Subscribe now

Over the past few months, multiple people whose opinions I trust have recommended that I connect with Dan Coyle, the New York Times bestselling author of books including The Talent Code, The Culture Code and a new book called Flourish: the Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment.

They said things like, “You two will like each other!” and “You’ll love his book.” And, as so often happens with people whose opinions you trust, those people were correct! I recently had the delight and honor to sit down with Dan to talk about what it means to flourish, and how each of us can apply lessons he learned in his own research to our own lives.

Learn More

I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation (and that you’ll check out Dan’s work and books!).

To scrolling less, living more, and creating conditions for flourishing,

Catherine Price

Leave a comment

Share

PS: I’m experimenting with a bunch of new features specifically for my paid subscribers, including a Phone Breakup Support Group chat for alums of my book (and phone breakup course), a revival of our group delight chat (coming soon!) and bonus sections of podcast conversations where I do something a little different, or take the conversation in a more personal, vulnerable, or hands-on direction.

This will take different forms depending on my guest; with Dan, I was particularly curious about what might happen if he and I took one of the strategies he described in his book and put it into practice ourselves.

More specifically, Dan has a section in his book about conversational strategies that bring people closer and encourage trust and vulnerability (and, in so doing, lead to flourishing). One of these techniques is a series of four simple questions, used by Penn State basketball Mike Rhoades (and since adopted by numerous other teams and organizations, including the New England Patriots) that bring players closer together, both on and off the court — and that can be used in any context where you’re hoping to move beyond small talk and establish a genuine bond.

I found this intriguing — so I decided to ask Dan if we could put this idea into practice and go through those four questions ourselves.

Read more

I first came across Jean’s work in 2017, when she published a now-famous (and at the time, very controversial) Atlantic article with the headline: “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”

I remember reading it while I was working on How to Break Up With Your Phone and thinking, YES. It pulled together something many people were feeling but that wasn’t yet part of the mainstream conversation: something was going very wrong with kids’ mental health, and the timing seemed suspiciously aligned with the rise of smartphones and social media.

That article was adapted from her book iGen, which I still have on my bookshelf. Since its publication, Jean has continued to be one of the world’s leading experts on the intersection of technology, teens, and mental health.

She also does not shy away from giving practical advice. And so when I heard she had a new book out — 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World — I knew I wanted to have her on the How to Feel Alive podcast.

The book isn’t just about what not to do; it also provides concrete guidance for how to protect your kids online and give them more opportunities for real-life fun.

Why am I sharing this conversation now, in the midst of the pre-holiday rush (let alone on a Sunday)? Well, first, because I’m excited about it and wanted to get it to you as soon as possible. But also: I know that many listeners are being pestered by their own children to get them tech for the holidays (think smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, Roblox gift certificates, AI toys, etc) and . . . I am hoping to convince you not to! (PA Unplugged put together a great screen-free gift guide, which you can check out here.)

I encourage you to listen to the conversation this week — perhaps while doing some holiday prep — and then spread the word to other families in your community—and encourage them to get their kids screen-free holiday gifts, too.

After all, the best gift we can give our kids isn’t a smartphone; it’s the gift of having an actual childhood.

To scrolling less, living more, and spreading real life joy, skills, and fun—

Catherine Price

Share

Leave a comment

Want to hear more from Jean Twenge?

Subscribe to her own Substack newsletter, Generation Tech:

Generation Tech

Psychologist and author Jean M. Twenge shares the latest research on teens & social media, generational differences, and trends in mental health -- plus tips for finding a better balance with technology.

By Jean M. Twenge

Jean Twenge’s 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High Tech World

Note: This list is just a tease; it is not meant as a substitute for buying and reading the book!

Rule #1: You’re in charge

Rule #2: No electronic devices in the bedroom overnight

Rule #3: No social media until age 16—or later

Rule #4: First phones should be basic phones

Rule #5: Give the first smartphone with the driver’s license

Rule #6: Use parental controls

Rule #7: Create no-phone zones

Rule #8: Give your kids real-world freedom

Rule #9: Beware the laptop—and the gaming console, and the tablet, and . . .

Rule #10: Advocate for no phones during the school day.

And don’t forget!

The Amazing Generation, my new book for kids (coauthored with The Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt) comes out December 30th. I just received my own copy and it looks great (a huge shoutout to Cynthia Yuan Cheng for creating art that brings the book to life). I truly can’t wait for you all to check it out!

In the meantime, you can learn more and preorder it (and get a free preview) at AmazingGeneration.com. Regardless of whether you have kids of your own, I would love your help spreading the word within your own communities, so that we can get the book and its message to as many kids as possible. As the mother of a 10-year-old, that’d certainly be the best holiday gift you could give me!

Preorder the Book

Today, on the most playful of holidays, I’m thrilled to share with you a recent conversation I had with designer (and play expert) Cas Holman about her new book, Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativity, co-authored with Lydia Denworth.

Get Playful!

