Tired of spending yet another instance of free time doom scrolling rather than doing anything — however small — to improve your life? Well, Ryan McConnell, Kyle Cole, and Nick Vitellaro, makers of The Hero’s Journal and The Hero’s Planner, happen to make a series of “SideQuest” decks that give you “things to do when you don’t know what to do.”

Each deck is comprised of 52 RPG-flavored cards full of ideas for quick activities, encouraging tasks, and creative prompts that help you be more productive, collect new experiences, get out and explore, take care of yourself, or fuel your inner artist.

There are four decks in all:

1. “Adventure” — Small challenges geared toward getting out and trying new things.
2. “Self Care” — Chill tasks that are designed for you to do more and be kinder to yourself.
3. “Creativity” — Prompts for helping you get out of your head and unlock your imagination.
4. “Variety” — A random selection of worthwhile activities that aren’t tied to any given category.

The idea is, whenever you have some free time and would hate to waste it looking at your phone, pull a card from any of those decks and do the activity on it. Each task is a relatively small one, so there’s as little friction as possible between you and getting started. You don’t even have to muster the energy to decide what to do next — the idea is already handed to you.

As I write this on August 16th, 2024, the SideQuest Decks are all on sale for $20 each (down from $30).

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In the late 1960s, Danish cabinetmaker Hans Gustav Ehrenreich decided the world needed a little more happiness and cheer. To that end he designed Hoptimist, a line of fun little bobbing-head figurines that serve no real purpose except to bring a smile to your face — and isn’t that needed more than ever these days?

Whenever you’re feeling blue or stressed out, just give your Hoptimist a little tap on the head and let its indomitable jaunty bouncing infect you with enthusiasm you didn’t know you had.

You’d probably have to be a sour soul indeed not to crack a smile, or at least a smirk, while watching this thingy go. I am given to catastrophizing, but this doojigger helps me to pause, get perspective, and reset with a sense of humor.

—Chantel Tattoli, The Strategist

The Classic Collection pictured above is the obvious place to start, but they have many other collections to choose from as well, like the Soft Collection:

…the Wood Collection:

…and the list goes on.

Whatever design you choose, it will happily fulfill its role as desk toy, conversation piece, or special gift to someone. Every Hoptimist is assembled by hand too, so each one has a degree of uniqueness.

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There is a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from those who’ve lived the longest, and journalist/author David Von Drehle learned that first-hand when he moved to Kansas City and encountered a centenarian neighbor named Charlie who, by all accounts, had lived an extraordinary life and had no intention of slowing down.

The two hit it off right away and a friendship was born, which became the basis for a biography written by Von Drehle titled The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man.

From the book’s description:

Charlie White was no ordinary neighbor. Born before radio, Charlie lived long enough to use a smartphone. When a shocking tragedy interrupted his idyllic boyhood, Charlie mastered survival strategies that reflect thousands of years of human wisdom. Thus armored, Charlie’s sense of adventure carried him on an epic journey of the Jazz Age, racing aboard ambulances through Depression-era gangster wars, improvising techniques for early open-heart surgery, and cruising the Amazon as a guest of Peru’s president.

David Von Drehle came to understand that Charlie’s resilience and willingness to grow made this remarkable neighbor a master in the art of thriving through times of dramatic change. As a gift to his children, he set out to tell Charlie’s secrets. The Book of Charlie is [an] inspiring story of one man’s journey through a century of upheaval. The history that unfolds through Charlie’s story reminds you that the United States has always been a divided nation, a questing nation—a nation of Charlies in the rollercoaster pursuit of a good and meaningful life.

Although only about 200 pages long, this is one of those books that has so much to teach about how to live and find happiness and meaning even in the face of hardships, mistakes, and tragedy. Don’t go in expecting tips on how to live longer; it’s more about living better, whatever time is left on the clock.

“I came to realize Charlie was not a survivor. He was a thriver. He did not just live. He lived joyfully. He was like a magnet, pulling me across the street and into his confidences, where I discovered something about life’s essentials. The sort of something one wants to pass on to one’s children.”

