One of the things I miss about living in a city with a subway system is the myriad thoughtful design elements that go into managing a perpetual flow of tourists and commuters. New York’s subway map presents us with an iconic tangle of interlocking tributaries resembling diagrams of a circulatory system. The NYC system’s ingeniously simple graphic presentation of lettered and numbered trains, encircled in their corresponding colors, can be read by most anyone with a rudimentary grasp on the English alphabet—from a new language learner to a small child. The Washington, DC subway system, though a much more prosaic affair overall, whisks riders through impressively cavernous, catacomb-like stations, with brutalist tile and concrete honeycombs that seem to go on forever. The squiggly lines of its color-coded map likewise promise ease of use and legibility.
And then there are the hours of reading time granted by a subway commute, a leisure I’ve relinquished now that I rely on car and bike. So you can imagine my envious delight in learning about Brazil’s Ticket Books, which are exactly what they sound like—books that work as subway tickets, designed with the minimalist care that major transit systems do so well. And what’s more, they’re free: “To celebrate World Book Day last April 23rd,” writes “future-forward online resource” PSFK, “[Brazillian publisher] L&PM gave away 10,000 books for free at subway stations across São Paulo. Each book came with ten free trips.” Riders could then recharge them and use the books again or pass them on to others to encourage more reading, an important public service given that Brazilians only read two books per year on average.
With subway map-inspired covers designed by firm Agência Africa, the books include The Great Gatsby, The Art of War, Hamlet, Murder Alley by Agatha Christie, Hundred Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda, and more (including comic collections from Charles Schulz and Garfield’s Jim Davis). Watch an explainer video at the top of the post and see some lovely images of the book covers above. The campaign won three trophies at the Cannes Lions Festival in the categories “Promo,” “Outdoor,” and “Design,” and has proved so popular that publisher L&PM has expanded the project to other Brazilian cities, giving me yet more reason to visit Brazil. And if Ticket Books makes its way to a subway-enabled city near me, I may consider moving.
At the stroke of midnight on January 1, millions of New Year’s resolutions went into effect, with the most common ones being lose weight, get fit, quit drinking and smoking, save money, and learn something new (we can help you there). Unfortunately, 33% of these resolutions will be abandoned by January’s end. And more than 80% will eventually fall by the wayside. Making resolutions stick is tricky business. But it’s possible, and Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal has a few scientifically-proven suggestions for you.
For years, McGonigal has taught a very popular course called The Science of Willpower in Stanford’s Continuing Studies program, where she introduces students to the idea that willpower is not an innate trait. (You can sign up for an online version of her course which starts on January 25. Get details here.) Rather it’s a “complex mind-body response that can be compromised by stress, sleep deprivation and nutrition and that can be strengthened through certain practices.” For those of you who don’t live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can also find McGonigal’s ideas presented in a recent book, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Below, we have highlighted 15 of Dr. McGonigal’s strategies for increasing your willpower reserves and making your New Year’s resolutions endure.
Will power is like a muscle. The more you work on developing it, the more you can incorporate it into your life. It helps, McGonigal says in this podcast, to start with small feats of willpower before trying to tackle more difficult feats. Ideally, find the smallest change that’s consistent with your larger goal, and start there.
Choose a goal or resolution that you really want, not a goal that someone else desires for you, or a goal that you think you should want. Choose a positive goal that truly comes from within and that contributes to something important in life.
Willpower is contagious. Find a willpower role model — someone who has accomplished what you want to do. Also try to surround yourself with family members, friends or groups who can support you. Change is often not made alone.
Know that people have more willpower when they wake up, and then willpower steadily declines throughout the day as people fatigue. So try to accomplish what you need to — for example, exercise — earlier in the day. Then watch out for the evenings, when bad habits can return.
Understand that stress and willpower are incompatible. Any time we’re under stress it’s harder to find our willpower. According to McGonigal, “the fight-or-flight response floods the body with energy to act instinctively and steals it from the areas of the brain needed for wise decision-making. Stress also encourages you to focus on immediate, short-term goals and outcomes, but self-control requires keeping the big picture in mind.” The upshot? “Learning how to better manage your stress is one of the most important things you can do to improve your willpower.” When you get stressed out, go for a walk. Even a five minute walk outside can reduce your stress levels, boost your mood, and help you replenish your willpower reserves.
Sleep deprivation (less than six hours a night) makes it so that the prefrontal cortex loses control over the regions of the brain that create cravings. Science shows that getting just one more hour of sleep each night (eight hours is ideal) helps recovering drug addicts avoid a relapse. So it can certainly help you resist a doughnut or a cigarette.
Also remember that nutrition plays a key role. “Eating a more plant-based, less-processed diet makes energy more available to the brain and can improve every aspect of willpower from overcoming procrastination to sticking to a New Year’s resolution,” McGonigal says.
Don’t think it will be different tomorrow. McGonigal notes that we have a tendency to think that we will have more willpower, energy, time, and motivation tomorrow. The problem is that “if we think we have the opportunity to make a different choice tomorrow, we almost always ‘give in’ to temptation or habit today.”
