I Hid in the Bedroom at My Own Party. It Was Going Fine.
Out of ice, wine on the carpet, and me having a quiet breakdown in the bedroom. The party was going perfectly well. I was measuring it wrong.
Category: Advice (Page 2)
AdviceThe Fire Jumped the Road Behind Me. I Had Nothing in the Car.
Fire on both sides of the road, and when I looked back it had jumped behind me. Years of camping experience and nothing in the car that helped.
AdviceI Made $25,000 in a Year From Things in My Closet. Here Is What Changed.
A thousand items, twenty-five thousand dollars, one year. eBay has changed under sellers since 2003, and most of the advice out there describes a platform that no longer exists.
AdviceThe Rose Parade Pins That Stopped Me Decluttering
I had the display case open and the pins counted. Then I checked what they were worth, and the arithmetic stopped me. Knowing when to stop is the part nobody teaches.
AdviceStop Listening to the Gurus About Your Writing
I have spent months cleaning up my own website, deleting some articles entirely and rewriting the rest, fabricated quotes, keyword-stuffed paragraphs, emojis in headers, rules between every section. Every one traces to the same mistake: I trusted someone who called…
AdvicePositive Transformation to Improve Your Writing
Inspiration does not improve your writing; practice does, and practice needs a system that holds up against deadlines, fatigue, and real life. Most advice treats output as a willpower problem, which is why most advice fails. Consistency is structural. Here…
AdviceMistakes Are Not Okay. How You Handle Them Is
When a point-of-sale system fails across a retail chain, stores stop taking money and the calls start before you have even found the problem. I ran those systems at Trader Joe's for 20 years. In that world, mistakes are okay…
AdviceBurn Your Bridges: What 33 Years in Corporate America Taught Me
I was raised never to burn bridges, so for 33 years I stayed in jobs long past the point I should have left, enduring toxic bosses to protect contacts I would never use. When I finally walked, almost no one…
AdviceHow to Lead a Happy and Prosperous Life: From Someone Who Rebuilt His
I spent 33 years in technology, twenty of them at Trader Joe's, building a career that looked successful from the outside. Then at 53 I walked away from all of it. That decision taught me more about happiness than three…
AdviceWhy Writers Procrastinate and How to Stop: A Ghostwriter’s Perspective
People assume that writing 10,000 words a day means I never procrastinate. They are wrong. I have stalled on chapters and dodged manuscripts I knew would be hard. The difference is not that I avoid the pull; it is what…
AdviceEliminating Distractions | What Happened When I Unplugged My TV for a Decade
I put my television in a closet and left it there for ten years. Friends thought I had lost my mind. What I gained was a decade of focus that produced more than 50 books and a business. Here is…
Advice32 Strategies to Break Bad Habits (and Make the New Ones Stick)
Bad habits start small and become automatic, but they are learned behaviors, which means they can be unlearned. Here are 32 places to start, plus the cue-behavior-reward loop that makes replacement actually stick.