Cas is the founder and chief designer of the toy company Heroes Will Rise and a former professor of Industrial Design at RISD. She travels the globe speaking about playful learning, the design process, and the value of play in all aspects of life, and she works with companies such as Nike, LEGO Foundation, Disney Imagineering, and art museums around the world. Some of her designs include toys like Rigamajig and Geemo, as well as play experiences at the High Line in NYC and the Liberty Science Center, and you may have seen her and her work featured on the Netflix show Abstract, in an episode called (appropriately enough) The Art of Play.

Put this together and longtime readers of this newsletter will not be surprised at all to find out that when Cas and her team reached out to me a couple months ago to ask if I’d check out an early copy of Playful, I enthusiastically agreed. I loved it so much that, in addition to contributing a blurb, I immediately asked if Cas might be interested in having a conversation for my How to Feel Alive podcast about her book and—more specifically—why she thinks play is essential for grown-ups, and how we can have more of it.

Here is that conversation!

My Halloween Takeaways:

I think it’s a perfect conversation to listen to today in particular, given that it’s Halloween. But for those of you who don’t have time to do so, here are three of the things that I’m personally carrying with me as I get ready for tonight.

1. Free Play

When she talks about the importance of being playful, Cas is referring to what’s known as free play: a set of behaviors that are “freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated.” Translation: it’s when you do stuff for fun, without any predefined structure, and purely because you want to do it (not because someone is telling you to). This is how kids naturally play and learn — but it’s something that is very unfamiliar to most adults, in part because things like organized sports and grades and performance reviews and, let’s be honest, parenting have chased it out of us. (Think about it: when’s the last time that you did something purely for fun?)

It’s making me wonder how much more I’d enjoy tonight if I changed my own attitude. Right now, I’m approaching it with a little bit of dread and a fair amount of self-judgment: I “have” to take my kid trick-or-treating and if I don’t “make it fun” for her (not exactly sure why she’d need extra help from me on that front given that this is her once-a-year opportunity to accumulate pounds of free candy) then I have somehow “failed.”

What if instead I took Cas up on her three pieces of advice on how to make life more playful — namely:

2. Embrace possibility, release judgment, and reframe success

Embracing possibility means noticing the opportunities for playfulness that exist around us all the time. As she puts it, “The way you take your kids to school can be playful. The way you fold your laundry can be playful. The way you conduct a meeting can be playful.” It’s really just about our attitudes. And I’m willing to bet that if I come at trick-or-treating with a playful, “let’s go with the flow and see what happens” attitude instead of thinking “this has to be perfect or I have failed as a parent,” it’s going to be more fun for all of us. In other words, it’ll be better if I adopt the second part of Cas’s advice, which is to . . .

Release judgment. Releasing judgment is often the biggest obstacle for adults because, well, we’re perfectionistic control freaks. But why are we so hard on ourselves? As Cas writes, “Who cares if you’re not great, or even good, at something if you enjoy the experience?”

I’m trying to embrace that attitude for myself more often in general, but it’s particularly applicable tonight: Like many people, I have a vision of what a “good” parent (or, more specifically, mother) does with her kid to celebrate Halloween. For example: make a handmade costume. Bake cookies with ghosts on them. Coat your banisters and picture frames in fake spiderwebs. Do something with pumpkin seeds. Then, if I/we don’t do these things (I have not), we feel that we have failed. But what if we stopped doing that, and instead tried to . . .

Reframe success. Is “success” defined as making yourself (and, likely, your child) miserable by forcing them to learn how to pipe icing onto cookies under the guise of “making memories together”? Or could “success” be redefined as having a relaxed, fun, silly evening with your kid? This Halloween, I’m choosing to go for the latter. (As a side note, this means that sometime within the next five hours, I’m going to have long, black sparkly press-on nails applied to my fingers by a 10-year-old—wish me luck!)

Play Connects Us

The last thing I’m taking with me tonight from Cas’s book is that play connects us — and Halloween is a perfect night to witness this in action.

There is, of course, the playfulness we experience with kids when we help them dress up in costumes. But on Halloween, I’m routinely struck by how playfulness connects adults. In my neighborhood in Philadelphia, adults of all ages—regardless of whether they have kids—come out of their homes and sit on their stoops. Sure, ostensibly they’re out there to give out candy and compliment people on their costumes, but there’s something much deeper and more important going on: the building of community. People laugh with strangers. Neighbors who rarely see each other chat and share food and drinks. Streets that are usually quiet burst with life. With Halloween as the backdrop (and the excuse), adults come out and play.

To me, that’s the most beautiful and important aspect of play: its ability to erase differences and bring people together.

It’s something we need more than ever. That’s why tonight, I encourage you to go out of your home—even if you don’t have kids—and actively look for evidence of this happening. Notice the friendly greetings, the smiles between strangers, the silly decorations, the playful conversations, the glimmers of connection and community. And then ask yourself: what might happen if we were able to hold onto this spirit beyond Halloween?

Because here’s the thing: we can.

To scrolling less, living more, and (re)learning how to play —

Catherine Price

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share

MORE ABOUT CAS:

• Get the book

• Learn more about Cas’s work

• Learn about Cas’s inventions, Rigamajig and Geemo

• Watch Cas’s episode of Abstract: The Art of Play on Netflix!

