Simple Frugality

making your home work

Death Isn’t the End

· Resiliency & Change

Recently a couple of our loved ones died, and my family have been hit by grief and loss. I’ve been letting myself feel it as much as I can, and letting it bring our family closer together. It’s not the only time death has hit our loved ones in recent years — aside from my father and Eva’s dad dying, we’ve had other …

Read the full post

Staying at the Edge of Uncertainty

· Uncertainty & Discomfort

When we get into a situation that feels uncertain, most of us will immediately try to get to a place of certainty. Instead of writing a blog post, I’ll find myself wanting to check emails or my favorite websites. Instead of having a difficult conversation, we’ll stay in a crappy situation for longer than we need to. …

Read the full post

First Two Steps to Creating Resilience

· Resiliency & Change

When life is shaking us up and we’re feeling stressed … it can be tough to feel resilient. Resilience helps us to deal with the chaos and overwhelm … but how to we create it when we feel like we’re underwater? The first step is to remove things that are adding unnecessary stress. The second step is to do things that …

Read the full post

Creating Impact When You’re Overwhelmed

· Productivity & Organization

Our lives can be chaotic and overwhelming, and we can feel like we’re struggling to stay afloat. We feel behind, stressed, distracted, undisciplined, unworthy. And in the middle of all of this, we want to do our meaningful work. We want to create an impact. How can we find focus and create some kind of meaningful …

Read the full post

Positive Feedback Loops

· Productivity & Organization

Let’s say you want to be more disciplined about your day … you might tell yourself, “I’m going to wake every morning, meditate for 15 minutes, plan my Most Important Tasks, and then get started and follow the plan. No doubts about it.” And then your plan gets hit by distraction or interruption, and you feel bad about …

Read the full post

What I Learned About Facing Fear from Cold Swimming

For the first 40 days of this year, I jumped in a cold swimming pool with two of my sons, as a practice in facing discomfort and fear. We never looked forward to it, but it taught me a lot about facing things I don’t want to face. The things we don’t want to face can look like a top hits list:

Read the full post

Relaxing with Chaos

· Uncertainty & Discomfort

There’s a big part of us that doesn’t like chaos: we want order and simplicity and feeling like we’re on top of things and doing things the “right” way. And so when things feel chaotic, we scramble for some kind of stability: Do you relate to any of these examples? In fact, the uncertainty of our chaotic lives is …

Read the full post

The Quest for Impact, Not Productivity

· Productivity & Organization

There once was a young man named Brabu, who discovered at a young age he had a superpower: he could make things move just by waving his hands. Brabu found delight in this at first, making sticks and leaves float in the air, playing wildly in the forests and ocean, the world was his playground. Then he grew up, and …

Read the full post