—David Von Drehle, author

Get the book in these formats:

• Kindle ($4)
• Apple Books ($4)
• Hardcover ($14)
• Paperback ($18)
• Audible audiobook ($14)
• Audio CD ($21)

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I’ve always been something of a digital packrat. I’ve gone through all manner of apps and websites and bookmarking systems over the years — from Evernote to Pinboard to Huffduffer to Instapaper to Simplenote to Bear and beyond — that help me keep things organized since my brain can’t handle all of it.

When it comes to capturing my favorite quotes though, my old go-to was Lickability’s Quotebook, which I last wrote about a decade ago and once reviewed on my own blog. Unfortunately, they pulled the plug in 2016 and while I can technically use the app today, it doesn’t quite function the way it used to :(

But it seems that developer Jay Hickey realized there was still a need for this kind of app, so he made one: Quotify for iOS.

Quotify similarly lets you save and organize quotes from just about anywhere — even if it comes from an audio source. If you’re listening to a podcast in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Castro, you can have Quotify take a snippet of it (based on timestamps you select) and it’ll convert the audio quote into text on the fly!

You can also have quotes displayed in widgets on your home screen:

Now, I should note that there are several features tucked behind a modest “Premium” subscription, including backup and sync across devices, the ability to save unlimited quotes (only 25 are allowed by default), daily quote notifications to keep you inspired, and the ability to automatically attach source info to quotes sent from other apps.

Quotify is free to download and use, and the Premium subscription is something you can either pay $1/month for indefinitely (and it includes a one-week trial before you commit), or you can opt for the $20 lifetime unlock.

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If there’s anyone alive whose brain I would love to pick about the creative process, it’s Rick Rubin. He’s not only the legendary and award-winning music “superproducer” behind some of the biggest albums of all time, he’s also a philosopher of creativity who has spent decades thinking about, practicing, and guiding others in the making of art rather than simply product.

Earlier this year he released a book called The Creative Act that takes a bunch of that creative wisdom out of his head and distills it on the page for the rest of us to learn from and be inspired by.

From the book description:

Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn’t, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone’s life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.

The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.

Whatever your preferred art form/medium — or if you currently lack one and are thinking of taking up a new hobby or even profession — reading this book is like entering a dojo of creativity where you not only learn how to get better at your craft, but also come away feeling more in tune with your own humanity.

Get the book in these formats:

• Kindle ($17)
• Apple Books ($17)
• Hardcover ($20)
• Spiral-bound ($33)
• Audible audiobook ($28)

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To say that writer and futurist Kevin Kelly has had a profound influence on this website (and arguably the web as a whole) is an understatement. His longtime Cool Tools blog has been a regular source of reading for me personally ever since I first discovered RSS circa ’07 or ’08.

And in just a couple days, he has a new book coming out called Excellent Advice for Living that compiles 70 years of hard-earned life wisdom and presents it across 450 useful, thought-provoking, and occasionally humorous aphorisms that aim to help you live a better life. He covers everything from relationships to finances to parenting to self-reflection to careers and beyond.

Here are some of the succinct nuggets of advice you’ll find in the book:

“To succeed, get other people to pay you; to become wealthy, help other people to succeed.”

“A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.”

“If you are looking for something in your house and you finally find it, when you are done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.”

“If you loan someone $20 and you never see them again because they are avoiding paying you back, that makes it worth $20.”

“Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible. Instead aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing.”

“If you stop to listen to a musician or street performer for more than a minute, you owe them a dollar.”

This is sure to be an invaluable resource, and it should find a happy home on your bookshelf where you can reference it daily.

The book releases May 2nd, 2023 and can be pre-ordered in these formats:

• Hardcover ($21)
• Kindle ($15)
• Apple Books ($15)
• Audible audiobook ($19)

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Through some combination of our stubborn genetics, my wife and I have produced two of the most hardheaded and persistent kids either of us have ever met. As you might imagine, this hasn’t always led to, uh, healthy communication between all of us.

In my search to find some guidance about this sort of thing, I came across How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I’ve gotta say, it’s definitely forced me to re-examine my parenting style and work through some uncomfortable facts about myself, in a good way.

