The things you do for yourself are often beneficial to others, too. And since you’ve already done them, the cost of sharing them is very low!

If you’ve solved a particular problem for yourself, created a helpful spreadsheet for something, figured out a tricky home repair problem, etc. – share it! Take a picture or write it down, maybe even make a video. You never know who’s day you’ll save!

Medicine is marvelous. Cheers to the doctors, scientists, production facilities, and all the other elements of the system that make medicine possible.

Pad Thai is also great.

I hate being sick.

I think it’s really fantastic when someone loves something as a kid and then, as an adult, gets an opportunity to meaningfully interact with it in some way.

I recently saw the band Kansas perform live. This band has been around for more than 50 years, so as you’d imagine, the lineup has changed many times. At least one of their members was a fan of the band as a child, and being able to grow up and join that band has got to be incredible.

Taylor Swift got to do a song in Toy Story 5. When she performed live with Randy Newman, she brought her VHS copy of Toy Story (1) that she’d watched many times as a child and had Newman sign it.

When I was a kid, I played a ton of a unique role-playing game and more than 20 years later, I’m a published author for that game.

These kinds of things are not only great to see from the personal level, but they’re amazing to see writ large on society. The passing of torches and the evolution of culture, the way we can care about things together even across generational divides, all this is wonderful.

Look back on your youth. What did you care about then? What was special to you? Could you experience it again in a new way, today? I’ll bet you could – come full circle.

It’s hard to notice nothing. And the people who work very, very hard to make sure nothing happens generally want exactly that outcome – you not noticing.

The person who runs your company’s IT security is doing a great job when A.) nothing bad happens and B.) you aren’t even aware that person exists on a day-to-day basis. In other words, they’re ensuing a smooth operation and they’re doing it without disrupting your job otherwise.

It’s possible to do (A) without pulling off (B). We notice that all the time. “Sure, there’s no fights in this bar, but there’s security everywhere, hassling us every time we go to the bathroom.” Or maybe, “Our company hasn’t had a malware attack, but I need to use three different programs to send an email and when I tried to download a PDF for work I had to make an appointment with IT to do it.”

The ability to make things run smoothly without making people aware of it is fine art. The next time you notice nothing – and hopefully, primed by this, you will – take a moment to say thank you to whoever engineered it.

If you can find them.

If you’re worried that you’re in trouble, get in front of it. There’s never been a kind of trouble that wasn’t at least partially mitigated by admitting your fault in advance.

If you know you’re wrong, showing genuine remorse and responsibility is a way to earn grace and mercy. And if you don’t think you’re wrong – if you think the impending trouble is unjust – then not waiting until the last minute shows conviction and enables you to mount a more serious defense.

In either case, trouble of some kind is always out there. Don’t let it catch you unawares; do the reverse.

“Only name a dog if you own it.” I heard a relative of mine say this phrase in relation to investing in things that you don’t have any way to recoup. There’s nothing wrong with charity, of course – if you know that’s what it is. But don’t throw your resources into a well you can’t draw from, thinking it’s a crop.

There is a big difference between “I don’t want to do that,” and “I want to not do that.”

For me, wanting to do something is a status reserved for a relatively small sampling of all the things it’s possible to do. The same is true for things I actively want to avoid. The rest of all possible stuff to do is in a broad category of stuff I’m relatively neutral about.

And to be clear: I only want to do about 25% of the stuff I do. The rest is stuff I have to do. I have to pay bills, clean my house, brush my teeth, and so on. These aren’t things I’m excited about, they’re just the things I have to do in order to have the life I’d like.

I almost never do stuff I actively want to not do, and that’s something I’m quite proud of.

But I notice that lots of people seem to take that huge category in the middle and act like it’s a massive burden to ever do that stuff! As if somehow the goal of life was only to ever do stuff that actively brought you joy directly, instead of stuff that maintains a life where joy can thrive.

I heard someone recently say that they weren’t interested in a potential partner, who was otherwise incredibly well-suited for them, simply because that potential mate was religious and the person I was talking to wasn’t. The religion itself wasn’t poorly aligned with their values or anything, either. It was simply a matter of “I don’t want to go to church every Sunday.”

