What if we were to tell you that your life is really just an elaborate video game?

The purpose of the game? To win, obviously, and score as many points as you can.

How do you score points? Three ways: money, approval, and achievement. The higher your aggregate score, the faster you move up the leaderboard, the better you feel about your position in the game. 

You might notice though that there’s something peculiar about the scoring system: you only get points for the things you do outsi...

Here’s a strange fact about busyness. 

Throughout most of human history, successful, high-status, people bragged about not being busy. That’s right, they flaunted their leisure time by sailing boats, playing polo, joining country clubs, or buying expensive clothes. 

But these days, we’ve flipped this old-school model on its head. To be busy in our current age is to be important, valued, needed, and in-demand.

For instance, the research of Columbia University professor Silvia Bellezza reve...

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently issued an advisory warning that couples with kids now face a mental health crisis.

Why?

We're trying to succeed at everything and burning ourselves out in the process.

In Murthy's words, "compared with just a few decades ago, mothers and fathers spend more time working and more time caring for their children, leaving them less time for rest, leisure and relationships."

Murthy's point is that success used to mean becoming excellent at one thing.

You...

The management scientist Edward Deming once said, "Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets."

Now, Deming was talking about large organizations and companies. But his insight applies perfectly to relationships for two reasons.

First, his words offer an important reminder. The results you and your partner are getting -- both good and bad -- aren't happening by random chance. They're created by an underlying system of habits, perfectly designed to give you those results.

 Imagine your relationship as a boat.

In this boat, you've got you and your partner. You might also have a kid or three. And then you've got parents, in-laws, friends, and extended family hanging off the stern.

Oh, and don't forget about things like careers, financial planning, daily logistics, shopping, Instagram and TikTok time, house repairs, laundry, cleaning, school events, and the thousand or so other things that take up space on this boat of marriage and life.

Now imagine what happens ...

Originally published in Inc. Magazine.

Does this sound familiar?

You've just finished a long day, full of emails, Zoom calls, deadlines, and to-dos. You're now making the shift from work mode to family mode. But, for some reason, you just can't seem to turn it off.

You keep thinking about that meeting, that call you need to make, or all the things you weren't able to get to. You're living in yesterday, tomorrow, and five years from now, finding it impossible to slow down and be here now.

If ...

There's an invisible tug-of-war happening in your relationship.

It's not about who does the dishes.

It's not about who tucks in the kids at bedtime.

It's about connection.

And in just about every couple we've encountered, partners unconsciously take on one of two roles.

First there's The Glommer. This is the partner who most craves connection. They just can't get enough quality time and deep conversation. They're always craving more of their partner.

Then there's The Splitter. This partner...

You don't see it. You're not aware of it. 

But you own (or are perhaps owned by) a guilt machine.

This guilt machine runs all day, every day, with the sole purpose of destroying your ability to focus on what matters most.

"But what is this invisible machine running our lives?" you say.

It's not our phone, our computer, or our tablet, though it uses these devices to impose its will.

No, the guilt machine runs on the oxygen of emotion. It's that subtle but uncomfortable feeling that someon...

We live in an age of hyper connection. 

We can text our partner at all hours of the day and night. We can track their every move using Google Location Sharing. We can even FaceTime them when we’re thousands of miles away. 

So why is it so hard for modern couples to stay connected?

Researchers at UCLA have an answer. They followed around thirty modern couples, observing them like anthropologists as they ate, got the kids ready for school, and navigated the logistics of an ordinary day.

The...

School is in session. All those glorious summer vacations have come to an end. The days are getting shorter.

And most companies and organizations (consciously or unconsciously) view the time from now until Thanksgiving as the last remaining productive days of 2023.

The post-Labor Day fall sprint has begun.

As this sprint begins, we think it's worth remembering one of the most essential principles of managing energy. It's an idea that comes from Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, the idea of osc...