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.
I often advise keeping your eyes on the process rather than keeping your eyes on the prize. In other words, focus on your effort, not the results you’re aiming for. Pour your energy into the work, and the results will usually take care of themselves. But last week, Seth Godin reminded me that it’s not that simple: “We expend effort. We create value. It’s easy to get confused about which… Read More »Are Your Efforts Effective?
Lately, I’ve been really busy. My work is in its busiest season. We’ve been house hunting. Friends and family keep inviting us to events we can’t say “no” to. I’m piecing together plans for a complicated vacation next year. And every week, there are a dozen urgent but unexpected tasks to take care of. I also haven’t been writing much, finding it hard to focus enough to do deep work.… Read More »What Stillness Brings
“The meaning you give work determines its difficulty. A coder working on a passion project works 12 hours straight and calls it energizing. That same programmer, doing maintenance on legacy code they consider meaningless, feels exhausted after 2 hours. Your relationship with the work shapes its weight more than the work itself.” –Shane Parrish1 In both of the cases above, the coder was working for money. But in the first… Read More »How to Be Energized by Your Work
“The hardest truth about happiness is that it’s a choice.” –Shane Parrish1 You can focus on what you don’t like about a situation, or you can choose to pay attention to the aspects that you do like. You can long for what you don’t have or be glad for what you do. You can resist what you’re experiencing or accept it with grace. You can focus on scarcity and feel… Read More »Happiness is a Choice