Education is a tricky thing. Many jobs require you to learn things prior to you getting on the job, but sometimes, that education is more valued in retrospect. What is and what isn't valuable gets especially lost in four year degrees that mandate something like 130 credit hours for graduation. A college isn't going to tell you, "These classes are important, and these classes... not so much." To be fair to colleges, value is a subjective thing. What I might have found valuable might be different to somebody else. This is especially true for a more general major like mine, Business Administration. I took courses in macroeconomics, marketing, communications, finance, accounting, HR management, and more. If you go ask my fellow graduates which courses they valued the most, I bet every one of them would give you different answers. Anyway, I was reflecting back on my own undergraduate education and thinking about the classes I wish I could go retake. It's not that I...

Ever since finishing Mindless Eating , I've been hyper-aware of the environments and situations in which I eat. One of the points in that book is that its not that we are unaware of the nutritional choices we make but more so that our emotional side kicks in and takes over regardless of hunger or health. Think about the Rider / Elephant metaphor from the Heath brothers' book, Switch . Our logical side (the Rider) is well aware a donut is not a healthy choice, and its easy to tell ourselves not to eat a donut when they're not around. But then, you have a coworker bring in a box of Krispy Kremes, and your emotional side (the Elephant) says it's game on. Despite the fact that we know the donut is bad for us, we don't care and scarf down five of them. (Okay, maybe five is an exaggeration for most people, but... well... that's not an exaggeration for me. 😌) That said, I thought I'd share my five biggest "danger zones" as a means for you to think ...

Running was a big staple in helping me lose weight and remains important in helping me maintain that weight loss. I'll be honest: I don't necessarily find running fun like some people do, but I can't overlook the fact that it's certainly effective. I was never a runner before losing all my weight, and it still surprises me how far I've come in about two years. Where I couldn't run a full mile before, I'm now training for my first full marathon. That's insane to think about. If I can do it, you can certainly do it, too. Here are some tips to help you get started with running.

I'm a tech enthusiast all the way. I frequently visit tech blogs, keep up to date with the latest stuff that I don't own myself, and adopt the latest stuff that my budget affords me. If I could afford it, I'd always own the top of the line computer, smartphone, tablet, and smartwatch. My friends and family look to me to help them troubleshoot through any issues, and I'm almost always consulted by those same folks when they're about to make a tech purchase. So you might find it weird that I've recently moved back to using paper for some things. Technology is great, but I've found that it's not appropriate for every scenario. That said, this post is definitely more geared toward my tech-savvy, younger crowd who are apt to use tech for everything. I hope the insights shared here give you a refreshed perspective on the ol' paper and pen.

A little while back, I wrote a post on weight loss on emotions where I shared that the most important thing when beginning a weight loss journey is managing your emotions. If you haven't read that post, please do as this post will largely build upon that and make much more sense. Diet is a huge deal when losing weight. People might think it's all about exercising, and while exercise is certainly a factor, I would say it has more like a 25% importance. That means that diet holds like a 75% importance. You can workout all day, but if you don't change your diet, I highly, highly doubt you will see much progress at all. Oh, and get rid of the idea of temporary diets. There's a reason I choose the words "dieting lifestyle change." If you truly want to shed the weight and keep it off, there's no going back. You're going to have to make conscious effort to constantly keep a healthy diet. Is it hard? Yes, but I think you'll find it's not too bad o...

Regardless of what industry you work in, your role in the organization, or size of the organization, you're eventually going to have to figure something out that you aren't currently privy to. Heck, this can even apply outside of work. It could be trying to figure out the business process of another area in your company to trying to file your taxes without the help of a third party. This isn't just a "This might happen someday" kind of thing. No, it WILL happen. You're going to have to figure out some ambiguous process or pioneer something that has never been done before. I've found it to be a very valuable skill in my work, so here are five tips to help you figure stuff out.