That’s bonkers to me. In any relationship, you’re going to do some stuff that isn’t your cup of tea. No person on Earth wants to spend all 168 hours of each week exactly as you do. Whether your partner spends Sundays watching football or attending Mass or gardening or whatever, that just might be a little thing you do in order to have all the other wonderful elements of a successful and happy relationship.

And that’s just life! Filled with little things that bring neither joy nor sorrow, but are just the basic maintenance costs of our lives. An attitude where those neutral things are burdensome is such a surefire way to a miserable life I wouldn’t curse my worst enemy with it.

Try to do at least one thing each day that brings you joy, that you want to do. Try to do as few things as possible that you actively want not to, but – critically – keep that list incredibly short. Everything else, just do because it keeps the proverbial lights on.

I never get tired of watching my kids on stage.

My oldest is a major thespian, but all of my kids have tendencies toward the stage. It’s an eternal joy. It’s not just the performances themselves, of course. It’s watching children unafraid of the world.

Because that’s what performance is – it’s defiance of fear. It’s play, broadcast against a world that wants less of it. The world will often try to tell you to stay in your corner. But you belong in the center, wild and free.

Imagine two cultural groups, the Oranges and the Purples. These two groups have a long history of opposition to one another and have many values in conflict. This opposition doesn’t always become direct violence, but violent conflict has definitely happened.

Now, imagine Sam. Sam is extremely pro-Orange and anti-Purple. Sam may or may not actually be an Orange; that’s not important. What is important is that they think the Orange position on everything is correct and the Purple position is incorrect. In Sam’s view, the Oranges are oppressed, noble, and justified while the Purples are terrible people to the last. Sam acts on this view often, by protesting Purple-owned businesses or picketing against Purple community events. If they find out someone they know is a Purple-supporter (or even, gasp, a Purple), Sam makes a big deal out of it, shouting at that person, trying to get them kicked out of groups that Sam belongs to, etc.

Now we have Chris. Chris also shares the same opinion as Sam on the Orange/Purple divide. They see Orange as good and Purple as bad, same as Sam. And like Sam, Chris acts on this view frequently, but in a very different way. Chris largely ignores the Purple-supporters, but seeks out Oranges and Orange-supporters and contributes to their well-being in various ways. Chris donates to Orange causes, helps Oranges in the local community, and patrons Orange-run businesses whenever possible.

Two people with the same views. But one is definitely the better person.

Chris isn’t just better than Sam because Chris chooses to help while Sam chooses to harm. That is better, but there’s a much more important reason that Chris’s course of action is the better one: Sometimes you’re wrong.

Look, we ALL carry biases, and many of them are totally subconscious. We all make snap judgements and use tribal reasoning. Obviously you should try to tamp that down, but you’ll never be totally successful. So you should act in a way where being wrong doesn’t automatically mean you’ve done wrong.

Imagine that the reality of the Orange/Purple divide is much more nuanced and complex. Imagine that the reality is that most Oranges and most Purples are very good people who have failed to resolve an understandable dispute with no clear right or wrong. Imagine that the stakes of their conflict are much lower than Sam & Chris think; neither side wants to exterminate the other, they’re just debating what color the public signs in their town should be or something. In that reality, both Sam & Chris had incorrectly calibrated views, but Sam hurt people over them. Chris just bought people lunch or helped in some other way.

In other words, the penalty for Chris being wrong is “bought a pizza from the wrong place.” The penalty for Sam being wrong is “protested an innocent local pizza place until it shut down.”

If you think one group deserves help and another deserves harm, focus on the former. Ensure that even if you’re biased, the results are still positive.

I think an underrated way to improve your life is just to make sure the various things you do anyway are aligned in a harmonious way.

I know that sounds “woo-y,” but here’s what I mean. There was a study done a long time ago evaluating parole hearings. Criminals who had served a long sentence, but were eligible for early parole. Thousands of such cases were catalogued and evaluated to look for patterns in whether or not they were approved or denied (a monumentally important decision). The most important factor turned out not to be severity of the crime, length of sentence served, good/bad behavior, etc. It also wasn’t race or anything like that.

It was whether the judge had eaten lunch yet.

Turns out the cases heard right before lunch, when the judge was hungriest, had a far higher rejection rate than the ones heard right after lunch, when the judge was sated.

So what I’m saying is, scheduling the important things in our lives to be in harmony with our natural patterns of eating, sleeping, etc., can have a major impact on how smoothly everything goes for us.

Have a snack, take a nap.