It takes serious intention to improve your life 🧠

In working on several projects that require design and product thinking expertise, my career choices have compelled me to personally discovering and honing hacks that simply and sustainably improve my life. None of them are uniquely original, but when compiled together, they make for a powerful personal toolkit.

None of these have come easily, of course. To hack your life, it requires a great deal of trial and error. As somebody who believes intensely in the principle of kaizen—or “continuous improvement” in English terms—I have arrived at many of these hacks after years, even decades of personal tweaks.

While I’m sure I could come up with another 25 beyond the hacks detailed hereafter, these are the ones that have had the most significant impact on my life. Whether approaches to work to small, daily choices, I believe any of these are worth trying on your own. I don’t expect all of them will work for you exactly as they have for me—but don’t hesitate to tweak them for your own purposes, much like I have.

In the end, I simply hope my favorite life hacks save you the trial and error I’ve personally encountered. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to. Trust me on this one.

How many times have you been asked for information about you, your health, your family, your home, or some other data point that you don’t have offhand? I know I experienced this lots, and I was sick and tired of not having the answer ready.

After reading a book about keeping an organized mind, it shared how much mental processing we do in the background, regularly preventing humans from working at less than full capacity. I decided to do something about it.

While it took a few months of slow and steady work, I now have absolutely everything—and I mean everything—stored in my LastPass vault. This way, if you ask me for my passport number or my blood type, address or account numbers, birth certificate or marriage certificate, I have it accessible within seconds, no scrambling or “I’ll get back to you” required.

I even store pictures of my identification records there, knowing that if there’s ever a catastrophe of some sort and our entire house goes up in flames, I still have the information I need to resolve any official or non-official data collection needs. As a bonus, LastPass helps me rest at ease knowing that I don’t duplicate a single password anywhere on the increasingly fraudulent internet.

Of all the life hacks I have, this is the one that has probably saved me the most time and frustration. Moreover, I believe I’m more productive simply by not having to consciously or subconsciously remember where something is—I just always know. And I highly recommend you go about doing the same.

While the reason for this hack is similar to why I’ve created a centralized, digital source of truth, to accomplish this hack, I primarily use Dropbox instead. Dropbox is the most useful software in my arsenal of tools, but it doesn’t quite save me the same amount of time and hassle that my LastPass vault has. Regardless, it’s up there in terms of value.

Having gone through the pain of laptops that die, I don’t have to worry about the effort to switch them anymore. I never store a single file anywhere but in my Dropbox now, allowing me the ease of switching machines in a moment’s notice. Where it would have taken days to accomplish that before, now it takes me less than an hour of initial setup and syncing with Dropbox for me to make a transition.

It’s not even just about my laptops, either. I also use Dropbox to access files from my phone and backup all my photos. This way, if I ever lose or break my mobile device accidentally, I don’t have to go through the headache (or heartache) of trying to remember if I still have access to those wonderful photos and videos that our smart phones make so easy to capture. I’m a big organization guy, so I try to keep my folder structure pretty clean, and it works for me. Still, I do have to go through and rearrange things once or twice a year. It’s kind of like a digital spring cleaning.

While it may feel tangential, I file my real world organizational habits under this life hack, too. From my Christmas decorations to my car keys, screwdrivers to towels, picking a designated location for everything in my life saves our family from having conversations like, “Do you know where ______ went?” We especially try to do this with our kids, because children are notorious for losing things and getting frustrated.

In the end, the more you can determine where everything should go, the easier and less chaotic life can be. Phew.

Over time, I’ve oscillated between keeping up all my inboxes to letting them go unchecked for extended periods. In the last several years, I’ve finally landed on something that works best for me. Here’s my battle-tested hack.

For work, I try to time block when I respond to emails. But most importantly, I’ve implemented policies at work where our employees cannot use email at all for internal purposes. All we use is Slack instead. This has been great and really cut down on the number of messages I’m receiving.

But when it comes to my personal email, I have a lot of people reach out to me still, even for business purposes. So, rather than keep up two inboxes or clutter up my work email with forwarded mail, I’ve turned on my vacation auto-responder at all times. I’ve written about this hack elsewhere and shared previous email auto-responder messages I’ve used.

