The person who takes a thousand steps, each one in a random direction, doesn’t get as far as the person who takes twenty careful steps in the same direction.

Activity doesn’t always equal progress. The formula is: “Action + Planning = Progress.”

When we want progress and we don’t have a plan, often we try to correct by increasing our activity. But while certain kinds of activity are generally always helpful, just throwing stuff at the wall isn’t generally beneficial unless you’re deliberately doing it to experiment – and experiments require intentionality and planning!

So if you feel like you’re always going, going, going, but never getting anywhere, then the answer is probably to stop. Look around a little. The activity surge isn’t what you need; you need a plan. Calm down for a day or two, and fight the notion that a break means you’re falling behind; you can’t fall behind by stopping something that wasn’t getting you ahead.

There’s a certain type of old video game where you start moving, and the whole point is just to avoid obstacles for as long as you can. You can swerve back and forth, but you can’t just stop – you keep moving and the obstacles keep coming (often with increasing speed) until you beat the game or you perish.

Life is like that, too.

Sometimes you don’t want to do something. You get a request to do some task, an offer with an opportunity, or a need to be met. It’s fine to not want to do that, whatever it is. But you don’t get to just pause your life. You keep moving forward, like it or not. You have to do something, in other words, even if you don’t want to do that thing.

You can’t say “no,” only “no, but…”

You can give yourself alternatives. You can swerve, juke, and pivot. In fact, you should! But you can’t just halt so the obstacle never comes.

The next time you don’t want to do something, pick something else. It doesn’t even have to be something you’d love, just something you’d hate less than the first option. Keep picking less-bad options each time, and your life will look pretty great before you know it.

Here is a parenting “trick” I’ve used for many years: I allow exceptions to the normal rules for the children as long as the exception includes something I want them to do more of.

Here are some examples: I don’t allow the kids to have food outside of the kitchen. But if the food is raw veggies, then that’s an exception. The kids love being able to have snacks in the playroom, so they eat more carrots and cucumbers. I extend bedtime by 30 minutes, but only if they’re in their beds reading. Kids tend to value ANY extension of bedtime very highly, so they do more reading as a result.

As an adult, no one makes you do good, healthy things like read and eat vegetables. But you can certainly do so yourself! Trick yourself – put your phone charger across the room instead of next to your bed, and put books on the nightstand instead. Put bottles of water in your game-room mini-fridge instead of beers. However you do it, attach some healthy habits to your indulgences and watch the benefits come along for the ride.

One of the strangest things about memory is how different two people’s can be. I’m not even talking about error, just perspective. Context. One person experiences an event so differently than another, and then twenty years later those memories have interacted with such different lives. The factual account of the events might be identical (though probably not), but even so the memory has such different meanings for those people.

Don’t trust what you remember. Trust what you can learn now, and stay curious – even about your own past.

Today I had the opportunity to do a good deed that was very minor in effort for me, but very meaningful for the recipient. I still had something I’d bought for my departed best friend, something we never got to actually do together. I have no reason to keep it – it’s a game we were going to play together. But it’s sat on my shelf for some time.

A random stranger happened to have that same game stolen from them. They were quite upset, naturally – but Chalie is here to save the day, still.

I am grateful for the chance to add light to a dark world.

There is a version of jealousy that breeds hatred. If you covet what your neighbor has without admiring what they’ve done to get it, it’s easy to ruin your joy and darken your heart.

But some jealousy is a good thing. You should admire the fruits of just effort! If your neighbor has earned a good life and your jealousy inspires you to live better, then hurrah!

Live well, and show it. Be a light for others to follow.

In any contest, you should cheer for the side that’s morally correct. If – as is often the case – there is no side that’s more morally correct than the other, you should root for the underdog.

Why? Because the world is more interesting when the winners don’t always win and the losers don’t always lose. Because the underdog story is more inspiring. Because humanity needs examples of beating the odds.

Because an upset of the order is a chance for new life.

There are two types of stubbornness: The kind where you refuse to be moved, and the kind where you refuse to be stopped.

The first kind tends to make one closed-minded, paranoid, and suspicious. The latter tends to make one fierce, determined, and brave.

Be the second kind.

Two things I really love: My children, and when I get to share a unique joy with someone else.

I love when someone “geeks out” about their passion to me, especially if we get to participate in it together as a result. Show me your favorite movie, introduce me to a musician you love, take me to a hiking spot that inspires you. I love it in the other direction, too – when someone else loves a game I show them or a book I recommend. Sharing joy more than doubles it; it’s tenfold, at least.

So when I get to do exactly that with my children, it’s magnified even further. And as they get older, the range of things that this can happen with widens. They bring me their favorite new experiences, and I get to share from my own vault with a new generation.

I’m going to another concert today with my eldest – this time, one of my all-time favorites, the incomparable “Weird Al” Yankovic. She’s as excited as I am, which makes me even more excited, which makes her even more excited… what a joyous loop!

Your brain needs chemical reactions. You need things that fire the neurons you don’t use, that makes the brain tick and whirl in new and weird ways. You need to prime the pump.

Don’t go into a tough day thinking only about that. Have a conversation first, about something else. Read something new. Get a little interesting thought into your head.

Watch the whole day change as new paths in your mind engage with it.