You don’t have to look too far on most social media these days to find an expert on productivity giving you tips on how to live a life more optimized for … well, work, I guess? Which is why I clicked on this video, “Do less, become happier, says Yale cognitive scientist,” and it did not disappoint. (video)
This is hands-down one of the best essays I’ve ever read about anything, ever, but it also has to do with caring for dogs, raising humans, and art, which is a pretty good Venn diagram for me. (Thanks, Memory, for sending me this!)
This might be too urban-design-geeky for a lot of people, but I love this YouTube channel, and I love someone digging into the history of city design and why we hardly ever see circular cities—including Circleville, Ohio, which started out with grand plans to be round but very quickly succumbed to the regular old grid.
Sometimes art hits you at exactly the right time: Since February 13th I’ve run a total of three times, because of a stubborn respiratory virus that lasted 2.5 weeks, and now hand, foot, and mouth disease, which is equally fun, but in a different way. So this was perfect for me: Marathon Training Plans for Runners with 0, 1, and 2 Offspring Under Age 5 (Thanks, Jessica)
For one thing, this is cool because it’s a mega-famous (and probably mega-busy) film director making a dying person’s last wish come true, but also that it’s someone’s job to facilitate this sort of thing.
Sometimes I share these massive listicles not because I read the entire thing, but because I’m so psyched that someone a) came up with this premise, which sounds like something you’d say to your friends after your fourth or fifth beer, and b) followed through with an incredibly detailed execution of said premise: Every Best Picture Winner Ranked by How Good a Muppets Version Would Be (thanks, Stephen)
I put this image on Instagram last week and got a bajillion replies—I wasn’t sure it was worth putting out a whole Thursday newsletter email, but I went ahead and put the series of slides and about 15 of my favorite comments it received on my website for people who aren’t on Instagram:
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