profile

Tyler Smith

Stories, insights, and encouragement from a coach and lifelong learner.

Featured Post

↩️ You Can Reverse Your Mistakes

TYLER SMITH Hey friends, I've gained 30 pounds over the last few years. Somewhat disturbed by this, I recently decided to hire a coach to help me improve my health. Things have been going well. But then... Two weeks ago I went on a quick trip with my brother-in-law. We saw Jacob Collier perform at the Hollywood Bowl and returned home the very next day. In that short time, I managed to gain back nearly half the weight I'd lost over several months. This depressed me. How could a few days of...

Hey friends, One idea I've been thinking about lately is the more responsibility you assume, the more problems you face. A new relationship. A new child. A new pet. A new job. A new business. A new volunteer position. A new personal goal. A new home. A new hobby. Each enriches your life. Each brings new problems to solve. Sound familiar? This week I completed 78 items on my to do list. Each item represented a problem in my life. There were work problems: How to earn a promotion? How to...

A client and I had an insight this week as we chatted: we spend so much more in this life than our money. We also spend our time and our attention. We can spend our money, our time, and our attention in a “default” way, which tends to be the path of least resistance. Or, we can spend with intention. We use a budget to spend our money in alignment with our values. We use a calendar to spend our time in alignment with our values. We use a to-do list to spend our attention in alignment with our...

Subscriptions dancing around a camp fire

"a synthwave style image of a television, a pair of headphones, a cardboard box, a dslr camera, and a dvd dancing around a camp fire in the woods at night" by DALL-E 2 Quick, don't think, just answer--how many subscriptions do you have? I asked myself this question and had no clue. So I counted. 21. I subscribe to 21 things. Here's the complete list. You may freely judge me. Car wash iCloud Todoist Fantastical YNAB Day One 1Password Phone Bill Backblaze Spotify Disney+ Netflix DVD (Yes, they...

My Furnace Broke Down Do unexpected expenses ever derail your financial progress? My furnace stopped working last week when it was 13° F outside. Great. As I awaited the diagnosis, I wondered how much it would cost and began to regret dipping into my emergency fund recently for some very, um...non-emergency purchases... 😬 I tried to play it cool as I asked the technician, "Worst case scenario, how much does it cost to replace the system?" I tried even harder to seem calm when I heard the...