• Follow Cas on Instagram: @casholman

• Join her on LinkedIn

PS: I have a new book coming out on Dec 30, co-authored with Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt, that’s written specifically for 9-12 year-olds. It’s called The Amazing Generation, and its goal is to convince kids and tweens to decide for themselves not to allow their lives to be dominated by screens. It’s available for preorder now—and I’d love your help spreading the word!

Preorder Now!

A mid-summer greeting: after months of intense work, Jon Haidt and I are finished with the manuscript for our upcoming book (The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a World Filled With Screens) and I am GOING ON VACATION.

I’ve got my Brick,* I’ve turned on an email auto-responder, and I’m out of the office (or, rather, I’m away from my dining room table, which is where I’ve been doing most of my work for past few weeks). But before I truly check out, I want to share an interview with you with a friend and colleague of mine (and fellow author and Substacker!), .

Katherine and I first met several years ago when she asked me to blurb her book, Childhood Unplugged, and—after quickly falling in love with the book—I realized that we share more than just a first name: She and her husband are committed to raising their kids (they have three sons) with an abundance of real-world experiences and opportunities for free play—and a minimum of screens.

Sometime last fall Katherine joined me for a conversation about phone time, play time, technology, boredom, and hamsters (yes, hamsters) and I’m thrilled to finally be sharing it with you.

I highly recommend checking out Katherine’s book and subscribing to her Substack, The Analog Family—which has thoughtful essays and practical advice for everyone, not just parents.

So take a listen (maybe on your own vacation!)—and I’ll include some practical takeaways from our conversation below. . . .

Get the Book

And here’s Katherine’s excellent Substack:

The Analog Family

How can we be better parents in a digital era? Smart guidance on how to fight tech takeover, embrace independence, tolerate boredom, and navigate FOMO, from the author of Childhood Unplugged

By Katherine Johnson Martinko

To scrolling less, living more, and unplugging for ourselves once in a while,

Catherine

PS: If you’re curious about the Brick (which I wrote about in more detail in this post), use SCREENLIFEBALANCE10 to get 10% off. It lets you turn your smartphone into a “dumb” phone on command, and it has saved me from myself more times than I can count.

Share

Leave a comment

Pro Tips and Insights from Katherine Martinko:

• If you want to reduce conflict around screen time—and help your kids feel less left out if they don’t have smartphones and devices—make your own home a more fun place to spend time in. Katherine and her husband have stocked their (rural Canadian) yard with a used trampoline, a slack line, pogo sticks and more. (Craigslist or your neighborhood listserv or Buy Nothing Facebook group can be great sources of used equipment.) Other ideas: give your kids a board game budget (or set them loose in a thrift store) and if you have the space, allow them to turn an area of the basement, attic, or yard into their own hangout spot. The more fun your home is—and the more independence your kids have there—the less time they’ll want to spend on screens (and the more their friends will want to come over!).

• She has a great equation that sums this up:  Kids - Digital Media + Independence = Creative Free Play. Take away digital distractions, allow boredom to enter, give kids some independence (and supplies), and before long, you’ve got creative free play.

• She and her husband don’t have a television, and the kids don’t have smartphones or tablets. Instead, they have a family desktop computer that they keep in a common area of the house, which their sons use to look stuff up and group text with their friends. (As a side note, this is a common workaround that I’ve heard from people whose kids don’t have smartphones or tablets, but who want to be able to message their friends.) Her boys borrow her or her husband’s phone to make calls, and they watch movies on the family laptop.

• They’ve told their oldest son that he can have a smartphone when he turns 16 (their logic being that if you’re not old enough to drive a car, you’re not old enough to own a smartphone)—but if he decides to get one, he will have to buy it and pay for it himself. (This makes so much sense to me!) They also don’t plan to let their sons open social media accounts till they’re at least 18.

• She encourages uptight parents like me to “embrace the mess and the chaos” around the house that comes with kids. Why? Because in her words, “they need to see  the detritus of their play left all around the house because it's gonna spark their creativity again the next time they see it.”

• She encourages parents to help their kids (especially young ones) create screen-free “survival kits” for themselves when they know they’re going to be going on a long plane or car ride — for example, craft supplies, markers and paper, and books. My own husband and I have done this ourselves since our daughter was a baby — we called it our “go bag” — and it’s a tradition we’ve kept up to this day. (My daughter is currently sitting next to me on the plane, trying to crochet . . . and rebuffing all offers of help.)

• Lastly, and I don’t even know if I should include this lest it come back to (literally) bite me: Katherine is also a hamster evangelist (hamstevangelist?). She and her husband got one for her boys and referred to it as “the best $25 [she’d] ever spent” (and those are Canadian dollars!). I tried to get her to stop talking about hamsters (because my own daughter is pushing hard) but she refused and just kept telling me about how much creativity and fun their hamsters had brought them. And you know what? I started thinking about my own daughter and how much she can build using a paper towel roll, even without a live hamster to enjoy it, and well, there may be a hamster in my own future. Maybe. Dammit, Katherine.

As most of you know, I’m in the midst of hosting a February Phone Breakup Challenge, which is a chance for readers to go through the 30-day plan from my book, How to Break Up With Your Phone, with other people. This week of the breakup is all about how we can rebuild our phone-atrophied attention spans, and I thought Dan would be the perfect guest for my first-ever Substack live.

