1: Arthur Brooks, the author and Harvard Happiness Professor, arrived in his hometown of Seattle just before midnight.

The taxi ride from the airport to downtown Seattle passed by the huge Boeing Field plant, where the aircraft manufacturer parks many of its planes.

“Sometimes, when I was a kid, my dad would take me there to look at them from outside the fence. I marveled at how incredible these … continue reading

1: The Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov was the second man to orbit the Earth.

In 1962, the year after his achievement, he visited the World’s Fair in Seattle.

When he was asked about his experience in space, he said: “Sometimes people are saying that God is out there. I was looking around attentively all day but I didn’t find anybody there. I saw neither angels nor God.”

“When smart people … continue reading

1: Tynan thought mindfulness and meditation were “too wishy-washy and time consuming,” he writes in Superhuman by Habit.

When he tried meditating, he found it hard to keep his attention on his breath. His mind kept wandering, which left him frustrated and ready to give up.

But then he discovered something that completely changed how he saw meditation.

“If meditation were easy, it would not be as beneficial,” he writes. … continue reading

1: Each day when he’s not traveling, Kevin Deshazo, CEO of Fieldhouse Media, drives his son Gabe to and from school.

“While in transit I normally check my phone at red lights for emails and posts, trying to see what the world is up to,” he explains.

“Everything changed,” he says after learning about the 5 Gears framework.

The 5 Gears is both the title and the central metaphor … continue reading

1: Imagine a beautiful summer morning on Lake Erie.

“The sun’s out, but there’s just enough breeze to keep you comfortable. It’s not too hot and not too cold,” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their powerful book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.

Erik is lying in a hammock right by the beach. He’s reading a good book. On the table next to him is a cold … continue reading

1: “Suppose it’s 4.10 pm, on a day when it’s not my turn for school pickup,” Oliver Burkeman writes in Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.

“I’m focusing hard in my office at home,” Oliver notes, “when my son bursts in, to tell me excitedly of his preparations for the school play.”

Here is one of those moments of wonderful … continue reading

1: “In the 1960s futurists all over the world—from sci-fi writers to political theorists—thought that by now we’d all be working way fewer hours,” John Mark Comer writes in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World.

“One famous Senate subcommittee in 1967 was told that by 1985, the average American would work only twenty-two hours a … continue reading