As of this season, the message I’m currently using is…

Hi there,

Entering 2022, I'm going to continue my 2021 (and 2020 and 2019 and…) trend in rarely checking and not responding to this email address. It's one of my top life hacks. Feel free to email me at jc@journeyage.com if it's work related. If you need to get a hold of me for any other reason, I always prefer phone calls at 480.319.0448. If you get my voicemail, I'll return the call.

Much love,
Jonathan

After years of applying this practice, I can assure you that I have missed nothing important. I check it maybe one or two times each year, and that’s it. People follow the instruction and reach out to me personally if it’s something important—which is rare. As a result, I don’t have to worry about my personal inbox anymore. You don’t have to, either. What a relief.

Retrospectives are one of the keystone ceremonies conducted within the Scrum framework of Agile teams. However, they don’t just need to be applied on Agile teams. In my opinion, these are the most important events that can be conducted individually or with teams. The three major reasons I believe retrospectives are the most important meetings you can conduct in any personal or professional environment are:

1. Without pausing to reflect on and share what’s taken place with others, learnings can easily remain individual rather than becoming collective

2. This practice forces you to celebrate wins and failures, living out of a place that values learning and progress over knowing and perfection

3. Retrospectives result in real, sustainable, and implementable change that leads to better performance across the board

So, what the heck is a retrospective? In it, you ask three simple questions:

• What went well, and why?

• What didn’t go well, and why?

• What will we change next?

In most teams, retrospectives are typically conducted at the end of an iterative cycle, commonly referred to as a “sprint.” However, on teams I work with, I encourage everyone to hold retrospectives more frequently. In addition to post-sprint ceremonies, I also encourage that retrospectives take place:

• On a regular basis as a functional squad, team, or department

• Immediately following key moments and activities that are essential to the performance of an individual or team

• After shared, cross-functional events that are customer-facing

• Following significant wins and failures

• On occasion after repeated, recurring internal events and meetings, to ensure they do not grow stale

The key in all of this is not to stick to the process just for process’s sake alone. Never. Instead, each person should be looking for opportunities to reflect and share learnings with others, injecting these retrospectives into their own process at the moments which help them most improve performance. They should never become perfunctory, only perfecting.

The whole point of a retrospective is to implement change, not just talk about it. As such, there are three times in the lifecycle of a team that retrospectives can become useless which everyone needs to look out for. They are:

• When there are no actionable changes that are identified and assigned to a directly responsible individual to help implement

• When there are far too many changes to implement and it becomes an overwhelming burden

• When people stop being accountable to implement the small changes discussed and decided upon

These are the reasons why I look for that “Goldilocks” sweet spot of 1-2 changes noted for next time. Nothing more, nothing less. When you talk about what needs to change, it should result in assigning an action, setting a due date, and getting it done.

One way in particular to ensure that changes are implemented is by reviewing changes before starting your next iteration or work cycle. For individuals, it’s great to do this each week or month. For example, if you conduct a retrospective on Friday, on Monday, start the week by reviewing the 1-2 changes you decided to implement on Friday and re-communicate and commit to the change that’s being made. It’s that easy.

In short, never stop improving. This is a great hack to get that done, and that’s why I’ve written a more complete guide on why and how to conduct retrospectives.

I believe great tools can truly improve your life. I’m not just saying that. As I’ve honed my craft both personally and professionally, I’ve landed upon some great go-to tools to help make my life more productive, more organized, and more rewarding. Finding the right tools to make things easier on you is a simple life hack I’m all about.

Tools don’t solve everything, of course, but they sure can help a whole lot. It’s more about how you use them than what they can do alone.

I’ve written a ton more about this by compiling a list of the 56 tools I use to do life the way I do. That includes recommended tools for productivity, communication, design and web, media, finance, and everyday needs. Start adding the right tools to your arsenal today.

Early in my career, I was tasked with crafting every presentation and proposal to my marketing agency’s Fortune 500 clientele. Rather quickly, it became a small team of people I managed who were all dedicated to designing strategic plans and PowerPoints that won prospects and satisfied customers. As a result, it didn’t take long before I learned the extreme value of templates.