Turns out I was right! I had a great time talking with Dan about phone-induced anxiety, our atrophied attention spans, and how mindfulness and meditation can help with both. (We also talked about what mindfulness and meditation actually are.)

We then did a 5-minute live meditation together (it starts around minute 20), which was a wonderful, grounding break in my own day—and which I hope gave some of you a firsthand taste of what mindfulness meditation is all about. (Pro tip: if you notice that you’re getting distracted, you’re suceeding.)

Check out the preview above to hear the first part of our conversation, and become a paid subscriber to hear the full conversation and do the meditation with us. (By becoming a paid subscriber, you’ll also get access to my phone breakup support group chat here on substack, which is going strong and has become a highlight of my own day.)

Subscribe now

Check out Dan’s Substack

Also, as a reminder, Dan hosts regular live meditations over on his own Substack (and shares special insights from his podcast, 10% Happier) — so if you haven’t already, I encourage you to head on over and become a subscriber.

Dan Harris

Self-help for smart people.

To scrolling less, living more, and creating moments of calm amidst the chaos,

Catherine Price

PS: A reminder for those of you following along with the February Phone Breakup Challenge: this Friday is the “trial separation,” an opportunity to experiment with taking up to a full 24-hour break from your phone. Most people are terrified when they hear about it . . . but then report back that it was one of their favorite parts of the entire breakup challenge.

Paid subscribers: I’ve put together some tips to help you prepare . . .

Read more

Today’s newsletter is a quick reminder that Monday is the official start of the February phone breakup challenge—your chance to go through the 30-day phone breakup plan in How to Break Up With Your Phone with other people.

As a reminder, “breaking up” with your phone doesn’t mean dumping it completely (unless you want to!). It means creating better boundaries with your smartphone and a relationship with technology that feels healthy. I don’t know about all of you, but given the chaos of the world right now, this is something I personally really need to work on, too.

The challenge will officially begin on Monday, February 3rd and will culminate in an invitation to join the “How to Feel Alive” community in participating in the Global Day of Unplugging, which is March 7-8. The goal is to end the challenge with a new relationship with your phone that feels good.

How do I participate?

First, get a copy of the revised edition of How to Break Up With Your Phone, which will be officially released next Tuesday, Feb 4th— it contains the 30-day plan that we will be following. (You can pre-order the print and audiobook now; the ebook will be released on February 4th.)

Get the Book

Next, choose your subscription level:

• All subscribers (paid and free) will receive a substack newsletter from me each Monday featuring high-level advice and suggestions based on that week of the book’s 30-day plan.

• Paid subscribers will have access to a private “phone breakup support group chat” on Substack where they can interact with each other (and me!), provide accountability, ask questions, and share experiences, resources and advice.

Subscribe now

Invite People to Join You

Lastly, I recommend recruiting a few friends or family members to join you (phone breakups are always more fun and more effective with other people). Simply share this newsletter and tell them to subscribe and order a copy of the book.

Share

Get 15% off a group subscription

Give a gift subscription

I’m in! How do I join the chat?

I just posted our first pre-game prompt, with instructions for what to do before we officially begin on Monday. You can hop in any time (and I’ll be back myself next week!):

NOTE: Substack’s Chat is separate from the comments section below each post. It is a different space where we can post about our experiences, share resources, ask each other questions, and give each other support. It is exclusively for paying “How to Feel Alive” members.

More questions? Check out the FAQ.

For more instructions on how to use Substack’s chat feature—and for general questions about the challenge—please check out my FAQ post, which has detailed instructions for how to participate via both desktop (recommended, given our goal!) or the mobile app.

Thanks in advance for your patience as I figure this all out—this is an experiment for me, too!

To scrolling less and living more—and creating better boundaries with our phones together.

Catherine Price

My first experience with Yondr was back in 2019, when I was invited to be a speaker at an off-site conference for a financial company that was using Yondr pouches to create a phone-free space for the attendees. At the beginning of each session, we were asked to put our phones into small, lockable pouches—and to keep them there for the duration of the session. As you can imagine, I loved this idea, but I remember watching grown men (the conference was mostly men) getting extremely grumpy about it.

“I’m a grown adult,” I remember one man saying. “I don’t have to be forced to put away my phone.”

The same man then spent the entire session — as did many other attendees — with the phone pouch clutched in his hand in the same way that a child holds on to a security blankie, unable to physically separate himself from his device even though, technically speaking, he couldn’t use it. I remember thinking: someone should get that guy a a teddy bear.

Fast forward to today

Yondr pouches are everywhere. Comedians and musicians such as Dave Chapelle and Alicia Keys use them to protect their IP and create a more magical experience for their fans. And, more recently, there has been an explosion—the founder of Yondr, Graham Dugoni, called it a “sea change”— in the number of schools that are using Yondr pouches to help them go phone-free, thanks in large part to Jon Haidt’s internationally bestselling book, The Anxious Generation. (I’m a collaborator on Jon’s team, which has given me a global view of just how quickly the shift to phone-free schools is happening—and it is truly inspiring.)

