Best of 2015

Things discovered in 2015 that I found useful, informative, and/or inspiring. Covers books, productivity tools, podcasts, documentaries, and best parenting resource discovery of the year (how to do allowances). PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS Limefuel Blast Pro external battery pack coupled with a four-in-one multi-USB charging cable connector: Purchased for this summer’s trip to Ireland. Easily kept four teenagers’ worth of tech fully charged throughout the day without a hitch. I continue to use it daily for work-related purposes. But definitely too much (and too heavy) if all you need to do is keep a smartphone charged throughout the day. Wirecutter.com: A free […]

The best blog post ever

I first came across Leo Babauta’s writing in 2006 or 2007. This was shortly after he started his blog Zen Habits, and it focused mostly on task-based self-improvement: productivity hacks (such as keeping his email inbox empty); getting fit (quit smoking and start exercising) and how to get out of debt (tips for spending less money and how to start saving). Over the years, Babauta has largely stuck with writing about self-improvement, and while he still tackles the same topics (healthy eating, fitness, and personal finances) his approach to personal change is more zen than habits. For a while, Babauta […]

5 lessons for living from a haiku master

Haiku as we know it today―a rich means of expression and one of Japan’s highest art forms―can be traced to Bashō, a 17th-century haiku master. An example of his work―one of his most well-known haikus―evokes the Zen koan about the sound of one hand clapping: Old pond― A frog jumps in The sound of water As Stephen Addiss tells it in his 2011 book The Art of Haiku: Its History Through Poems and Paintings by Japanese Masters, early haiku was more akin to limericks, jokes, and puns: “Bolstered by goodly quantities of sake, composing humorous linked verse became a very […]