Since then, I’ve worked my tail off to ensure that I’m always creating with the end in mind—and that end is developing a system to repeat things with less work. Cutting and pasting content from elsewhere simply isn’t enough in my opinion. It’s all about crafting repeatable, templated approaches that can easily be used by me or others in the development of new work. It saves time, sometimes money, and it always improves the end result.

I most recommend this when it comes to presentations and documents. But if you’re a designer, that also means creating design templates. If you’re a finance person, that means crafting spreadsheet templates. If you’re a marketer, it means creating email templates. You get the idea.

One of my favorite hacks is using Gmail templates. Partnered with my automated system for scheduling meetings, I never have to worry about writing emails about when to meet anymore. I simply reply, select a template, and off sends this message:

Hey, rather than play email ping pong while individually navigating calendar Tetris to schedule something, just pick a time that works best for you based on my availability. I'm looking forward to it.

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve saved thousands of hours in my life using templates, and you can do the same. Do it.

Cal Newport wrote a book about focus amid a distracted world titled Deep Work. While I can’t say that I recommend the book in its entirety (like many books, it’s a simple principle that’s explained in far too many pages), I surely recommend its underlying principle.

There are lots of ways to get things done. But when it comes to work that takes substantial mental energy, I have frequently applied the deep work hack and blocked out 3-4 hours at a time on my calendar to do what I must. Sometimes, that’s several hours worth of deep work in the middle of the day, where I don’t accept meetings, turn off notifications, and get down to business. In my past, I’ve also gone to places where I didn’t have internet access so that I could just do what I needed to do right in front of me, working on documents, presentations, and the like. In the book, Newport also suggests that renting a hotel to execute on large projects helps motivate some people to get things done even faster as a byproduct of the personal investment required for such deep work.

In running the businesses I now do, deep work is more important than ever. Most often, I spend the earliest hours of my day on the most difficult projects, as that is both the time I’m most productive and the time of least distraction. It’s important everyone find the rhythms that work best for them, though. For example, I very rarely schedule deep work time in the afternoon, as I know that this is the least productive time for me. Simultaneously, I’m energized by meetings with other people, so rather than use my productive morning time for meetings, I prefer to make any meetups happen in the afternoon.

Again, everybody has their own preferences and work styles, but I know that blocking my calendar and focusing my energy on deep work is a requirement to make the kind of progress I hope for in life. Give it a try.

It’s not like I’ve ever been a fashion guru or anything, but I’ve always enjoyed shopping for clothes, whether it’s just me or it’s with others. Just ask Nicole—I’m one of those weird husbands who loves browsing the aisles, pulling stuff off the rack, and rushing back to the dressing rooms to hand my wife more items to try on while she’s still there. “This is adorable, you have to try it on.”

However, while I’ve always enjoyed looking for nice new outfits, I’ve simultaneously hated picking out what to wear every morning. It’s not like it took me that long, but with an assortment of styles to choose from, the fact is, not everything I owned went together. Plus, as my wardrobe grew, it slowly became that I really only wore a few of the total pieces I had available.

That’s why I followed the advice of other minimalists I trust and began a search for a uniform which worked for me. This hack is in-depth enough that I’ve written a whole page unto itself on why I do it, how it’s helped me, and the uniform I’ve landed on after years of searching. Who doesn’t want to save time, save cash, and look good while doing it?

Make your wardrobe work for you.

A while back, I read a book that introduced me to the concept of affordance theory. In researching it, I found this helpful description:

Affordance theory states that the world is perceived not only in terms of object shapes and spatial relationships but also in terms of object possibilities for action (affordances) — perception drives action.

American psychologist James Jerome Gibson was influential in changing the way we consider visual perception. According to his theory, perception of the environment inevitably leads to some course of action. Affordances, or clues in the environment that indicate possibilities for action, are perceived in a direct, immediate way with no sensory processing. Examples include: buttons for pushing, knobs for turning, handles for pulling, levers for sliding, etc.

