success Archives - Page 2 of 9 - Create an Adaptable Life

With the Benefit of Hindsight, How Do You Feel About Your Commencements Now?

question of the week / Johanna / May 25, 2023

It’s commencement season. Commencement speakers offer (hopefully) valuable insights. Parents watch with pride as their students walk across the stage to pick up their diplomas. And now, everyone’s life will change. In the case of high school graduations, many kids move away, and parents shoulder tuition payments. The family unit changes, too. My parents used […]

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How Can You Learn from Your History to Succeed Now?

newsletter / Johanna / September 10, 2022

Do you ever make the same mistake twice or realize that mistake somehow feels familiar? Many of us fall into patterns that allow us to recreate those mistakes—even when we don’t want to. However, we can learn from our history. When we do learn from our history, we can increase our chances of succeeding now.

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What Would It Take for You to Fail to Success?

question of the week / Johanna / September 1, 2022

On my other blog, I’ve been explaining that my WIP (Work in Progress) is way too high and what I’m doing about that. (Writers, this means all my work, not just my current writing project.) But I didn’t explain how my WIP got so high. I’m trying to fail to success. I learned about this

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Longevity and Success: How and When Do You Choose to Show Up?

question of the week / Johanna / April 27, 2022

I have a new nonfiction book in the 2022 Write Stuff Storybundle this week (the bundle is only until March 10 or so). While you might not have heard of some of the writers, I’m sure you’ve heard of Lawrence Block. He’s a multi-award-winning mystery writer. His contribution to this bundle is a memoir. The

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How Many Generations Overlap With You That You Can Appreciate?

question of the week / Johanna / April 15, 2022

Many of us see early spring as a time of renewal and rebirth. And for those of us in the northern hemisphere, early spring also has religious celebrations. Passover starts tonight and Easter starts this weekend. For me, that’s family time. And, we are fortunate to have three generations at our table this year. (We’re

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When Do You Choose to Narrow or Extend Your Focus?

question of the week / Johanna / March 3, 2022

For years, I was a terrible photographer. When I took pictures of Mark and the children, I often cut off the top of Mark’s head. That was back in the days of film cameras and I never quite understood how to frame pictures. Until we developed those pictures, I didn’t realize how narrow my focus

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How Do You Manage Your Energy?

newsletter / Johanna / January 12, 2022

How Do You Manage Your Energy? Do you ever slog through the days, feeling as if you can’t get going? That happened to me last month. I wasn’t sick or depressed—I didn’t have my normal get-up-and-go. That’s when I realized I was “out of spoons.” The spoons represent our energy—and, at least for me—our resilience.

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Where Can You Create Reinforcing (Virtuous) Feedback Loops?

question of the week / Johanna / November 18, 2021

I love to make it easy for me to do my best work. To do so, I need to think about what I want to reinforce and what I want to dampen. When I create reinforcing—or virtuous—feedback loops, I use my data to do more of what I want. However, that’s not always easy to

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What Games Do You Create to Succeed in Life and Work?

newsletter / Johanna / November 10, 2021

I wish I could tell you I was perfect at doing all the work on my list. Nope. Every so often, I procrastinate and delay on some specific task. In the past, I worried because I didn’t finish that work. (The more I worried, the less I did.) I created a reinforcing feedback loop that

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Mistake vs. Success: When Do You Learn from Each?

question of the week / Johanna / June 22, 2021

Back when I was a software developer, I excelled at certain mistakes. I could write an infinite loop faster than anyone. Then there was the off-by-one mistake for arrays or tables. I repeated certain mistakes too often. Until I started an engineering notebook. Once I started to learn about my mistakes, I stopped those mistakes. I

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