This week’s post is deliberately short and simple because I’m giving myself permission to rest. In fact, that’s the whole message: You have permission to rest. I believe it was Tal Ben-Shahar, in his Positive Psychology class at Harvard, who said that the problem is not that we work too much, but that we rest too little. Stress, he argued, is like physical exercise: It can make us stronger as… Read More »Permission to Rest
Over the years, I have come to embrace being weird. However, I don’t mean weird for weird’s sake. My weird has a purpose. Despite how I sometimes appear, I am not heeding the advice of Robin Williams, who said: “You got to be crazy. It’s too late to be sane. Too late. You got to go full tilt bozo. Cause you’re only given a little spark of madness, and if… Read More »Be Weird
Yesterday morning I listened to this episode of the podcast Hidden Brain. In it, researcher Ming Kuo discusses the findings that show how we benefit socially, psychologically, and physically from spending time in nature. Green spaces reduce social conflict, increase mental health, lower blood pressure, and improve immunity. This was not news to me: I already knew about the many benefits of spending time in nature, both from personal experience… Read More »The Power of Daily Wisdom
I’ve written before about the surprising power of 20 seconds, also known as “The 20-Second Rule.”1 This is probably my favorite life-hack. The 20-Second Rule is simple: If you make something just 20 seconds easier to do, you’ll be much more likely to do it. And if you make something just 20 seconds harder to do, you’ll be much less likely to do it. There’s nothing special about 20 seconds… Read More »The 20-Second Rule Revisited