Life hacks.

Tips and philosophies to live by. I’ll start with a few, and I would love to hear some of yours.

• When you are in a restaurant, scanning the menu and trying to decide what to order, it can be overwhelming. Here’s what I do. I start at the top, and as I read down the list I make a mental note of the first thing that sounds really good. Then as I continue to read, everything else has to top that one to be considered. At the worst, by the time I finish reading the menu the first time I have two or three top contenders. Then I narrow it down from that short list. I’m usually the first one done reading the menu.

• “Form follows function” is a design philosophy with which I completely agree. Basically it means design should be logical and practical, not just pretty. To that end, I would like to request that the people who design shampoo bottles remember most of us don’t wear our glasses in the shower. That means we can’t read your fancy little print on the shampoo bottle so we’re not sure if we are grabbing the shampoo, the conditioner, the body wash or the dog’s flea and tick medicine. (Just kidding, we don’t keep flea and tick medicine in our shower. Julie dumps that on me when I’m not looking.)

  PLEASE put the word SHAMPOO in big letters. THANK YOU.

• I’ve been acutely aware recently of so many friendships on the rocks. A lot of them seem to be related to political differences, but it is certainly not limited to just politics. That has me thinking about something my Dad used to say all the time: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be reconciled?”

  I mean, the choice is yours, of course. If being right is more important than relationships then that is your choice and you can choose to cut off your friends and family for whatever reason you feel is the hill to die on. I have found, however, that reconciliation and relationships are far more important than winning an argument or punishing someone I love because I think they are wrong, or did wrong. There’s a limitless supply of things to get upset and offended about. I choose to not keep score.

  The bible says love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs and is not irritable. It says good sense makes one slow to anger and it is His glory to overlook an offense. And it teaches clearly that we should forgive others as we have been forgiven. So, do you want to be right? Or do you want to be reconciled?

• Finally, let me congratulate you on a new personal achievement this morning! You, my friend, have set a new personal record for consecutive days alive. You and I have, at some point, successfully navigated and survived the worst day of our lives, and we woke up today for a reason. Let’s go find out what that is.