And made a worksheet you can use too — “Too bad that you’re retired,” the nurse told my psychiatrist mom as he gave her the Pfizer booster shot. “Students here are really struggling with their mental health. We could use more help.” Conversations like this one, which my mom shared with me after driving home from the vaccination center…

And the three questions she asks herself — It’s been well documented that the pandemic has warped our sense of time. I, for example, wrote in my previous post that I hadn’t been on a flight since February 2019, when really it was 2020 — an easily fixed, if slightly alarming mistake. But this inability to anchor ourselves…

Stressful times call for performing this Jedi mind trick on yourself — I just got back from my first conference in Pandemic Times. In the end, the event was rejuvenating. But the build up to my departure was exhausting. Once a regular (maybe too regular) traveler for work, I hadn’t been on a plane since February 2020. My family had become very…

How to stop agonizing over your career choices — As I get older, I get cheesier. Phrases I scoffed at as a Gen-X’er are now words I’ve come to live by. Take the cliched term “core values.” Up until my forties, I equated those two words with hollow corporate mission statements recited by executives who, inevitably, put earnings above…

How to apply the creative process to your professional life — The next time you go to Target, Wal-Mart, or any other huge, air conditioned, and sterile store, turn the drudgery of picking up detergent into a contest. Challenge yourself to spot something weird amidst the aisles. That’s the premise of Big Box Archeologist, an activity included in Rob Walker’s book…

Even if “visioning” isn’t new to you, this method might be — Generally, I turn up my nose when people turn nouns into verbs, like sunsetting, friending, or, for that matter, verbing. But I make an exception for visioning, as in, figuring out your future, because of Priya Parker. Priya’s probably best known for her book The Art of Gathering: How We…

It’s the most important thing to do after a big life event — like, say, a global pandemic — Exactly one year ago, my friend Greg Epstein told me about an intriguing mental strategy. Greg is the Humanist Chaplain at MIT and Harvard; he helps students figure out how they’ll define a meaningful life. Not a small task in the best of times, but especially hard to do when…

My goal was to keep up a weekly practice without churning out “content” — Last November, I committed to publishing on Medium on a weekly basis for six months. Usually after completing a project, I charge onto the next thing, without pausing or looking back — a stupid, unproductive habit, because it means I rarely learn from my mistakes nor relish what I’ve accomplished…

How data distracts us from feeling joy — How much? How many? These are the questions our gadgets answer for us all day long: We see how many steps we walked, minutes we spent tossing or turning overnight, hours we started at a screen. But technology can’t measure everything. Other, more nebulous concepts, like happiness, creativity, and pain…