The special-effects dragon was the most beautiful they had ever seen, they said, and in my head the reel stopped as I wondered how many iterations of stomping Western dragons (“Basically, brontosauruses that breathe fire,” said my husband later) they had had to endure before seeing a major studio attempt…

I did a quick Google search for this advice. It turned up 47.9 million results in half a second. Each of these details how writing a book is like running a marathon, or training for one. Some of these posts compare writing a book to the marathon itself: The excitement…

Habit trackers are just that: a method by which you notate each day you do a thing. Say you want to track your exercise: you might mark that in your calendar. Say you want to track drinking 8 glasses of water a day. You might mark that down, too. …

Dear Reader,

I write to you from my office. It was my dad’s office when we lived in this house growing up. I have made it my own — painted the dark wood veneer light grey; pivoted my desk to face the windows; filled a corner with a sunny yellow…

EXPRESS YOURSELF

Alt text for this illustrated essay appears below the photos

I’ve been trying for the last year and a half to implement Ryan Holiday’s great index-card filing system for keeping ideas in place. The idea immediately appealed to me: I scribble in books and mark them up and make notes in the margins and on Post-It notes.

I also really…

James Clear’s Atomic Habits lays out the way that tiny changes can contribute to lasting behavior change. In other words, micro-movements you make in your schedule, your life, and even the way you talk to yourself can help you to build good habits that last a lifetime.

The first three…