Acknowledge and understand your cravings rather than denying them. That will take you further in the end. The video above has more on that.
Imagine the things that could get in the way of achieving your goal. Understand the tendencies you have that could lead you to break your resolution. Don’t be overly optimistic and assume the road will be easy.
Know your limits, and plan for them. Says McGonigal, “People who think they have the most self-control are the most likely to fail at their resolutions; they put themselves in tempting situations, don’t get help, give up at setbacks. You need to know how you fail; how you are tempted; how you procrastinate.”
Pay attention to small choices that add up. “One study found that the average person thinks they make 14 food choices a day; they actually make over 200. When you aren’t aware that you’re making a choice, you’ll almost always default to habit/temptation.” It’s important to figure out when you have opportunities to make a choice consistent with your goals.
Be specific but flexible. It’s good to know your goal and how you’ll get there. But, she cautions, “you should leave room to revise these steps if they turn out to be unsustainable or don’t lead to the benefits you expected.”
Give yourself small, healthy rewards along the way. Research shows that the mind responds well to it. (If you’re trying to quite smoking, the reward shouldn’t be a cigarette, by the way.)
Finally, if you experience a setback, don’t be hard on yourself. Although it seems counter-intuitive, studies show that people who experience shame/guilt are much more likely to break their resolutions than ones who cut themselves some slack. In a nutshell, you should “Give up guilt.”
Now that another New Year’s Day has come around, we must once again ask ourselves: do we believe in New Year’s resolutions, or don’t we? As with most institutions, Mark Twain, that most quoted of all American humorists, both believed and didn’t believe in them. Or maybe we could say that his lack of belief transcended run-of-the-mill cynicism to become a kind of devout faith in human folly itself.
Here we have a few words on the subject from the man himself, first published in the January 1, 1863 edition of the Territorial Enterprise, the Virginia City, Nevada newspaper where the young Twain worked for a time:
Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.
Twain made a career of skewering the countless pieties of American life, and the culture’s perhaps overzealous spirit of self-improvement provided him a vast and never fully deflatable target. His assessment feels as true today, and makes us laugh just as much today, as it must have 153 years ago. So keep enjoying the friendliness, festivity, and human comedy of the New Year’s holiday as Twain would have. If you do make a resolution, keep it to a manageable level of morality. And don’t forget to revisit the other perspectives on New Year’s we’ve previously featured from such other cultural luminaries as Neil Gaiman, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Marilyn Monroe.
But the handwritten packing list Godmother of Punk Patti Smith scrawled upside down on a photocopied receipt from a children’s bookstore on the eve of a 40-date European tour comes close. One can kind of imagine her stuffing her adaptors, her Japanese pants, and her “9 underwears” into a shopping bag or a dirty day pack, using it as a pillow in the back of the van…
Behold the reality, below.
Smith’s hard shell case is kitted out with practiced precision, its contents pared to the leanest of luxury-brand necessities to keep her happy and healthy on the road.
Other essentials in Smith’s tour bag include loquat tea for her throat and plenty of reading material. In addition to the Hunger Games, she elected to take along some old favorites from author Haruki Murakami:
I decide this will be essentially a Haruki Murakami tour. So I will take several of his books including the three volume IQ84 to reread. He is a good writer to reread as he sets your mind to daydreaming while you are reading him. thus i always miss stuff.
Readers, use the comments section to let us know what indispensable items you would pack when embarking on a 40-city tour with Patti Smith.
Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play, Fawnbook, opens in New York City later this fall. Follow her @AyunHalliday
Alan Watts moved from his native London to New York in 1938, then eventually headed west, to San Francisco in the early 1950s. On the left coast, he started teaching at the Academy of Asian Studies, wrote his bestseller Way of Zen, and began delivering a long-running series of talks about eastern philosophy on KPFA radio in Berkeley. During these years, Watts became one of the foremost popularizers of Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, which made him something of a celebrity, especially when the 60s counterculture movement kicked into gear.
Now, 40 years and change after his death, you can find no shortage of vintage Watts’ media online (including this archive of streaming lectures). And today we’re featuring an episode from a TV series called Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life, which aired in San Francisco circa 1960. “The Silent Mind” runs 28 minutes, and it offered American viewers an introduction to the philosophy and practice of meditation, something still considered exotic at the time. History in the making. You’re watching it happen right here. Find more meditation and Alan Watts resources below.
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Where have all the Fezziwigs gone? Those festive souls whose joyfully uncomplicated relationship to Christmas inspires generosity and the highest of spirits?
The factors leading to the seasonal malaise documented above are far less easy to identify than the singular complaint of the famous song Koresky borrows for the title of his video essay.
A simple reunion would have fixed Elvis’s Christmas blues.
Not so the characters played by Catherine Deneuve, Angelica Huston, and other lovely, aging actresses gazing mournfully in this mash up. Large families, sumptuous tables, and lavishly decorated homes are no match for their seasonal depression.
Perhaps they should try volunteering in a soup kitchen.
Or getting away from it all in the French Canadian asbestos mining town that provides the setting for Claude Jutra’s Mon oncle Antoine. (Nothing like a child-sized coffin and some realistically grimy, non-fake snow to make you count your blessings!)