When I read about this theory, it made me quickly think of the phrase, “Out of sight, out of mind.” I had already been considering this phrase as my wife and I organized our house in the effort to simplify, but then I realized I could apply this principle to my digital spaces, as well. On the flip side, I realized the opposite is just as true: “In sight, in mind.”

James Clear wrote at length about the power of our environment in one of my favorite books, Atomic Habits. Similarly, I’ve read multiple other books about how office space design increases or decreases desired behaviors among people.

Of course, none of this is too surprising. The question is, how can we use affordances and environmental design as a hack to improve our lives?

Over the years, I’ve experimented with affordance theory and design to create environments that result in all sorts of better habits. That’s included radically changing my phone screen so I read more, labeling everything to keep things tidier, placing my journal next to my bed at night so I actually do it, using Alexa commands to turn on my office lights and tell me to meditate in prayer, and much more.

Whatever the case, there’s a ton of ways we can craft and arrange our spaces to drive us toward the actions we want. If you want to work out more, put the weights somewhere you can always see them. If you want to clean the house more, take the vacuum out of the closet and charge it in somewhere you can see it. Those are just a few ideas, but the opportunities truly are endless.

Our environment matters. Let’s consider it, accordingly.

Sticky notes and Sharpies are among my favorite everyday tools. They’re like Batman and Robin in my book—inseparable do-gooders when paired together. I use this dynamic duo to do a few things.

First, if my office has a whiteboard in it, I often turn it into a large, real-life kanban board where every sticky note becomes an item of work that moves from planned to in progress, in progress to in review, and in review to done. Having the sticky notes visible to everyone in your environment is an incredibly helpful way to keep work moving forward quickly, without distraction.

I also make daily and weekly to-do lists on the little yellow pads, enabling me to stick my priorities on my laptop. Similarly, I also keep my larger goals for each season at the top of my whiteboard, where I can see them at all times. It keeps me focused on where I’m going.

Whatever your own use of to-dos, making lists is a proven way to make sure things get done. While digital task management solutions are helpful for those actions—especially among teams—I prefer having things right in front of me at all times, where I can’t forget them.

While sticky notes and Sharpies may not be able to fight the scourges of Gotham, they can definitely help get things done. KAPOW! 💥

Context shifting kills productivity. Let me paint a common scenario…

I’m at work on something and making decent headway, but in the back of my mind, I know that I have a meeting coming up in 30ish minutes. So, rather than just keep plugging away on it, my mental game starts shifting toward that, where I think to myself, “Is it time for me to jump on that call yet?” It heavily impacts that work.

That isn’t all, either. Even though we may have an entire 60 minutes scheduled, really, it’s something that only takes 40 minutes to talk through and arrive at our desired outcome. We could absorb those other 20 minutes and keep talking about things that aren’t as important, because we have the time scheduled, or we could finish.

Whenever we do wrap up the call, it takes me another 5 to 10 minutes to get back into the flow on what I was working on. Unfortunately, 30 minutes after that call ends, then another 30-minute meeting is smack dab in the middle of my calendar.

Sound familiar?

Rather than schedule meetings that are not imperative to the ongoing work of my team and don’t have a defined agenda, I try not to schedule such meetings at all anymore. If someone has a request or needs to talk to me about something, I tell them to just call me at their convenience. If they get my voicemail, I’ll return the call, but no, I won’t schedule it.

This eliminates the mental energy of knowing that a meeting is coming up. It mitigates the temptation to use more time than required for the issue at hand. Lastly, it frees up my calendar entirely for things that actually do reserve the blocked time.

This is a game-changing productivity hack for those interested in being more efficient and effective with their time. Stop context shifting.

Soon after the advent of the smart phone, I commonly heard people or read articles referencing the wonder of the computers in our pockets. It’s true, no doubt. We hold more computing power in the palm of our hand today than most people ever imagined personally wielding in the past.

Unfortunately, these tiny little wonders have also led to more digital distraction (and addiction) than we’ve ever encountered in human history.

In the ongoing effort to foster more abundance in my life, I’ve applied affordance theory to my phone’s mobile screen for a better, less cluttered and distracted experience. Since doing so, one of the chief benefits I’ve discovered is reading more. Way more, in fact.

