By Colby Kultgen
Résumé Virtues vs Eulogy Virtues, 100 Must-Read Life Hacks, and The Average Tuesday Rule
Read online / Read time: 4 minutes
Today at a Glance:
- Idea: Resume vs. Eulogy Virtues
- Quote: Powerful perspective shift
- Rule: The Average Tuesday
- List: 100 things I know
- Funny: Extract here
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Resume Virtues vs. Eulogy Virtues
Answer this:
Who are the people in your life you admire most?
Are they:
1. The ones with the longest list of achievements
2. The ones who listen deeply, make you feel valued, and seem to light up any room they enter.
I'm guessing you went with #2 (so did I).
David Brooks calls this the difference between résumé virtues and eulogy virtues.
Résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace.
Eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral.
Here's the uncomfortable truth:
Most of us are optimizing for the wrong column.
We chase external metrics—promotions, followers, square footage—while neglecting the qualities people will actually celebrate at our funeral.
Brooks argues that to live a truly meaningful life, we should build what he calls a Moral Bucket List—a set of character traits that lead to deep fulfillment:
The Humility Shift – Trading self-promotion for self-awareness. Strength isn’t pretending to be flawless; it’s owning your flaws.
Self-Defeat – Battling yourself, not others. Real character comes from wrestling with your worst tendencies and turning them into strengths.
The Dependency Leap – No one builds character alone. The strongest people are grounded by deep relationships, meaningful work, and something larger than themselves.
Energizing Love – Love that expands your focus beyond yourself. It turns service into joy and transforms meandering lives into purposeful ones.
The Call Within the Call – When work becomes a calling. That gut-punch moment when excellence and service start to matter more than status or comfort.
The Conscience Leap – Acting on principle when it counts. That defining moment when you shed appearances and fears to stand for something real.
The résumé-focused life begins and ends with self.
The eulogy-focused life embraces the beautiful struggle of becoming the kind of person others will genuinely miss.
The undefeated power of perspective
This one mindset shift has saved me countless hours of misery:
It's all about perspective.
Why your average Tuesday is the key to happiness
A question that changed my life:
What if the secret to happiness isn’t in weekend adventures or dream vacations—but in a random Tuesday afternoon?
The Average Tuesday Rule:
The quality of your ordinary Tuesday is the most accurate measure of your life satisfaction.
Think about it.
We spend 80% of our lives on these “nothing special” days—yet we obsess over optimizing the other 20% (weekends, vacations, milestones).
We tolerate miserable Tuesdays while dreaming about spectacular Saturdays.
But when your average Tuesday is an 8/10, everything changes:
- Bad surprises don't feel as bad.
- Good surprises feel even better.
- You start enjoying the entire ride—not just the peaks.
Most self-improvement advice focuses on reaching the ceiling.
The Average Tuesday Rule flips this approach: focus on raising your floor.
How to apply it:
1. Design your ideal ordinary day. From wake-up to bedtime, craft a realistic blueprint for an 8/10 Tuesday.
2. Take small steps to close the gap.
- Identify one daily friction point. Solve it permanently.
- Add one small joy to your routine. Protect it fiercely.
- Subtract one energy leak. Be ruthless.
Because life isn’t made up of mountaintop moments.
It’s made up of average Tuesdays.
A list of 100 things everyone should know
It wouldn't be a proper 1% Better issue without a juicy list to sink your teeth into.
This one comes to us courtesy of author Mari Andrew.
A few of my favorites:
I know that grief never ends. When a friend’s loved one dies, put the loved one’s birthday on your calendar. Send them flowers or a card on that date, and never stop doing that.
I know that fretting over other people’s choices is one of my favorite hobbies. To stop myself, I repeat this golden phrase: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
I know that you don’t have to tell people that they have a sunburn or a bug bite or a zit. They are aware.
I know that playing is the opposite of fighting. If you’re in an argument that’s going in circles, suggest switching roles: “I make your point, and you make mine.” It helps with empathy, yes, but also brings humor and levity to a strained situation.
I know every path is different. Remind yourself of this by reading memoirs and biographies. If you feel like you’re way off-track from the life rut that everyone else is on, these books can affirm that you’ve found your own special one.
Read the full thing here!
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Have a great week!
—Colby