Originally published in the early ’80s — I can’t find a definitive answer on whether it was 1980 or 1982 — the book is full of tips, tricks, and advice on attaining a more effective level of communication whenever parents and kids reach an impasse with one another:

This bestselling classic by internationally acclaimed experts on communication between parents and children includes fresh insights and suggestions, as well as the author’s time-tested methods to solve common problems and build foundations for lasting relationships, including innovative ways to:

• Cope with your child’s negative feelings, such as frustration, anger, and disappointment
• Express your strong feelings without being hurtful
• Engage your child’s willing cooperation
• Set firm limits and maintain goodwill
• Use alternatives to punishment that promote self-discipline
• Understand the difference between helpful and unhelpful praise
• Resolve family conflicts peacefully

Enthusiastically praised by parents and professionals around the world, Faber and Mazlish’s down-to-earth, respectful approach makes relationships with children of all ages less stressful and more rewarding.

If too many conversations you have with your kid(s) seem to take a negative turn into arguing (*raises hand*) then this is the book for you. It might even change the way you interact with other adults, which is fitting because that’s what you’re raising your kids into anyway.

Get the book in these formats:

• Kindle ($14)
• Apple Books ($14)
• Hardcover ($28)
• Paperback ($12)
• Audible audiobook ($15)
• Audio CD ($35)

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The “Roller” by ONO is the kind of fidget toy that doesn’t overcomplicate its job or demand much of your attention while you play with it. You simply hold it in one hand and use your fingers and palm to rotate the two attached barrels around and around. That’s it.

It rolls smoothly and quietly, relieves tension in the hand from prolonged computer/phone use, can help alleviate anxiety and/or boredom while increasing focus and dexterity, fits nicely in your hand or pocket, and it just plain feels satisfying to use. Everything you could want in a fidget toy.

The ONO Roller is $35 on Amazon and comes in Black, Sapphire, Rose Gold, and other colors. Each one comes with a small carry pouch. They also offer a “Junior” version ($25) for users with smaller hands.

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Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe is a 2014 book by comic book artist Yumi Sakugawa that acts as a kind of hand-drawn spiritual guidebook for reconnecting with the universe.

And yeah, I know how corny or even “woo-woo” that will sound to some of you reading this. But it really is a delightfully sweet and gently playful little graphic novel full of wisdom and meditations on metaphysical matters, from making peace with your demons (over a slice of cake!), to the importance of deep breathing, to finding solace in your place, however small, in the seemingly endless cosmos — all accompanied by the author’s trippy, dreamlike black-and-white illustrations.

From the book’s description:

Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe erases the boundaries of the standard self-help book and sets you free on a visual journey of self-discovery. Set against a surreal backdrop of intricate ink illustrations, you will find nine metaphysical lessons with dreamlike instructions that require you to open your heart to unexplored inner landscapes. From setting fire to your anxieties to sharing a cup of tea with your inner demons, you will learn how to let go and truly connect with the world around you.

Whether you need a little inspiration or a completely new life direction, Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe provides you with the necessary push to find your true path — and a whimsical adventure to enjoy on the way there.

Get the 160-page hardcover for $23 on Amazon.

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Listen, I don’t really do this. I’ve never met @joynessthebrave, but she wrote a book that pulled me out of a spiral. Aggressively Happy is funny, wise, and unapologetic in the best way.

Matt Civico (@mattCivico)

In an online world full of ugliness, cynicism, and despair, Joy Clarkson’s Twitter and Instagram pages are always an oasis of…well, joy — a teatime balm for the soul. As such, her new book, Aggressively Happy: A Realist’s Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life, is definitely one you should have on your radar, especially if the world has been getting you down lately.

This is a book all about cultivating happiness in your life, despite the darkness and pain out there, using lessons and insights taken from literature, poetry, and scripture. (The latter isn’t my thing personally, but I accept that {Chef Gusteau voice} great teachings can come from anywhere.)

From the book’s description:

This old world can be exhausting, despairing, and cynical. But you don’t have to be.

Instead, you can unlock the power to a happy life—an act of defiance that will make you more resilient in times of turmoil, pain, and chaos. Cultivating happiness takes grit, determination, and a good sense of humor. It’s not always easy, but it’s well worth it.

Beloved writer Joy Marie Clarkson leads the way, crafting an audacious case for happiness no matter what you’re going through. With her signature humor and lyrical storytelling, Joy offers an irresistible invitation:

“If we accept that life will be full of difficulties and sorrows, we then have two options: to resign ourselves to life generally being a bummer, or to seek enjoyment, delight, and hope in the midst of (and in spite of!) life’s up and downs. To put it bluntly: You could choose to cultivate happiness, or you could not. . . . I think we should go for it.”