It’s simple. I hide all apps on my iPhone within a single folder, making only three apps visible on my home screen: Kindle, Audible, and the Bible. When I’m stationary, I’m reading the Bible or a book on Kindle. When I’m driving or moving, I’m listening to a book on Audible.

While these apps are nothing to write home about on their own, having them be the only apps on my mobile home screen is a revelation. Paired with hiding email and deleting the social media apps that so commonly led to wasted time, this has led to my consumption of more books than ever.

The first year I did it, I read over 60 books that year. For comparison’s sake, I was reading about 5 books the years before that.

I used to jokingly reference my “endless reading list,” just like others. Now, I’m actually chipping away at it. Turns out, I just had to rid my life of distractions and get those books off my shelf and into my pocket.

As a bonus tip, I recommend you start your digital reading with smaller books, so you feel more accomplished as you take up the new habit. You know what they say—readers are leaders. Read on, and lead on.

P.S. If you want to read more about this, give how to read more books a once over.

While this may sound a bit dramatic, volleying emails back and forth with people until we found an agreeable time to meet felt like the bane of my existence. Calendly changed all of that. There are few tools that have saved me more unnecessary time than this one.

Now, I just send people a link to my Calendly page so people can pick when they want to meet based on their own availability. No more email ping pong. No more “Just confirming we’re meeting tomorrow” messages. No more canceling and rescheduling. Calendly handles it all, perfectly synced with my calendar. I love it.

Of course, there are plenty of other meeting scheduling tools out there, too. Doodle can help large groups of people figure out a good time to meet. There are even some pretty cool artificial intelligence tools out there that help people schedule meetings as if it was being scheduled by a personal assistant, like x.ai.

Whatever tool you use, though, the hack is what’s most important. Just use something so people don’t have to waste any more time on finding a time to meet. The world will thank you.

The internet has become a far more fraudulent place. While we may not need to fear being pickpocketed on a street corner, there are plenty of ways that identity and financial theft can happen, even when it isn’t our fault.

After having to cancel my debit card on two different occasions and go through the rigamarole of updating all the different vendors where I had saved those card numbers, I was annoyed. That’s when I discovered Privacy, an easy way to avoid ever having to do that again.

This nifty little product and all its browser extensions and mobile apps make it super simple to generate virtual credit cards and keep my original debit and credit card numbers more secure. I create recurring card numbers for merchants to whom I pay monthly bills, and I generate one-time card numbers for sites that seem a bit more sketchy.

In either case, if there’s a security breach with a vendor I use now, I don’t have to go about changing all my card numbers come next billing cycle, because that card number will be useless elsewhere. I can even pause a card or change its spending limit on the fly. I also use it to watch (or even cap) my spending with certain vendors, ensuring I know when recurring expenses are increasing.

I absolutely love the service and I think its apps are second to none. I also know a number of credit card providers are offering similar services now. See ya later, virtual pickpockets.

“Time is an inspiration killer.” While I had never heard it put in these words before, when I read them in the book Rework, I was convinced of the truth. I had experienced it firsthand, letting inspiration wane as I completed “more important” work.

I believe that chapter in the book was originally inspired (ha!) by this 2006 blog post, where Jason Fried paints the analogy that “Inspiration is like picking up one of those blinky things in a video game that makes you invincible for awhile.” He writes:

Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won’t wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.

Ever since reading it, I’ve tried to apply the principle to my own work. If I’m inspired to do something, I don’t let anything stand in the way unless it’s absolutely immoveable. When inspiration strikes, if I have team meetings that day, I reschedule them or say I can’t attend. If there’s other work I had prioritized to get done, I rearrange priorities.

When inspiration strikes for something hard, especially, I always try to do those things first. Getting painful tasks out of the way before the easier ones make the latter even more pleasurable. It may not feel like that in the moment, but this trick is proven to work.

The fact is, most of the work that’s in front of us is work that’s been placed there because we placed it there. That’s not always the case, of course, but it’s usually something that can be moved. When we’re in a state of flow and motivated to be doing what we’re doing, why not capitalize on the moment?