I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of Yondr pouches and what the need for their existence says about where we are as a society—and how much the world has changed since the introduction of the first smartphone in 2007. So I was excited when, last spring, I had the opportunity to meet the founder of Yondr, Graham Dugoni, in person when he was visiting New York.

Our conversation got pretty existential pretty quickly, and it became clear to me that Graham, who founded Yondr in 2014, thinks about technology and its impact on human existence in a way that’s much deeper than the grumpy guy at the conference might have expected. So I was thrilled when Graham agreed to join me on the How to Feel Alive podcast. Because that’s what he and I ultimately ended up talking about: how to feel alive.

I loved the entire conversation, but I particularly enjoyed Graham’s description of the feedback he and his team have gathered from schools that have gone phone-free.

And I particularly enjoyed the second half of our conversation, where we went beyond the basics of what Yondr pouches are and how they work, and talked about the magical experiences that can happen when people are fully present with each other, and why we both feel that there is a need for society to create phone-free spaces for everyone, not just kids.

You can listen to the whole episode above (or on your favorite podcast platform!) but I’ve included clips of some of my favorite parts below. I hope you find it as thought-provoking and inspiring as I did.

What is a Yondr pouch?

What Happens When Schools Go Phone-Free?

I think most of us would intuitively guess that if you take phones out of classrooms, students will be less distracted and teachers will have more time to, you know, teach. But when schools go phone-free from bell to bell (i.e. during lunch and recess, too), the effects can be even more powerful—and in ways you wouldn’t necessarily predict.

The more I think about the concept of phone-free schools, the more excited I get — because if you get into a routine of putting your phone away during the school day, it sets the stage for healthier tech habits for the rest of your life. Imagine what might happen when these “phone-free natives” (to adapt the current terminology of “digital natives”) get into the work force: they’ll have had years’ worth of experience putting their phones away when they’re trying to be present or to get work done. Maybe they’ll teach us how to have better habits and etiquette around our devices!

Why do we need phone-free spaces to begin with?

I was very interested in learning more about what inspired Graham to found Yondr back in 2014, at a time in which most people—myself included—had not yet begun to think about how smartphones, social media, and other mobile devices and technologies were impacting our experience of our lives. (As context, remember that the first iPhone was only introduced in 2007, Instagram was founded in 2011, and TikTok wasn’t even available in the United States till 2016.)

He made the case that, as a society, we should be carving out phone-free spaces (for kids and adults) where we can experience things in a “primary” way—a similar concept, in a way, as putting aside public land as National Parks. In his view, living in a world where, at any moment, someone could record you and post the video online has a “totally neutralizing effect on people’s ability to express themselves” because, as he put it, “there’s no such thing as intimacy without privacy.”

Optimism for the Future

It can be easy to feel like it’s futile to resist — or even question — the continued infiltration of technology into our lives, especially as AI becomes more pervasive (and persuasive). But when I asked Graham if he had any final thoughts to share, he ended on a note of true optimism about where things currently stand, and how the conversation around technology and the human experience has changed over the past ten years. It left me feeling optimistic, both for my own generation—and for my daughter’s. We do have the ability to course correct, and collective action can be easier than we think.

Go on and listen already.

The conversation left me with so many thoughts and insights that I realized I couldn’t put them all in one post, lest I get diverted directly into your spam folder. (Not that spam filters care about email length, but I just fear I’ll get punished in some way for sending you more than a “5-minute read.”)

My point being: get ready for a follow-up post about some of my favorite parts of this conversation. Also, as a thank you to my paid subscribers, I made a video clip of the part of our conversation where I asked Graham about his own tech habits — which I found thought-provoking and inspiring, and suspect you will as well (even if you’re not someone who’s going to go back to a full-on flip phone). So look for that in a separate email if you’re a current paid subscriber, or in your welcome email if you become one.

Subscribe now

And now I’m off to attempt to put my money where my mouth is by shutting this computer, putting my phone into my bag, and spending a few hours being present in the physical world. (Feel free to join me!)

To scrolling less, living more, and taking a break from being connected every now and then,

Catherine

Leave a comment

Share

After years of writing and talking about delight (and sharing delights with you all in our group delight chat), I had the delight and honor of speaking with the author of The Book of Delights, himself, Ross Gay.

For anyone not familiar with Ross and his work, he’s a poet, essayist, teacher, and all around wonderful human being who is the bestselling author of books including The Book of Delights, The Book of (More) Delights, Inciting Joy, Be Holding, and The Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude. (If you’d like to buy them, please do so via that link, which will take you to his website; I’m quite sure Ross would prefer that we not get them through Amazon!)

I read The Book of Delights (for which Ross wrote an essay about something that delighted him every day for a year) during the first year of the pandemic, and it truly changed my life. Among many other things, it inspired me and my family to start a practice of noticing and sharing delights. For example, we have a “Delight Jar” on our dining room table (into which we drop slips of paper with daily delights), and in a meta-delight, my daughter, who is now nine, routinely points out her own delights to me (recent examples include a bright pink house, and a bumper sticker indicating how much someone loved their golden retriever). I was truly honored to get the chance to talk about delight with Ross himself.