Go, therefore, and choose an aggressively happy life.

And here’s what the author herself says on her website:

This is a book about looking life square in the face and learning to, as Wendell Berry puts it “rejoice though you have considered all the facts.” It is not about being happy all the time. There is such a thing as toxic positivity, a compulsive need to look on the bright side that lends itself to a perpetual denial of the real, deep difficulties of life. A happiness that ignores pain, injustice, and brokenness is not worth having. But a happiness which can stand tall, look life in the eye, and smile anyway? That is well worth the fight.

This is a book of essays drawing on literature, poetry, theology, history, and my own little life. I wrote it in the depths of winter, locked down in the UK, and gnashing my teeth over my PhD. It was purgatorial, a good test of the content. And yet, I found that I still believe there is a deep well of happiness at the heart of life. I believe that for all of its darkness, and mundanity, and confusion, life is good, and was made to be good, deep down to its core. I believe being alive is a precious gift, and the greatest crime is to squander it. I believe that there’s reason to hope. I know I can’t exactly prove these things, but in my experience, life is better when you live like they’re true.

By the end of Aggressively Happy, you’ll have the tools to find encouragement and comfort in all things (yes, even sadness); to enjoy things unironically; to face down outer turmoil with inner light, bravery, and hope.

A book best enjoyed with a latte or cup of hot tea in hand. ☕️

Get the book in these formats:

• Kindle ($11)
• Apple Books ($11)
• Hardcover ($30)
• Paperback ($16)
• Audible audiobook ($16)

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Successfully funded on Kickstarter last June, the 3D ergonomic eye mask by Ostrichpillow adapts to the features of your face (without putting pressure on your eyes) to block out any and all light that might disturb your slumber.

This machine-washable mask is made up of six different layers that not only keep all that light out, but also provide the ultimate level of comfort whenever you put it on. And thanks to its blink-friendly eye cups, you can even keep your eyes open while wearing the mask in the daytime, for those moments when you simply need a moment to center yourself and focus on the breath.

Get the Ostrichpillow Eye Mask for $45 on Amazon in your choice of Dark Night (black) or Midnight Grey.

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Wow, has it been a year already?

The all-new Focus Course Planner for 2022 from our sister site is out right now, and it’s ready to find a home on your iPad so your productivity and creativity can go to the moon and beyond next year.

Like the previous editions, this planner is not a standalone app, even if it looks like one. Instead, it’s an interactive PDF document, the details of which have had a lot of love and care poured into them. You load it up in an app like GoodNotes or Notability, then simply follow along with its system, each day at a time:

The planner is meant to be used on a daily basis. You begin with the first section that helps you establish your annual goals and desired outcomes. It then helps you distill those down into quarterly, monthly, and even weekly goals. And then helping you turn those into daily actions.

The planner helps you take your ideas, hopes, and goals and then turn them into part of your daily activity.

The Digital Planner is the ultimate combination of analog and digital productivity tools. If you want a single, searchable solution that handles everything you need to make better choices about how you spend your time and energy each day — meaning you can focus on what truly matters — then you’ll love using this planner.

Here are the planner stats for our fellow tech/productivity nerds out there (we see you):

• 800+ pages (up from last year’s 700), all of which are individually numbered for fast referencing and indexing.
• Over 6,000 internal document links to help you quickly navigate thoroughly the planner.
• Multiple calendar views, including one for the year, various ones for each month, and each week.
• Monday or Sunday start options.
• Portrait or Landscape orientation options.
• Goal setting sections.
• Weekly and monthly review prompts.
• Daily habit trackers and progress logs.
• Daily planner pages for task management and time blocking.
• Blank notes section for ideation, doodling, mind mapping, meeting notes, and more.
• Works perfectly on any iPad with Apple Pencil support.

The planner is $39 to download and includes setup instructions and several walkthrough videos to help you get the most out of it.

P.S. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll notice there’s an epic bundle option that will also get you access to the popular Plan Your Year workbook plus the live-online workshop happening in December!

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Anxiety is your brain tricking you. You can call its bluff.

