What is happiness? What is a happy life?

Great question. One for the philosophers, surely.

As for me, I kind of look at happiness the same way I might look at art. I’m not entirely sure how I’d define it, but I know it when I see it.

Personally, I think happiness is a sense of contentment. Joy takes energy. Misery is exhausting. Happiness is a state of being that requires little work to maintain, feeds and strengthens itself, and gives me a reason to keep moving forward.

My success isn’t 100%. I might be worried if it was. That said, general happiness is… generally achievable. …

It can be discouraging to consider, but if you want to keep your business healthy and safe, you’re going to need to take a serious look at cybersecurity. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a large corporation, a modest-sized business, a literal mom-and-pop store, or you’re running it solo — the decisions you make about the safety of your data and network can make or break your business.

The chances are good that your business makes use of some online technology of one kind or another. You could be responding to emails and researching potential clients. You could be collaborating with colleagues and sharing resources on the cloud. …

At yet another Zoom “mixer” with friends and colleagues, the topic came up of what we all plan to do once the pandemic is reliably over.

I became deeply disappointed in my friends and colleagues. Most responses involved going to restaurants again or sending their kids off to school safely.

Meh.

What Will Likely Be Referred To One Day As “Exhibit A”

I had a very different post-pandemic list in mind. I figure I’d share it here with you:

Touch everyone’s face, whether they like it or not.

Ride a New York Subway. Maybe lick a few handrails.

Become a costumed superhero, but not a masked one. …

If you thought cybersecurity was a concern only in businesses and governments, you’d be wrong. Your home network can be just as tempting a target as any office, and with more people working from home these days, cybercrime continues to be a growing concern.

With so many poorly protected home networks conducting business — oft-times with sensitive business data — there has never been a greater need for awareness of security risks and how to counter them.

Why is your home office such an attractive target?

To begin with, there is a lot of exploitable tech already in place. Nearly everyone owns a cell phone these days, and around 75% of people have laptops or desktop computers at home. When you take into account tablet devices, that number goes up considerably. Of all those networked devices sitting in private homes, very few have any serious cybersecurity measures installed. …

I’m a guy who likes his sleep but also tends to have many responsibilities in the morning. I don’t have the luxury — as much as I would like otherwise — to hit the old snooze button a few dozen times or three. I need to be up and productive at a fairly obscene hour of the morning.

My biggest freelance clients are located on other continents with their exotic and mysterious time zones and all. That means it’s not unusual for me to have emails I need to respond to at criminally early hours and sometimes some rush work.

This is on top of getting my family up, fed, and ready for their day as well. …

What if I said that you could hack your life or your career with a simple exercise in managing expectations?

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not a big believer in New Thought philosophies or magical thinking. But I do believe that we can train our minds to work better than they do when it comes to finding and seizing opportunities.

You could call it affirmations, but I prefer to look at it as affirmations-in-action. It’s not enough to repeat to oneself, “Money comes to me easily and freely.” …

You have about 10 seconds to get your reader’s attention, impress them, and keep their attention before they lose interest and wander off to another website. That’s a contact lost, a sale not made, and a growth opportunity missed.

If you want to keep a reader on your page long enough to get to your Call To Action and to feel good about responding to your call, you need to address five questions to them quickly.

Who are you?

Your website’s home page is where you make your first impression on a new visitor. This is the time to introduce yourself. But make it short. Your website should have a separate “About” page where you can get into your whole life story. …

Hey, does this sound familiar?

You’ve been handed an assignment from a digital marketing agency to knock out a thousand words on property management services. You’re getting paid pretty well, which is good because the cell phone bill is coming due.

You sit down and do some research. You bookmark a few pages to refer back to. You open up a new Google Docs file and…

Jeez.

Like a needle scratching a record, it abruptly comes to a stop. “How should I start this?” you ask yourself.

And you do that thing where you rub the back of your head and look around and then back at the page and still… nothing. …