A complete list of the films selected by Koresky for this misery-loves-company compilation is below. (Kudos to producer Casey Moore for his masterful editing.)
Though few of us like to hear it, the fact remains that success in any endeavor requires patient, regular training and a daily routine. To take a mundane, well-worn example, it’s not for nothing that Stephen R. Covey’s best-selling classic of the business and self-help worlds offers us “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” rather than “7 Sudden Breakthroughs that Will Change Your Life Forever”—though if we credit the spam emails, ads, and sponsored links that clutter our online lives, we may end up believing in quick fixes and easy roads to fame and fortune. But no, a well-developed skill comes only from a set of practiced routines.
That said, the type of routine one adheres to depends on very personal circumstances such that no single creative person’s habits need exactly resemble any other’s. When it comes to the lives of writers, we expect some commonality: a writing space free of distractions, some preferred method of transcription from brain to page, some set time of day or night at which the words flow best. Outside of these basic parameters, the daily lives of writers can look as different as the images in their heads.
But it seems that once a writer settles on a set of habits—whatever they may be—they stick to them with particular rigor. The writing routine, says hyper-prolific Stephen King, is “not any different than a bedtime routine. Do you go to bed a different way every night?” Likely not. As for why we all have our very specific, personal quirks at bedtime, or at writing time, King answers honestly, “I don’t know.”
“I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning,” he explained. “I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.”
The King quotes come to us via the site (and now book) Daily Routines, which features brief summaries of “how writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.” We’ve previously featured a few snapshots of the daily lives of famous philosophers. The writers section of the site similarly offers windows into the daily practices of a wide range of authors, from the living to the long dead.
A contemporary of King, though a slower, more self-consciously painstaking writer, Haruki Murakami incorporates into his workday his passion for running, an avocation he has made central to his writing philosophy. Expectedly, Murakami keeps a very athletic writing schedule and routine.
When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.
Not all writers can adhere to such a disciplined way of living and working, particularly those whose waking hours are given over to other, usually painfully unfulfilling, day jobs.
An almost archetypal case of the writer trapped in such a situation, Franz Kafka kept a routine that would cripple most people and that did not bring about physical strength, to say the least. As Zadie Smith writes of the author’s portrayal in Louis Begley’s biography, Kafka “despaired of his twelve hour shifts that left no time for writing.”
[T]wo years later, promoted to the position of chief clerk at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, he was now on the one-shift system, 8:30 AM until 2:30 PM. And then what? Lunch until 3:30, then sleep until 7:30, then exercises, then a family dinner. After which he started work around 11 PM (as Begley points out, the letter- and diary-writing took up at least an hour a day, and more usually two), and then “depending on my strength, inclination, and luck, until one, two, or three o’clock, once even till six in the morning.” Then “every imaginable effort to go to sleep,” as he fitfully rested before leaving to go to the office once more. This routine left him permanently on the verge of collapse.
Might he have chosen a healthier way? When his fiancée Felice Bauer suggested as much, Kafka replied, “The present way is the only possible one; if I can’t bear it, so much the worse; but I will bear it somehow.” And so he did, until his early death from tuberculosis.
While writers require routine, nowhere is it written that their habits must be salubrious or measured. According to Simone De Beauvoir, outré French writer Jean Genet “puts in about twelve hours a day for six months when he’s working on something and when he has finished he can let six months go by without doing anything.” Then there are those writers who have relied on pointedly unhealthy, even dangerous habits to propel them through their workday. Not only did William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson write under the influence, but so also did such a seemingly conservative person as W.H. Auden, who “swallowed Benzedrine every morning for twenty years… balancing its effect with the barbiturate Seconal when he wanted to sleep.” Auden called the amphetamine habit a “labor saving device” in the “mental kitchen,” though he added that “these mechanisms are very crude, liable to injure the cook, and constantly breaking down.”
So, there you have it, a very diverse sampling of routines and habits in several successful writers’ lives. Though you may try to emulate these if you harbor literary ambitions, you’re probably better off coming up with your own, suited to the oddities of your personal makeup and your tolerance—or not—for serious physical exercise or mind-altering substances. Visit Daily Routines to learn about many more famous writers’ habits.
“There’s nothing left but to introduce you to some people whose lives will forever be a part of the life of Paris. These are our brothers. They were robbed of their stage three weeks ago, and we would like to offer them ours tonight.” And with those words from Bono, the Eagles of Death Metal took the stage again tonight in Paris, just three weeks after the horrific terrorist attack at Le Bataclan. Up top, see them sing, along with U2, a version of Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power.” Next, a version of their own song, “I Love You All the Time.”
Whether the band would perform again was never in doubt. Interviewed days after the attack, the band, still reeling, told Vice they had an obligation to carry on. In the poignant video below, Jesse Hughes said it all: “I cannot wait to get back to Paris. I cannot wait to play. I want to come back. I want to be the first band to play at Le Bataclan when it opens.” Playing at Le Bataclan may have to wait. But getting back to Paris, that’s now certainly done.
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