Always remember that stress compromises performance. You can withstand a certain amount of it, but diving deeper into it will slow the progress you’re making. You have to mitigate those forces, not just endure them.

Imagine yourself as a jigsaw piece. The more you look for pieces you fit with, the better your life will be. The more you look at pieces that are just like you, but bigger, the worse your life will be.

The piece that’s shaped like you, but bigger? That’s for a different puzzle. It has nothing to do with you. It can’t help you, because you can’t help it.

Joy and success in life comes from finding people we can help, and doing so. Look for people who are missing what you have, and who have what you are missing. Look for ways to form connections, not comparisons.

That bigger piece, to a different puzzle? It’s taking nothing from you; the pieces that it fits with don’t even belong to your puzzle. You gain nothing from even being aware of it, unless you’re using it as inspiration to find other pieces to fit with.

Don’t look for people like you. Look for people who will like you.

Oddly, I seem to frequently see people touting how much money they’ve spent on something as if it were something to brag about. I’m well aware of conspicuous consumption and all that, but usually that doesn’t include also bragging that you’re a sucker.

Whether it’s a neighbor talking about how much they paid to send their kid to school or the local town hall bragging about how much they’re spending on new infrastructure, the point seems to be lost. It’s not how much you’re paying – it’s what you get for it!

Remember the old adage, “Better, Faster, Cheaper: Pick Two?” The wisdom is that usually deciding between two options means sacrificing one of those three (and if you’re losing on 2, it’s a bad deal). A different landscaper might do a better, faster job than the one you have now, but they’re more expensive. That’s fine to go with, but what you’re supposed to brag about is how nice your yard looks, not how much money you spent!

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.