-care routine. I’m going to describe each piece of my morning routine and explain why I do it, but there are some things you should know first. I developed this routine gradually, one piece at a time, over the last three years. You probably shouldn’t try to jump into such a rigorous and lengthy morning routine… Read More »Self-Care Morning Routine: The Real Breakfast of Champions
In her book, No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness, Michelle Segar encourages us to find “opportunities to move,” or OTMs for short. Finding OTMs means finding ways to do some additional physical movement throughout the day.1 The reasoning behind this is that we live very sedentary lives and being sedentary is bad for both our physical2 and mental health.3 Even if… Read More »OTMs
Isaac Newton’s first law of motion states that an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. A similar law exists for human productivity and behavioral change: A person who is moving in the right direction tends to keep moving in the right direction, and a person who is stuck tends to remain stuck. Actually, I left something out. Newton’s… Read More »You Can Build Momentum