Before last year, I had no idea who Brian Solis was. But after getting hooked on his vodcast and online articles, it was only a matter of time before I wandered across this wonderful 2019 book that he penned.

LifeScale: How to Live a More Creative, Productive, and Happy Life is 304 pages akin to several workshops glued together. Time management, prioritization, efficiency, goal-setting, organizational inspiration. He covers it all! And his background in anthropology, technology, and entrepreneurial marketing gives Solis an undisputable aura of credibility.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS BOOK

If you ever find yourself overwhelmed juggling tasks with pleasure activities…

If your “to-do”…

SELF LOVE

It remains a childhood cliché that my mother would endlessly chant, with rather vapid naivete on her part.

“Forgive-and-forget…”

Her heart was in the right place. She didn’t want me (or my sister) holding onto our anger, allowing rage or a desire for vengeance to consume us. Unfortunately, the slapdash manner in which she and my father raised us only exacerbated these inner wounds. I can’t say that our school district’s teachers and faculty members, overall, were much better.

My parents are the types of people who, if you criticize something they’ve said or done by expressing how much it…

Privilege has become a dirty word in today’s climate. The most common attributes we associate with the concept of unearned advantages tend to be race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, class (socioeconomics), and skin tone. Increased awareness of other characteristics — such as religion, age, disability, citizenship status, and geographic residence — has also been slowly finding its way into the mix.

But within this highly-polarized society, there is one variable noticeably absent from the popular debates over privilege. This variable deserves its own reckoning: political affiliation. …

Most political analysts have noticed a shift in America’s Heartland during the past decade or so. Fairly moderate Democrats have lost their seats to Republicans from every wing of the GOP. These losses have been noticeable at the congressional level, but perhaps even more prevalently in state legislative races.

Why is this? Gerrymandering and voter suppression obviously have an effect in rural parts of states where Republicans consolidate power to rewrite election laws. Additionally, many Democratic strategists appear to have shifted their focus to urban (and, in some cases, suburban) cities with larger populations — viewing the outcome of winning…

It’s a cliché that almost everybody has heard. “Men are simple creatures.” According to these armchair gender experts, the male species only needs a handful of basic entities to be happy and fulfilled. Sex. Food. Sleep. Adventure. Shelter. Beer. Sports. More sex.

To this day, I’m haunted by my memory of the first time this idiom truly triggered me. The 1999 pilot episode of a short-lived ABC sitcom called Odd Man Out (starring Erik Von Detten, my “heterosexual boyfriend” during my adolescence) featured a male teen protagonist forced to live in a household of overbearing women after his father’s sudden…

As Americans panic over the possibility of murder hornets spreading beyond the Pacific Northwest, a less conspicuous invasive species is making its way across the nation’s forests and fields. And it’s doing so with methodical aggression.

It’s called the “jumping worm.” The twin species are known as amynthas agrestis and amynthas tokioensis. They have been spotted in gardens and on farms across the Midwest, Great Plains, and Deep South.

This creepy critter is the same shape as the European nightcrawler, except it’s pinkish in color and smoother in texture. …

When looking at our society’s most common gender-based stereotypes about human attitudes toward sex, the assumptions have been pretty well-established. Men and boys are viewed as hormonal “pigs” who can’t control ourselves. Women and girls are viewed as either promiscuous “sluts” who don’t “know their place,” or prudish crones (if not virginal lambs) who are disinterested in libido altogether.

These stereotypes are, of course, largely off-the-mark. But try telling that to folks who are peddling a specific agenda.

My plea to humanity is a radical departure from accepting these caricatures. Rather, we need to begin viewing ourselves as being rich…

So many of us with weak stomachs are often teased and mocked. In the eyes of those who seem to have intestines of steel, we’re melodramatic weenies. Our states of mind, they’d claim, need to become more resilient and impervious.

What I find so intriguing about “grotesque culture” is how truly individualistic it tends to be. The exact details of what grosses others out can vary greatly from one person to the next.

For example, my sister hates maggots and worms. My mom shudders around cats and snakes. One of my aunts is disgusted by birds. A former coworker of…