Happy Wisdom

4th Quarter of 2015 - GO TIME What does it mean?  By the end of this month the year is 3/4th over.  For those good at looking at calendars and math, you might ask - why is this blogger telling me Q3 is over?  Its September!   Well, lets face it, the year is basically over after Thanksgiving.  Even if you're in sales, you have to prep for December now...not in December. We are in the 4th Quarter.  When all sales folks want to make quota. When football teams make a press to win, putting in that extra doze of effort.  The players all hold up four fingers. Its a sign to GET SERIOUS .  Hold your hands up high with four fingers up.  Do it.  This is when you open your dream capture system ( aka LifeSparcs ) and open that thing up to the front and review the Dreams, Goals, and Musings section.  What in this area gives you energy, gives you passion, provides heart and meaning?  Big questions.   We must us...

What is it with New Yorkers and Seattle? First they blasted us out of our coffee-induced happy-place with a piece on how everyone west of Interstate 5 will be cast into the Pacific Ocean by a massive, continent changing earthquake, putting the odds at 33% that it'd happen within fifty years. Now we have this this one on Amazon   and how they've built a modern day Hunger Games workplace. You see, it is well known in the Seattle area that Amazon does not consider work-life balance or anything remotely like that. Everyone in the area knows this, because we all know a friend or a spouse that worked or used to work there.   Its not a sweatshop, but its close.   Most people know this going on an interview there know this.  They figure they'll stay four years until they vest and they get out.  If they survive the infighting and bullying, that is. But I have to admit it - I had no idea how bad it really was.  If half the things in this article are true it's th...

Remember the mission of HappyWisdom? To counter the negativity found so often on line . Well, here's a nice piece from Vox . "In the 19th century, extreme poverty — defined here as living on less than $1.25 a day* — was the norm. In 1820, 94.4 percent of humans were below that line." While we're not done yet,  this is the best possible time to alive by far. 

Hanford Reactor B National Museum Summer is a time of adventure, a time where the normal structure of the days of school fall away and much of our culture runs around the countryside. This was me.  I ran to a place called  Hanford, and for those who don't know, this site was an important part of the Manhattan Project, the race to build the first atomic bomb.   After a very long bus ride across a WHOLE lot of nothing in Eastern Washington, we come upon two buildings.  The larger is the reactor, shown above. They chose this place because they wanted something far away from population centers.  And believe me, it is still away from population centers !  Now, since this is Happy Wisdom, I'm not going to get into the politics of the events that surrounded the creation of this site.   I'm going to focus on this as raw human achievement.  It's all science and willpower here.  This is a monument to human creativity.  I...

“You only have to do a few things right in your life, so long as you don't do too many things wrong.”  - Warren Buffett Since launching LifeSparcs, I've been obsessed with minimalism.  I've r emoving clutter, working on doing fewer things, and really using intention to determine those few things. I'm teaching my kids this - be intentional. But there's so much noise. When I hear this I think Social Media, and media in general, but its more than that.  I've been reading  Greg McKeown's  book Essentialism , and he's got some great articles online as well.   One of my favorites is The Unimportance of Practically Everything , where he discusses items that readers of this blog and LifeSparcs will be familiar with  -  putting things in a short list, and focusing on those things alone for  period of time, or as we call it in the agile coaching business, a timebox.  Then you reflect on what you've done...and repeat...

I'm very excited to announce the creation of the LifeSparcs memobook !   Check it out - isn't it cute?   So, what do you do with it, you may ask?  Well, if you've been watching me over at LifeSparcs, you know what we're working on - a way for anyone to attain a greater level of happiness. Lets run down how you might do this using this little gem, which you can order from LifeSparcs.com for the low-low price of $15 bucks.    1.  First thing you do is remark on how easy it is to carry with you. This is by  design.  They say the best camera is the one that's with you.  Well, the best journal is the one with you , as well. 2. Now that you've recovered from the awesomeness that is the memobook in your hand, open it.  The first few pages are dedicated to the right brain . This is where you will brainstorm, draw, mindmap and dream on paper.  Avoid listing anything in linear form, and try to leave some blank sp...

Some people would think about LifeSparc  and other similar  tracking systems as specific to work life.  That would be missing its intent. LifeSparc is more for things that are out of our reach, for things that we cannot  or do not normally do. For example, a high-powered executive man or woman who has been alpha personality type may not feel the need for a system for work. Perhaps they naturally obsess and  achieve things in their career that they value.  That may not be where the problem is.  Often the problem is in our blind spot.   Where this person might need help could be  on the family front.  Maybe they're not particularly good at building relationships with their children. Maybe it's their sister,brother, mom or dad.They've  buried their problems in activity  and excuse but frustratingly it keeps resurfacing.  This exec archetype may not realize it but they have a complex problem and need a different set of to...