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Thomas Briggs

Happiness is Picking Your Problems

Or, Life is a Big Game of Whack-a-Mole

The first of The Three Most Important Things is that the whole point of life is to be happy. But what is happiness?

For an answer to that I’ll turn to one …

The Only Read the Fine Print Reading List

Below is a short list of books that I highly recommend, roughly organized by the chapter in Only Read the Fine Print to which they relate. They all contain important and valuable lessons.

The Three Most Important Things (Chapters 1

The First Rule of Zombies

Is also an important rule of life.

What do I mean when I say “zombies”? I’m referring to the zombies mode in the hugely popular Call of Duty series. In zombies mode, the objective is to stay alive as long …

The Personal Backlog: How I Organize My To-do List

Over the years, I’ve tried a number of different task management systems. Some were paper-based, some were all electronic, and some (highly ineffective ones) were all in my head. Some worked well, others not so much.

I’ve also spent a …

SMART Goals

(Excerpted from Only Read the Fine Print the book)

Recording your goals in writing is the first step to achieving them. However, thinking carefully about how you state your goals will dramatically increase your odds of success. If you …

People Only Do Things They Want To Do

(Excerpted from Only Read the Fine Print the book)

There are two types of motivation – positive and negative, or “closer to” and “further from”. Either you want to get closer to some achievement or possession or status, or …

Why We Give Our Kids an Allowance

In a word: practice.

Having, saving, managing, and spending money are all skills. You can’t develop skills without practice. Kids generally don’t have a way to acquire money, so how can we expect them to develop those skills? Not just …

One Thanksgiving Isn’t Enough

What if there were a day where (almost) everyone had the day off and (almost) everyone got together with family and friends just to eat and visit? No shopping, no gifts, no religious affiliation, no decorations except maybe getting out …

The ‘Play to Win’ Mindset and Mu

One night last week at dinner my oldest son asked me the following question:

“If you could live in a mansion by yourself or be homeless with Mom, which would you choose?”

I understood the point of his question: to …

Reminder: Focus on Results!

I picked up a fantastic idea from Agile trainer Angela Druckman last week. She recounted a story about a presentation she had been to where the speaker asserted that everyone would be more successful if they regularly asked themselves, “What …