That’s exactly what I do now—and I recommend you do the same.

I love change. In fact, I thrive in it. While I know that’s not everybody’s preference, it’s definitely mine.

Regardless of your personal affinity for change, though, we can certainly agree that change is inevitable as we live our lives. Whether it’s moving houses to changing jobs, getting married or ending a relationship, becoming a parent or simply getting older, life is rife with change.

With that in mind, it’s been incredibly helpful for me to use a consistent framework as I assess each season of my life. Seasons could be any length of time, but generally, I use my framework when I:

• Change jobs

• Finish a large project

• Celebrate a birthday

• Enter a new year or quarter

• Generally feel a shift in my environment and want to figure things out

When any of these events happen, I usually go about:

• Praying, listening, and reflecting

• Journaling what I’m feeling leaving the previous season (i.e. looking back) and entering into the next one (i.e. looking forward

• Bullet pointing what I need to stop doing that I’m currently doing, keep doing, and start doing that I’m not doing

• Ascribing a single word or theme to the time forthcoming

I’m definitely used to a lot of changes throughout my life, even major pivots. I’ve even gone through the process of classifying the years of my life into specific seasons. All of this is part of my way to maintain a positive personal mindset and mission.

It’s that simple. And now that I’ve been doing it a while, I’ve even started to add an approach where I can share each year’s learnings, highs, lows, and more with others via this handy website you’re reading. Check out my first complete year in review for an example.

I’m a socially motivated creature. In fact, I’m far more motivated by my relationships with others than nearly any other factor. So, rather than establish personal rewards or consequences to get me to do something, instead, I invite others to hold me accountable.

For example, when I was writing my first book, I asked my friend, Geoff, to be the person who held my feet to the fire on it. If I didn’t email him a new chapter by Monday morning, I gave him permission to follow-up with me and ask me about it.

Since I hate not doing what I say, this rarely was the case. Internally speaking, I was quite motivated to keep making progress (even when I didn’t feel like it and even on the weekends) since I knew Geoff would reach out to me if I didn’t send him something by Monday.

I’ve done this for workout regimens and goal-setting. It’s as simple as telling people what I’m going to do and asking them to follow-up with me if I don’t get it done.

We all have our different motivations, but I’ve found this to be one of my greatest hacks to keep making progress. Similarly, I encourage everyone to discover what specifically motivates them.

Yes, I’m old enough to remember learning how to type with good old Mavis Beacon. But whether you’re a fast typer or not, it doesn’t matter—keyboard shortcuts are an incredibly helpful hack to save time. It may not seem like it makes you more productive in the moment, but accumulated over time, it’s essential.

When I start using new software, I always try to learn what the shortcuts are. On a PC, that Ctrl button really comes in handy, while on a Mac, you can’t get enough of that Cmd key. In Slack, which I use daily, I’ve become addicted to shortcuts like Cmd+K that transport me between channels and direct messages. In PowerPoint, I use Shift+Cmd+1 regularly to open up formatting panels and make edits happen quickly. And of course, I’m always using Shift+Cmd+4 to take screenshots.

Whatever your preferences, investing a little bit of time to find some keyboard shortcuts that work for you is a huge help when it comes to navigating and using the software you rely on day in and day out. I heavily encourage you Cmd+C and Cmd+V this hack from my playbook to yours.

Knowing that I’m a film nerd, my friends will frequently ask me what my favorite films were at the end of each year or as the Oscars near. Once again trying to optimize my brain, rather than store the information in the cobwebbed recesses of my mind, I answer, “Let me see.” That’s when I pull out my phone and access my latest favorite films for the year on IMDb.

In fact, using the handy dandy list-maker, I keep track of three lists each and every year on IMDb:

1. Watchlist, which is every movie or TV show I watch that year

2. First times, which represent the first time I ever see the media

3. My tops, which includes my picks for the year’s top 20 productions

Labeled as “YYYY: List Name,” I create my three new lists at the start of every year, and it greatly simplifies me having to try and remember things later. In fact, it’s this life hack that enables me to write about my years by the numbers. It’s also how I was able to put together my top 30 films of all time.