One of the many things I loved about our conversation was its pace. I have a tendency to talk a mile a minute and often have a hard time leaving room for silence. Ross, on the other hand, has a much less hurried cadence. He took the time to actually think about everything I asked him and to reflect on his answers in a way that made me feel like we were exploring words and concepts together—which not only was deeply enjoyable, but struck me as remarkable, because I’m sure Ross has given interviews about delight hundreds of times by now, and could easily have given me pat responses. I found myself responding to his pace by slowing down myself, and thinking about the concepts we were discussing — delight, love, connection — as if for the first time. It felt good. And it inspired me to try to hurry less, both in my speech and in my life.

(Note: as anyone who’s spoken to me recently can attest, I’m failing. But a girl can have dreams.)

I also loved Ross’s definition of “delight.” It’s a word I often have trouble pinning down (it seems like one of those things where “you know it when you feel it”). But Ross proposed the idea that delight is, at least in part, the “pleasurable evidence of connection” (and, also, the pleasurable evidence of life and love).

I love that—because I think it’s true. Whether our delights are the result of sensory beauty (flowers in a window box, the morning light cutting across my kitchen floor, the taste of a perfectly ripe June strawberry), absurdity (the sight of a man playing a trumpet while riding a unicycle down one of Philadelphia’s busiest thoroughfares), or shared experiences (public high-fives between strangers, laughing together in a darkened movie theater), when we notice something that delights us, isn’t it usually a reminder that we are connected, to other humans, to other living creatures, and to life itself? And—going back to the theme of this newsletter itself—isn’t our ability to notice and experience delight therefore a reminder that we are alive? (And isn’t the fact of our alive-ness pleasuable evidence of our capacity to give and receive love?)

Subscribe now

I don’t know about your mental state at the moment, but given everything going on in the world right now, domestically and abroad, it seems urgent that we actively remind ourselves of the things that connect us, instead of endlessly focusing on what drives us apart. And I believe that if we open ourselves to receiving delight, we will be inspired to create more delights, to provide other people and creatures with pleasurable evidence of connection, life and love. It’s a positive cycle that, on a grand scale, could truly make a difference.

As just one example of how my conversation with Ross affected my own attitude toward hardships, at some point during the conversation, an alarm went off on my insulin pump (I have type 1 diabetes), and I apologized for the interruption. (You might be able to hear it in the background in the recording.) Instead of just saying, “That’s okay,” or “Don’t worry,” Ross’s response was to point out that my pump itself was “a miracle.”

I’d never thought of it in that way. (I usually think of my pump—which is a small machine that delivers insulin to me under my skin, and which I have to keep connected to me at all times—as an essential annoyance.) But as I reflected on it, I realized he was right: it is a miracle. Perhaps not a delight, per se, but worthy of my awe and gratitude nonetheless: were it not for this machine or, more specifically, the insulin it contains, I would have died when I was 22 years old.

I should also note that I teared up multiple times during this conversation.

I could go on, but I want you to listen for yourself. Choose an unhurried time—or a time when you would like to be unhurried—and enjoy.

If it inspires you to notice delights of your own, I’d love to hear them, either in the comments or in our group delight chat).

Also, Ross brought up a number of other authors and books he loves, which I’m including links to below.

To scrolling less, living more, and recognizing and honoring delight,

Catherine Price

Leave a comment

Share

Resources:

Ross Gay’s (lovely) website

His books, which include but are not limited to: The Book of Delights, The Book of (More) Delights, Inciting Joy, Be Holding, and The Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude

Books Ross mentioned that he thinks we should check out:

Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just

Bernadette Mayer, Midwinter Day

Lewis Hyde: The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Ross describes her as “one of the most beautiful articulators of gratitude.”

The Fig Tree:

In one of his poetry collections, The Book of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross mentions a fig tree growing on the corner of 9th and Christian street in Philadelphia. I am at the corner of 9th and Christian A LOT because it’s close to the studio where I take music classes, and I have been searching for this fig tree for years. Ross clarified that it’s actually at the corner of Christian and S. Hutchinson Street, and dear reader, I think I have found it. Add it to my list of delights for the day!

For a video of the talk — plus a link to the slide deck and a ton of additional resources — please see this post.

Feel free to share these materials with anyone you think might find them useful. And if you’re to support this work by becoming a paid subscriber, I would greatly appreciate it — I feel passionately about this issue, but at the moment my work in this area is a labor of love.

Share

Subscribe now

To scrolling less, living more, and being the changemakers our children need,

Catherine Price

Leave a comment

(And are you, like me, sitting on a couch surrounded by/on top of not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but SIX stuffed dogs right now, wondering if perhaps this abundance of stuffed animals—and the clutter that surrounds you and them—might have something to do with your inability to focus? No? Oh well. Had to ask.)

ANYWAY. Today I’m pleased to bring you a new episode of the “How to Feel Alive” podcast: a conversation between me and Devin McNulty, who writes the Substack newsletter and is Funmentum Labs’ co-founder and “brain-tender-in-chief.”