As a new dad, I am constantly thinking about how I can help mold my daughter into be a strong, capable woman someday. It probably won't surprise you, but I'm not fully sold on the education system doing that. I loop college in with that category. There is still a place for education, but when I think about what helped shape me, formal education played a relatively small role in that. What helped mold me the most was just getting out there and working. I've worked in a number of different positions now. I've been a sales associate at Bath & Body Works (true story), a traveling intern for Christ in Youth - Know Sweat, a help desk specialist for Lincoln Christian University, and more. But my first job (if you don't count my manual labor work for my dad's HVAC business) was working at a Steak 'n Shake. I worked there for about a year in high school, primarily manning the drive thru, but I did have my hand in everything at one point or another. I work...

I'm a big fan of podcasts. I regularly listen to at least two podcasts every day, ranging from business to comedy to video gaming. Speaking of that last one, the best time to listen to podcasts (aside from exercise) is while playing a video game. Now, you can't just play any video game while listening to podcasts because it's just not conducive in every situation. For example, I would never suggest you play something like Call of Duty online while listening to a podcast. All your brainpower will go to the game and zero to the podcast. So when coming up with this list, I held to these couple of criterion for games suitable for simultaneous podcast: Can't be heavily story driven (Looking at you, Telltale Games) Can't be something that involves a ton of strategy Can't can't CAN'T be multiplayer Keeping these criterion in mind, here are five games I'd suggest you check out.

I'm about to drop a truth bomb on you. Brace yourselves for it. Are you ready? Okay. Business college programs don't teach you everything you need to know about business. I know, I know, you're shocked. I'll give you a minute to regain your composure... ... Of course, I'm being factitious. We know (or, at least, should know) that business school cannot teach you everything there is to know about working in a business. This post focuses on a few things that I learned specifically from working in a few different office contexts. Even though the office environments I've worked in have been fairly large, the random tips below apply to any office of any size. Let's get into it!

In 2017, my aspiration is to continually focus on positively influencing my health since the way I lost weight wasn't particularly recommended. The end of 2016 saw me gain back 10 pounds and brutally ravage my knees, so I'm going to be overhauling my health and wellness to maintain my weight loss without killing my body. This will be the first in a series of health-related posts, and I have created a new blog label to indicate that. Anyway, I'm still a big advocate of exercise, and I've been thinking a lot about the benefits of exercise beyond being obviously good for your physical health. I hope these extra benefits encourage you to regularly exercise in 2017 to promote your own health and wellness. Without further ado, let's get into it!

As you are aware, I recently became a new dad to a precious little sweetie named Emma Allison Hundley. Most people with kids warned me that having kids changes your life and drains all your free time. They're not wrong: she has been a handful. But I still love her! She's super cute, and to prove so, check out the small collage of pictures below: Anyway, knowing that my free time would be drained, I embraced the idea that I probably wouldn't be able to churn out much new content as far as blog material goes. It turns out that I was fortunately wrong! If anything, I'm putting out more new content than ever. In thinking about my writing practices, I have developed a bit of a system where I spend less than 30 minutes actually writing each blog post . How do I get away with this? Check out my tips for efficient writing down below.

We're just now exiting the holiday season, and it was an extra special time for my wife and I as we welcomed a baby girl into our family last week. There is one thing the holidays and baby showers have in common: you get lots and lots of gifts. From the baby showers alone, I think my wife ended up sending over 100 thank you cards to all the people who gave us something! From the pile of things we received, there were a lot of great gifts, and, well... there were also some not-so-great gifts. Don't get me wrong, we are extremely grateful to everybody for everything they got us.  It got me thinking, though, that there are indeed categories of good gifts to give as well as categories of bad gifts to give, regardless of the holiday or occasion. We'll look at five categories from each side of the fence down below.