Similarly, I’ve found keeping track of my habits really helpful as well. I’ve used the Clear Habit Journal for this sometimes, helping me implement new habits that make for a better life and routine. I especially like the one-line journal format that the hardbound book provides. Sometimes I’ve used Evernote for journaling and habit tracking, as well.

I don’t track everything this way, but if something matters to you, it’s worth giving this hack a try. I keep track of the places I’ve been, my kids’ best quotes, favorite restaurants, and much more using one tool or another. It makes it so much easier to remember and share that way, eliminating the need to compile things down the road. This is partly why I’ve even developed this website on Squarespace, making it my repository of sorts for all the things I care about and that much easier to share with others.

You don’t have to be as much of a nerd as I am about this, but give it a try. The more you do it as you go, the easier it becomes.

There’s no better friend to an organizing, minimalistic, A-type personality than a good label maker. This hack is really just a continuation of my second favorite life hack, helping me designate a place for everything I own. But when it comes to tangible, real world items, that can sometimes be more difficult. Our home and work environments can easily become unorganized or out of control. With kids, this is especially true.

That’s why I’ve transferred the digital wisdom to real life practice. Using a combination of my preferred label maker, storage bins and organizers from my favorite store in the whole world, and sliding shelves that are an absolute dream, I’m obsessed. Whether it’s labeling every slot within our kitchen drawers or it’s placing labels on the bins that kids typically throw their clothes and toys into, I’ve found this activity to really help corral the chaos that can so easily ensue within a family of five.

Whether you’re in a tiny home where every nook and cranny matters or you roam the halls of a sprawling estate, labeling your drawers, cabinets, and storage areas will really help you keep things tidy for the long haul. Don’t worry, you don’t have to store this hack away somewhere in the dark, hidden cabinetry of your brain—pull it out and use it. Label away.

Taking care of a house is a lot of work. Even when it comes to my own home that I live and work in everyday, it’s easy to forget about what needs to be taken care of over time.

That’s where my handy dandy home care checklist comes into a play. Using Evernote, I documented the instructions for taking care of my family’s house quite a while ago. When my family and I go on vacation, this manual makes it easy for me to share the instructions with friends who watch our home (and pets) while we’re away. But even just for my own purposes, I have a semi-annual reminder in my calendar to check the list and update it as needed.

What’s in the list, you ask? Welp, it includes:

• Property details, like the size of the house, where it’s located, the neighborhood name, and nearest crossroads

• How to enter and exit the home, including step-by-step security system instructions and details

• When to collect the mail and where to place it

• When and where to take out and retrieve the garbage and recycle bins, including when bulk trash is picked up

• Wifi access and details, including router and internet company information

• How to make yourself at home, including food, beverage, and fridge instructions

• How to setup for guests, those primarily being the guests we have attend the church that meets in our house every weekend

• All about taking care of the dogs and cats, top to bottom

• Who our neighbors are and their contact information

• About the technicians who care for our pool and yard, how to contact them, and when they typically arrive

• Inventory of the lights and air filters throughout our home, so they’re easy to replace

• The paint colors and brands we use, in case they need to be switched out

• Who services our utilities, and how to get in touch if needed

It took a solid day’s worth of time to create a list as comprehensively as I had in mind, but it’s been saving me time ever since. Check.

If the world underwent a zombie apocalypse, I’m definitely not the first place people should run to. In fact, even I would probably go elsewhere.

However, even though I’m no prepper, I’m a huge fan of stocking up with the items that are always being replaced. I just find it too annoying when I have to run to the store for something that is so commonly needed. That’s probably why I love The Container Store, Home Depot, and Costco so dang much.

The things I love to always have on-hand include:

• Common paper goods like toilet paper, paper towels, and tissues

• Air filter replacements

• Paper plates, plastic silverware, and plastic cups

• At least one of every kind of lightbulb throughout my house

• Lots of batteries, neatly organized in my fabulous battery organizer

• At least a couple extra cartons of milk, cold brew, and bread, so we never run out

In addition to these common household items, I also find it incredibly helpful to keep the world’s best gift wrap cart fully stocked and prepared for last minute parties. I hate running to the store last minute for a gift and card right before somebody’s birthday or celebration, and this has kept me from having to do it. In the cart, I always have gift wrap, gift bags, tissue paper, blank cards, and gift cards in case I need to pop one of those in the card itself.

