Recent Posts

three young kids sitting and climbing on a large wood seesaw made from a tree trunk

Proactive Parenting: Preventing Meltdowns, Managing Emotions

Children are still learning to regulate their moods and emotions. If we help them head off problems before they arise, everyone will stay happier and less stressed.
five martial artists in dramatic lighting, each kicking or jumping or holding up fists

How to Level Up At Anything: Using Science to Approach Mastery

When you're not improving in your skills or craft, you're miserable. We all need a sense of progression and competence in our work. Here's how to efficiently improve—using intentional practice and outside input.
Jacqueline stands before a brilliant aqua blue alpine lake, with coniferous forests covering the slopes of mountains rising into cloudy mist on the opposite shore. She wears a black fleece and yellow banana; she looks up at the mountains, hands in pockets

Why Self-Awareness and Experience Are Better Than Data

Many people are enamored of quantified self apps. But being aware of your body and what you need—rest, exercise, food, water—is a crucial part of being an embodied being. How can we use both subjective experience and objective data to iterate and improve?
closeup of braided rag rug made from colorful tshirt strips

Life as a Practice: Pursuing Excellence in Daily Life

In a practice, you progress: you level up. If we treat daily life as a practice, what does it mean to level up? Hint: It involves effort, excellence, and virtue.
gold, silver, and bronze medals Jacqueline won at fencing tournaments

Why You Should Pursue Excellence, Not Success

Pursuing excellence will help you succeed—but pursuing success won't make you excellent. Here's why I follow this life philosophy, and why you should want to, too!
a shelf of colorful cognitive science books

How Reading Books Can Help You Reclaim Your Attention

Ever felt like you can't concentrate the way you used to? You're not alone. Scrolling through social media is easy. But reading a novel? You're in luck. Here's how to retrain your attention span.
woman sitting at a table writing in a small journal with a cup of coffee

My Experience Writing Morning Pages As a Parent With Young Children

Julia Cameron initiated Morning Pages as a creative practice. In theory, it's easy to squeeze into your morning and leads to profound changes. In practice? Read on.
toddler holding a magnifying glass up to her eye and looking up at the sky

How Curiosity Helps Children Build a Habit of Attention

Want your children to engage deeply with the world? Here's how to help them build a habit of deep attention and keep their curiosity intact.
sun setting on a hill of red sand in the Sahara Desert

How to Practice Self-Denial—and What You'll Gain By Doing So

Human desires are insatiable. But if we do the counterintuitive—practice self-denial instead of giving in to those desires—we build virtue, gain freedom, and step closer to the eternal.
old fashioned alarm clock sitting on a wood table

The Power of Waking Up Early: 9 Tips for Becoming an Early Riser

I default to being a night owl, but rising early enables me to do more and be better. Here's how I switched my mornings from lazy to productive.
a set of gears on the left and a lightbulb surrounded by puzzle pieces and question marks on the right

How I Prepared For My First TEDx Talk

How do you give a TEDx talk? Here's how I picked a topic I was passionate about, wrote the speech, refined it, practiced, and memorized it.

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About

We're Jacqueline and Randy, a blogging duo with backgrounds in tech, robots, art, and writing, now raising our family in northern Idaho.

Our goal is to encourage deliberate choices, individual responsibility, and lifelong curiosity by sharing stories about our adventures in living, loving, and learning.

Learn more about us.


Connect:

whoo@deliberateowl.com

Start here

Curious about our life and journey? Here are some good places to start reading:

Jacqueline and Randy leaning their heads together smiling at the camera

A Blog About Education, Lifestyles, and Community

A brief history of how the Deliberate Owl came to be and why we're writing a blog about us, our lives, and how we're living out our values.
Priests in red and gold celebrate a traditional Latin Mass

Discovering the Traditional Catholic Mass

How I discovered the traditional Latin Mass a few years ago, why that discovery changed everything for me, and what was wrong with the Novus Ordo Masses I'd attended.