You may remember Devin from our previous conversations and the “funterventions” that we’ve led together. And the especially focused among you may remember that a month or so ago, we put out a call to Fun Squad members asking them to submit work challenges for Devin and me to brainstorm solutions for, using the power of fun. (For a refresher on what the heck I’m talking about, click here.)

Well, we did it! We brainstormed! In today’s episode, we tackled challenges from three readers:

-Someone who works at a nonprofit and is struggling getting her employees and co-workers to meet deadlines (which touches on the broader question: how do you motivate people without nagging them?)

-Someone who is a stay-at-home mom with multiple kids (and a very challenging collection of family dietary preferences), who is trying to figure out if there is any way to possibly make cooking feel more fun (how can you make your own daily drudgery feel more tolerable?)

-Someone who used to have a boss who talked about the importance of fun at work — but in fact made work the opposite of fun

Share

Do you have a question or a problem? Tell us!

As a reminder, all members of the Fun Squad (my term for my paid subscribers) are welcome to ask us questions in this forum, and we will do our best to personally answer them in a future episode.

Join the Fun Squad

I’ll be back next week with a new podcast episode and post.

To scrolling less and living more — at home, at work and beyond,

Catherine

PS: Does anyone out there know a place that accepts gently used stuffed animals? Please tell me in the comments. This situation is becoming out of control.

Leave a comment

Share

The goal of the podcast is to have interesting and fun conversations with interesting and fun people about how to feel more alive (and experience more joy, fun, and delight) in all areas of life. And so I’m thrilled to introduce you to my first guest, Charles Duhigg. Charles is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of books including The Power of Habit, Smarter, Faster, Better, and, most recently, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. Charles also has his own Substack newsletter: , in which he provides science-backed answers to some of life’s common questions (e.g. how do I get my kids to actually talk to me?). I recommend subscribing.

Two notes before we begin: first, to clarify, I am not suggesting that you avoid small talk with Charles Duhigg. Rather, Charles helped me better understand how to avoid small talk and have better conversations. I suppose I could have called this post, “Listen to Charles Duhigg teach us how to avoid small talk and have better conversations,” but that was much wordier and amused me less.

Second, in the podcast itself, I refer to Charles’ second book as Stronger, Faster, Better. This is not actually the title of his book; it’s a jumbled version of a lyric from a Kanye West song. Apologies to Charles, and also apologies to you, for potentially getting that song stuck in your head.

His advice works!

I just had a chance to put Charles’ advice into action: I got my yearly (yes, yearly) haircut today, and while I always enjoy talking to my hair stylist, I decided to try something new. I noticed that he was wearing a beaded necklace and two beaded bracelets, which he hadn’t been wearing last April (the last time I got a haircut). So once he’d finished washing my hair and brought me back to his station, I asked, with no segue, “So, what’s with the beads?” (Grace is not necessarily my forté.)

Thankfully, he took this in stride, and told me about an Italian vacation (where he got one of the bracelets). This led to a conversation about Italy, which led to a conversation about European geography, which led to an interesting conversation about his fascination with the history of World War II, which led to him sharing an story about a medic in Normandy that gave us both goose bumps. By the end of my haircut, I felt like we both had gotten to know each other better than we have over the ten years or so that I’ve been going to him, and we parted ways with a hug. Nothing felt awkward or small-talky about it; it was nourishing, enlivening, and delightful. Which leads me to . . .

Your Assignment (Should You Choose to Accept It):

Try out Charles’ advice this week and tell us about it in the comments.

Leave a comment

Pro tip from his book: if you’re at a loss as to what to ask, pretend that you’re talking to a close friend. What would you ask that person? Try it out on a stranger or acquaintance and see how it changes the conversation. And don’t be afraid to get deep quickly—not only is that how you truly connect with someone, but it’s often much less awkward than you’d think (and certainly less awkward than the usual small talk!).

Also: instead of asking a purely fact-based question (e.g. “Where did you go to high school?”), ask how people feel about it. (For example, once someone has told you where they went to school, follow up by asking them “What was high school like for you?”)

Coming up soon:

As longtime subscribers know, this newsletter is eclectic—because there are a lot of things I’m interested in, and lots of contexts in which we could stand to feel more alive. (For example: at work, in our leisure time, in our relationships, as individuals, and as parents.) So here’s a preview of some of the newsletters coming up:

• I’ll be doing a podcast episode with Ross Gay (author of The Book of Delights and inspiration for our group delight chat!)

• I’ve got an episode coming up with Devin McNulty, the self-described “head of braintending” at Funmentum Labs (←click on that link to subscribe to his Substack) to troubleshoot challenges sent to us by readers about how to harness the power of fun at work. (To learn more about our collaboration, check out this post — and if you’d like to submit a challenge for us, become a Fun Squad member and post it to this thread)

• I’ll be diving further into the subject of kids and phones, including sharing notes with you from a conversation I had with , author of the “Be ScreenStrong” Substack, which is all about navigating kids and screens

• I’ll be sharing some of my favorite products and platforms that can help you create better boundaries with your own phone

• I’ll be telling you about my neighbor, Norma and what she has inadvertently taught me about the value—and peril—of cultivating acquaintances and loose ties (warning: Norma is definitely NSFW)

  ---

So check out the podcast, tell me about your conversational experiences, and please share it with anyone whom you think might find it interesting. Also, huge thanks to all of you who have become paid subscribers/Fun Squad members—I’m a full-time freelancer (i.e. totally self-employed) and truly do appreciate your support of my work.