One of the best things about living in Bloomington-Normal is the diversity of restaurant choices we have to choose from. Want one of the big chains? We've probably got it. Nice local restaurants? Yup. Italian, Chinese, American, Thai, and Indian places? Check. Ironically, one of the worst things about living in Bloomington-Normal is, you guessed it, the diversity of restaurant choices we have to choose from.

I'll be honest: I'm kind of surprised I'm writing another one of these posts. I have already written two sets of five tips on how to run more effective meetings (that can be found here and here ), and I keep finding even more tips. Apparently, there is no end to handing out meeting tips! Without delaying anymore, let's just get into it.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin I'm not an uber-Hunger Games fan. I tried reading the books and honestly couldn't just get into them; however, I did enjoy the movies quite a bit. While they weren't nearly as quotable as the Harry Potter series, there was one quote that did stick out to me.  You'll have to forgive me since I don't remember the precise context, but at one point in Catching Fire , the character Finnick Odair remarks to Katniss that he isn't necessarily interested in money. Rather, he is interested in trading secrets. That quote stuck with me because I think that when people think about "getting paid", they instantly think about money and that anything that doesn't involve money isn't "getting paid". I think that line of thinking isn't necessarily correct, and let's get into why.

Whether it's assembling a new piece of IKEA furniture or replacing that flaky light switch, you're going to want to have some tools around the house. Now, you don't have to be like my dad and have every single tool Craftsmen has to offer, but you'll want to have a core few of them around. We'll take some time in this post looking at a few recommendations. I'm going to skip a few obvious (but still essential) ones like hammers, screwdrivers, and tape measures and instead opt for a couple you might not regularly think about. (And just to make it even easier on y'all, I'll include pictures of each tool and a link to buy them on Amazon!) Let's get into it!

Several weeks ago, I published a post on five tips for running an effective meeting and promised in there that I would be publishing another set of five tips soon. Well, "soon" came and went, and I completely forgot to publish my other five tips. Until now! These tips are meant to work in conjunction with the previously suggested tips, so if you need a refresher on what those original tips were, click this hyperlink .

It's that time of year again. If you're like me, the trees in your yard have gone past that pretty orange stage and leaves have fallen on the ground. Time to pull out your rake! So, this challenge might seem pretty obvious, but there's a little more to it. Obviously, you're getting your yard clean. (And if you're married like me, a happy wife = a happy life!) If you don't have a yard with mature trees, I'm sure you have a relative or friend that has a yard that needs raked, and I'm sure they'd appreciate you raking it for them! There's a two-fold reason I suggest this challenge to you all.

Amongst my family and friends, and I am known as the tech guru. Any time they have any questions, I'm usually the first guy they call. And it's pretty understandable why: 9 times out of 10, I can help solve their problems. It's kinda weird and doesn't make sense to me. For example, I've been asked numerous times for help with something on Facebook. Um...... I don't have Facebook. (Well, at least, not anymore. I had one from 2008-2011 but haven't had one since.) This isn't to say, however, that I am useless here. In fact, my track record for solving Facebook questions is 100% so far. So what is it about me? As the title of this posts suggests, I'll be the first to raise my hand and tell you that I am not a tech expert. I have no formal training, no formal IT certifications, and only took one computer programming class in high school. So what I hope you learn from this post is what you can apply to become a "tech expert" yourself.

Whereas the first key competency we analyzed, gratitude, may have been more subtle, our second key competency, confidence, is probably a little more obvious to you. I really like how Google defines the word and want to share that here: "Confidence is the feeling or belief on can rely on someone or something; firm trust." I like it because it might not be what you think when you think about confidence, but it's so true. Let's not put your presuppositions about the word aside, though. When you think about a confident person, you probably think about somebody who knows their stuff and isn't afraid to share it. Speaking of that word, "afraid," confident people generally tend to be fearless. One of my favorite illustrations of confidence is actually found in the Bible with none other than Jesus Himself. Let me paint a really quick picture for you. At this point in His ministry, Jesus has been preaching to small communities throughout the countryside. As...