There was a time, not that long ago, when our evenings looked like this: come home, eat something over the sink or in front of a screen, then spend three hours half-watching shows while scrolling, then drag ourselves to bed around midnight feeling like we’d been cheated out of our own night. And then do … Read more
We used to make to-do lists so long they needed their own to-do list. Every morning we’d write down fifteen things, feel productive for about four minutes, and then by noon we’d done three of them and hated ourselves a little. The list wasn’t helping us do more. It was helping us feel behind. So … Read more
It was a Sunday. We slept in, made coffee, watched part of a show, scrolled our phone, ordered lunch, scrolled some more, and by four in the afternoon we were so tired we could have gone back to bed. And we remember thinking, tired from what? We didn’t do anything. This is one of the … Read more
We used to think we were good at multitasking. We were proud of it. We’d eat lunch while answering emails while half-listening to a podcast, and we’d tell ourselves we were being efficient. What we were actually doing was doing three things badly and enjoying none of them. The moment we really understood single tasking … Read more
We have a box of old band t-shirts in the back of our closet. We haven’t worn most of them in five years. But every time we open that box, we can tell you exactly which show each one came from — the venue, the opening act, the friend who was standing next to us. … Read more
For years we tried to break bad habits the way we’d seen people do it in movies: cold turkey, white-knuckled, full of dramatic declarations that we were done for good. It never worked for more than a couple of weeks. The habit always came back, and we always came away convinced we were weak. What … Read more
A few years ago we wanted to become a person who meditates, and we kept failing at it. Every attempt started with a full session—twenty minutes, a cushion, an app, the whole production—and every attempt ended within a week. Then a friend told us something that sounded almost insultingly simple: stop trying to meditate. Just … Read more
For most of our twenties we believed we had a willpower problem. Every January we’d decide to exercise daily, and every February we’d quietly quit. We told ourselves we just needed to try harder, to want it more, to be more disciplined. Then, around our thirtieth birthday, we read something that rearranged how we think … Read more