Lou Blaser

Host at Second Breaks

Writer 💥 Newsletter: https://t.co/9XTEtSPfqZ 💥 Podcast: https://t.co/7rQK7EQ6Ir

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Articles

To reclaim your time, stop looking at your To-Do list.

Jun 16, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser |Claudia Brose

My dear reader friend, The first principle in Cal Newport’s latest book, Slow Productivity, is “Do fewer things.” Music to my ears. And also, easier said than done. I look at my To-Do list and say to myself, “Okay, my dear, do fewer things.” But most of these things are urgent or important or both. 😳 Doing fewer things today only means doing more things tomorrow. And the last thing my mental sanity needs is to encourage backlog. But then Newport gives us the key to implementing this principle.
Creating More Time and Slowing Down the Day

Jun 8, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser

Hello. I’m Lou Blaser, and you’re reading We’re All Getting Older, a newsletter about getting better and living our best selves in midlife. We all have this feeling, I think, that time seems to be moving faster than ever.
Procrastinating versus Procrastinator - by Lou Blaser

May 19, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser |Matthew Long |Yi Xue |Fabienne Mannherz

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. My dear reader friend, If you procrastinate — as we all do from time to time — I’ll save you a step and say don’t bother trying to fix it with a new time management tool. Actually, maybe forget fixing it at all. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let’s look at some good news.
How to Effectively Relieve Stress

May 12, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser |Bridget Belden

My dear reader friend, In my younger years, my stress management approach was basically this: “Don’t let it show.” Demonstrate an even keel and show the world how great I was in handling stress. Sure, Lou.🙄During those years when I was “handling stress like a pro”, I was also operating on minimal sleep and experiencing migraine headaches and stress hives that would appear out of the blue — all over my face, my neck, my arms — which of course I just laughed off and dismissed.
102. Let the alarm bells go off.

May 5, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser |Maia Duerr

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. My dear reader friend, In the early 90s, Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks made a movie called Defending Your Life. It wasn’t a commercial hit, I don’t think, and it hardly gets mentioned in Streep’s storied filmography. But this movie’s fantastical premise has lodged itself in my brain and has been — I’m a little embarrassed to admit — a guiding principle for many of my decisions in life.
100. Must you finish that?

Apr 21, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser |Mo Issa

My dear reader friend, I’d make a (safe) bet that you were taught — just like I was — that follow-through is an important skill to have. “Finish what you started,” people told us often. Persistence pays off. And we're shown hundreds of examples of persevering people getting the rewards for their efforts. “I have not failed 10,000 times. I've successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work," so said Thomas Edison. Finishing isn't always the right answer, though. Sometimes, walking away is.
99. When the will hasn't got the power

Apr 14, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser |Lee Prescott |Dawna Kreis

My dear reader friend, I asked a couple of friends the other day, “If you had the choice, would you rather take meds for life or change your lifestyle to cure an ailment?”The answer from both? Meds for life. 🫢I get it. Not only is it a tall order to give up the things we enjoy. It’s hard to change a lifetime of habits that we’ve perfected to suit the person we are today.
98. Whoever complains less wins.

Apr 7, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser |Yi Xue

☕️ My dear reader friend, To get better at being grateful, I challenged myself to stop complaining for a week and promised to share my results with you. And I will, but first, can I tell you something I discovered?
"I work not for financial gain but for being kind and loving."

Apr 5, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser |Yi Xue

is a mother, wife, daughter, and sister. She’s also been many things at different times in her career: musician, engineer, business executive, writer, and advisor. Yi writes stories about her family of origin living through different times and from faraway places, being a first-generation immigrant redefining herself, being a woman of color navigating corporate America, and finding the power to make her own decisions and living life on her own terms. Yi lives in Camas, Washington.
What Bach and Darwin can teach us about retirement.

Mar 31, 2024 | loublaser.substack.com | Lou Blaser |Thomas Kuegler

I really ought to clean up and share my book notes on From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks. I love this book and often recommend it to midlifers who are thinking about what’s next. But for today’s piece, I want to just focus on J.S. Bach and Charles Darwin. We know these names of course, but I learned some other bits about them in Brooks’ book that made me go, “Hmmm, I want to be like Bach, and please, not Darwin.”So, Darwin — we know this guy...