Your inventory of things may differ from mine, but whatever the case, I highly recommend you get down with stocking up.

I hate an unkempt car. As much as fully remote work and post-pandemic living has led to me driving far less than I used to (yay!), I still hate when my car is messy.

Rather than wait between car washes to tidy things up, my hack is simple: create a single space for trash, and empty that space as soon as I return home or stop at a gas station. I usually use the driver door compartment as that space, but if there’s more trash than that, I’ll stuff it in a paper bag and empty it as soon as I stop my car. This also ensures my car never stinks, as I remove any food or beverages from my car ASAP.

Though I remain powerless when it comes to keeping the family vehicle tidy (boo!), that’s okay. One clean car is more than enough for me, and this is how I keep it that way.

As much as I’ve kept my portfolios here, documents there, and thoughts everywhere, I was tired of my web presence being distributed and confined to the restrictions of other platforms. So, I began on the journey to architect a website that would effectively express who I am, what I’ve done, where I’m going, and more.

As much as my work has changed over the last few decades, it’s often hard to convey exactly what I do to folks. But as I dug into think about my life’s work to-date, I realized that there were some very clear themes that have emerged, both horizontal and vertical in nature. Even more importantly, in this reflective process, I also recognized the ideas I want to spend more of my energy focusing on and communicating about over the years to come.

These themes are a connective tissue of sorts, helping me organize my work and thoughts in the future without feeling like my new efforts diverge too wildly from what I’ve done in the past.

This website has become part autobiography, part repository of everything I wish to share with the world. In fact, even if it’s content that only I care about, I still document those ideas online so that anybody can find them. It’s a transparent method for documenting all sorts of things and sharing them with others.

In short, I’ve architected a website (with Squarespace, if you’re curious) that will serve as my place for cataloging nearly everything in a way that’s personal, but also shared. It’s like people get to meet me, even if they never meet me—and I think that’s pretty cool.

This will never be “complete,” so long as I’m alive, but I’ll still give it my best shot. It’s very me, while remaining very much not about me.

It’s inevitable—I’m going to die. In fact, maybe I already did die if you’re reading these words. I don’t know.

Whatever the case, I can’t stop my death from happening. But what I can do is prepare for it. And prepare for it, I have. During my season of undoings, just before I turned 35 years old, I took significant strides in writing out instructions for the time in which my flesh fails me.

As much as this may seem morbid (by definition, in fact), I found it to be an incredibly life-giving exercise. In this effort, I:

• Completed a will and agreed with Nicole what would happen with our children were we to die before they become adults

• Wrote out detailed, step-by-step instructions for when I am incapacitated or die, including details about what I expect for my funeral

• Shared my instructions with multiple family members, so they know what to do well in advance

• Centralized my accounts, finances, and more into a single digital vault so the transition will be easier for others once I’m gone

• Wrote letters and recorded voice memos to say my goodbyes to my loved ones while I’m coherent

More recently, I worked on a goodbye letter, where I keep my latest public signoff to the people I love. I’ll update that every now and again so it’s as ready (as it can be) for when the inevitable moment comes.

When I’m gone, my loved ones shouldn’t have to concern themselves with the logistics of that while they grieve. By doing this, it’s simply another way I can love them in the process, even after I’ve passed on.

While saying that preparing for my death may not seem like a life hack, for me, it absolutely is. Every new day is a gift, and each one is not guaranteed. The least I can do is prepare for that day and say goodbye on my terms, in my own way, with as much consideration as possible for how I want to leave. And so far as it depends on me, I have.

I could talk at length about how you should work based on your chronotype, hire the right people for the job, take walks when you need to clear your mind, see a therapist, and more. In fact, I may.

But for now, these 25 hacks are the very best I have to offer. They have helped me improve my life in both big and small ways, and I hope they help you do the same.