Self-improvement

On a Sunday afternoon in October 1926, the greatest escape artist who ever lived died in a Detroit hospital bed. Harry Houdini had spent his career slipping out of handcuffs, straitjackets, and a nailed packing crate lowered into New York’s East River. He built a national reputation on the promise that no restraint could hold … Read more

In August 1915, The Atlantic Monthly published a short poem by Robert Frost called The Road Not Taken. In the hundred-plus years since, it has appeared on coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, and in most graduation speeches on record. It is also, according to the Paris Review, the most misread poem in America. We quote it … Read more

On October 14, 1926, the London publisher Methuen & Co. released a slim children’s book by A. A. Milne, a playwright and Punch humorist who would spend the rest of his life mildly annoyed that this was what made him famous. Winnie-the-Pooh was an instant hit. Its American publisher sold 150,000 copies before the end … Read more

In the spring of 1947, police trying to enter a brownstone at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 128th Street in Harlem could not open the front door. Behind it were the lifetime acquisitions of two brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer, who for decades had carried things in and almost nothing back out. When the … Read more

On March 4, 1933, a man who could not walk to the podium without help stood in front of a country that had largely stopped believing in itself. A quarter of the workforce was idle, banks were failing by the hundreds, and people were hoarding cash in mattresses and gold in coffee cans. That’s when … Read more

August 4, 1936. The Olympiastadion in Berlin, long jump qualifying round. Jesse Owens, already the fastest man in the world, had fouled his first two attempts. One more foul and he would be out — no medal, or no final — in front of 100,000 spectators and one particularly invested Führer. The story goes that … Read more

In April 2009, a 47-year-old church volunteer from a village in West Lothian, Scotland walked onto the stage of Britain’s Got Talent wearing a dress and hairdo that, as one reporter put it, might have been stylish when Dwight Eisenhower was president. The camera cut to Simon Cowell, who was sneering. It cut to the … Read more

Confession: I rarely watch YouTube videos or listen to Podcasts on normal speed. I have to at least 1.5x it most of the time. Patience, it turns out, is not a single muscle. It is many. And I have spent most of my life training the wrong ones. I’ve written about patience before. I leaned, … Read more

I can’t remember the last time I went out for a run without my phone, music, or watch. I’ve forgotten what it would be like to not track distance, heart rate, or my running pace. I’m not sure I could stand running five miles without a podcast or music, with just my own thoughts for … Read more

A few summers ago, on an early morning run, I spotted a woman about a quarter mile ahead of me. From where I was, I could watch her without her seeing me. She was walking backward, waving her arms in some kind of expansive, unhurried gesture, and either singing or reciting something to the sunrise. … Read more

Here’s a confession: I’ve spent years writing about self-improvement, and I’m not entirely sure it’s made me better at any of it. What it has done is make me very good at recognizing, with painful clarity, the exact moment I’m doing the wrong thing. After going back through some older posts recently, I noticed they … Read more

Here’s a confession: I have six browser tabs open right now, a to-do list glaring at me, and a brain that’s simultaneously catastrophizing about what’s happening in my house downstairs and how AI is going to change our jobs and lives. If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you know I think a lot … Read more

I have a minimal social media presence, plus I strictly enforce a hard cap on how much time I spend there. And yet, even I can feel the online pressure that comes with a New Year and the expectation that we should miraculously morph into entirely different people overnight. The TikToks and self-help gurus roll … Read more

Just before the holidays, I ordered a tablet for a work project. There was a seasonal promotion running at the time: buy the tablet, get a free wireless keyboard. In my multitasking, list-checking, end-of-year rush, I forgot to add the keyboard to my order. A couple of weeks later, after the tablet arrived, I went … Read more

’Tis the season of lists. Beyond the usual Top Ten books, movies, fashion moments, and travel adventures of the year, I’ve seen more unusual roundups, such as the strangest news stories and the cringiest pop-culture moments. Here’s my not-so-sensational contribution to the world of lists: five insights gleaned from books and life I intend to … Read more

One of the things I catch myself saying far too often is some version of: “I will be xxx when yyy happens.” It shows up in harmless-looking lines like: I’ll feel better once I deliver that big presentation I’ll relax on Friday night, after this crazy work week ends I’ll start my quest for spirituality … Read more

Forced to replace our car during Covid, we ended up buying an overpriced Tesla. Yes, this was back in the early days, before the world’s first trillion-dollar payout man went full Bond villain. And yes, I bought the stickers earlier this year to avoid the public shaming of being seen in a Tesla. When I … Read more

I enjoy doling out free (often unsolicited) advice far more than receiving (or acting on) it. One suggestion I routinely toss around is to encourage people to volunteer at local running events, even if they have no interest in the sport of running. Aside from the good karma, spectating at endurance events, especially longer ones … Read more