—u/Ehermagerd (Reddit)

In recent years, something I’ve come to understand about myself is that I suffer from at least a couple forms of anxiety. During one particular month in 2019, I had several episodes where I seriously thought I was having a heart attack and was going to die. Even saw a cardiologist about it. After my EKG came back clean, I started looking into what was happening to me.

Turns out, those were panic attacks. I’d just never experienced them before.

Having learned this fact about myself has made me do a lot of introspection. This thing that seemed to come out of nowhere…I realize now that it was actually building up inside for years, completely unnoticed — until it wasn’t. And even now, I still have episodes where I’m overly conscious of some sensation in my body and I will fixate on it incessantly, only exacerbating it more. (Hi, r/HealthAnxiety.)

If any of this sounds familiar to you, you need to check out Barry McDonagh’s tremendously helpful book, Dare: The New Way to End Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks Fast. In it, he explains what anxiety is and how it affects your mind/body, and then he goes through what he calls the “DARE” method, which you can use to directly address a panic attack when it strikes, rather than let it overwhelm you:

1. Defuse.
2. Allow.
3. Run toward.
4. Engage.

The guy also offers a companion app where, if and when you do have a panic attack, you can load up one of his audio guides to be guided through the process and reassured that what you’re feeling is NORMAL and that you are OKAY — your body is simply experiencing a stress response.

Paired together, the app and book are an invaluable resource for proactively pulling yourself out of stress attacks, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, and more. Truly lifechanging stuff.

Get the book in these formats:

• Kindle ($9)
• Paperback ($18)
• Audible audiobook ($18)

(Side note: If you want it on Apple Books, for some reason they only seem to have the Hungarian version as I write this on October 5th, 2021.)

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In the same vein as Big Ideas for Curious Minds, Usborne’s Philosophy for Beginners — which I believe can also be found under the newer name Understanding Philosophy since being re-released alongside the rest of the series — is a wonderful introduction to some big concepts that can help kids both understand themselves and make sense of the world around them.

From the book’s description:

Philosophy is a way of thinking about just about anything. It asks big questions, such as “how can I be good” or “what makes something beautiful” Using lively examples, humorous illustrations and simple thought experiments, this book opens up the world of philosophy to both children and adults and includes links to recommended websites with videos, games, and activities to find out more.

Using simple and clear language, Philosophy for Beginners helps kids (especially pre-teens) understand not only what philosophy is, but how to apply it in everyday life situations. Right off the bat, it introduces questions that can be difficult to answer even for adults:

• “Is it right to help someone if I know that doing so will hurt someone else?”
• “Why should we do what the government tells us? In fact, should we even have a government?”
• “If scientists built a machine that behaved just like a human, would it have feelings, and should I treat it kindly?”
• “If I could take a pill that would make me happy all the time, should I?”

So not only do we have an excellent set of conversation starters here, the book is also helping kids lay an inner foundation for the kind of person they see themselves growing into. I highly recommend reading this one alongside your kid(s) and having some deep discussions together.

Get the hardcover edition of Philosophy for Beginners for $18 on Amazon.

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This [book] is helping me contextualize how I spend my time in the pandemic, how that lack of any third space for us all is now developing online more tangibly than ever before, and how I approach the tropes of the industries I’m a part of

Matthew Cassinelli (@mattcassinelli)

At first, Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy sounds like it’d be a book about…I dunno, talking long walks in the woods or doing a digital detox by staring at walls or something. But it’s really so much more than that.

It’s a manifesto on reclaiming your attention and even your sense of self from the divided, cacophonous, info-overloaded, unfulfilling, kneejerk-reaction world that social media companies seem intent on trapping us in forever — or at least as long as we help them rake in that sweet, sweet ad revenue.

From the description:

In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives.

Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. We might not spend it on things that capitalism has deemed important … but once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.

Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to Do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book will change how you see your place in our world.

This is one of those books that could help you entirely reframe your relationship with technology and how it affects your day-to-day life. It’s also written in what I would call a ‘friendly/casual San Franciscan’ style, so if you’re into that vibe, this will be an enjoyable read for you.

Get the book in these formats:

• Kindle ($12)
• Apple Books ($12)
• Hardcover ($15)
• Paperback ($11)
• Audible audiobook ($18)
• Audio CD ($25)

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