Can Always Do Better This message was instilled in me just a few months into my professional career through a senior partner’s response after I hesitantly suggested a revision to a document he had drafted.  Joe Allen said, “I have never seen anything that couldn’t be improved.”  These words have remained with me and served me well despite occasionally haunting me. Last summer, I rode a bike up...

We know what we must do to accomplish our goals but fail to do them consistently.  To make progress, we need commitment and perseverance (i.e., discipline).    Promise Any goal undoubtedly requires doing things you would rather not do or abstaining from things you want.  Remarkably, we often have a higher commitment to others than ourselves.   On a Saturday afternoon when you would much rather...

How did we get here? Only a few years ago, you had to read a magazine in the waiting room of the doctor's office or commiserate with fellow patients over your ailments.  At the airport, you talked with other travelers about where they had been or were going or daydreamed while watching the planes take off and land.  Today, each of us carries a handheld device with a screen that displays a...

While I typically invite you to think rather than tell you what to do, it would be a dereliction of duty to deprive you of my favorite decluttering principle. Rather than agonize over emotional, space, and financial considerations, I recommend a simple use standard.  If I have not used it in a year, I free it from the confines of my home by repurposing it or performing an interment.        The...

Now that you are a faithful sentinel guarding your homestead against an invasion by anything you will not effectively use and removing an existing item for each new one you bring in, you can turn your attention to repurposing the unused objects trespassing in your home.   I do not write “dispose of” as that implies loss.  Repurposing gives an item another useful life, redirecting it to someone...