To scrolling less, living more, and having better conversations!

Catherine Price

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share

PS: Are you struggling with a big decision? Check out my friend Abby Davisson’s decision-making webinar and course:

In addition to being the co-author of Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions—and my colleague and friend—Abby’s also a Fortune 200 leader-turned-entrepreneur, and holistic decision-making expert. She’s about to launch something I think some of you may find really useful.

Abby is teaching a live, virtual, cohort-based course that launches April 26 called Make Big Life Decisions with More Ease and Less Angst.

The course will cover topics including clarifying your values and priorities; communicating effectively with important stakeholders; and avoiding the stumbling blocks that lead to regret. As Abby herself describes it:

The course is for you if you're seeking evidence-based wisdom, structure, and support as you consider a choice that feels scary, daunting, and exciting (a career pivot, a move, investing in a relationship or leaving one, for example). Through short lessons, practical reflection exercises, personal stories, and interactive conversations, you'll break down a complex decision into manageable pieces. You'll walk away with a clear action plan customized to your specific situation and constraints, and you'll feel more empowered and confident as a result.

In addition to co-authoring Money and Love, Abby has applied its evidence-based framework to her own life to take big leaps (translation: she quit her job). More information on the course is here, or you can reach out directly to abby@abbydavisson.com to learn more. 

All How to Feel Alive readers can enter code ALIVE100 for $100 off the course price.

In addition, Abby has generously offered a free spot in her course to a How to Feel Alive subscriber who could benefit. To be entered into a drawing for the spot (an $800 value), simply apply using this link by 4/19 and mention "How to Feel Alive" in the question that asks "How did you hear about this course?" The winner will be notified by 4/22.

Those of you who have been with me for a while may remember that Devin and I teamed up last year to run a series of live workshops around the theme of fun at work. In those workshops, we did activities where we put strangers into breakout rooms (did I just trigger a stress reaction in you?) and asked them to do things such as brainstorming the absolute worst ideas they could come up with to solve a problem, or identifying a celebrity they admired (such as Oprah, or Mister Rogers), and brainstorming ways that this “celebrity idol” might solve the problem.

All of the exercises—which were really games (did that just make you even more nervous? I’m sorry!)—were geared toward getting people’s inner critics to be quiet, and helping them find new ways to tap into their creativity, both individually and as a group.

The results were astonishing: people who had come onto the Zoom call as total strangers returned from their breakout rooms with big smiles on their faces, and with lists of new, creative ideas that they never would have come up with via a normal brainstorming session. Even better, they dropped comments into the chat about how much fun they’d had—and we found out later that several of these strangers had felt so bonded with their randomly assigned partners that they had actually exchanged contact information and made a plan to touch base regularly in the future to brainstorm about each other’s work.

Not bad for a Zoom call!

Send Us Your Problems

This year, Devin and I are experimenting—one might even say playing—with a different approach. Instead of live workshops, we’re inviting members of the Fun Squad to share issues, challenges, or projects that they’re struggling with at work that they would like Devin’s help in solving. These could be specific challenges (for example, you might be tasked with organizing a work retreat and want ideas for how to make it more enjoyable and effective) or they might be more general challenges, such as how to create culture and community when everyone is working remotely.

Each month, Devin and I will choose one of these challenges, and then will have a conversation (occasionally with the person who requested help, if they’re up for it) about ways to possibly address or solve it. We’ll then share the resulting ideas and conversation with the entire community. In other words, you’ll be able to benefit from Devin’s insights even if you’re not part of the Fun Squad—though I hope you’ll consider joining us.

Submit a Challenge for Devin

Let’s get to work

And that’s it! Think about your challenges, share this post with others who might benefit, and let’s bring more fun into work.

To scrolling less and living more,

Catherine

It occurred to me earlier this week that there may be readers out there who feel completely out of touch with fun and who might not have any ideas for what they might be interested in doing or trying.

So imagine how delighted I was (yes, delighted) when I reached out to , whose work I have long admired (in fact, it hangs on my wall), asked if she might be interested in having a conversation with me about the 30-Day Drawing Habit (her January initiative, in which she created 30 days’ worth of drawing invitations/exercises for her Grown Ups Table), and she said yes.

We spoke today on the phone and, after both deciding that we were not “camera-ready” (apparently we’d been working so hard on our respective January projects that we hadn’t even changed out of pajamas — and mind you, our call was at 3:30pm), we decided to share an audio recording of our conversation instead.

You can learn more in her FAQs, and if this piques your curiosity AT ALL, you should definitely subscribe to Wendy’s Substack: DrawTogether with WendyMac.

To scrolling less and living more,

Catherine Price

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Last weekend, I found out that New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose had devoted a full ten minutes of his podcast, Hard Fork, to talking about delights. More specifically, Kevin told his co-host Casey that he had read the op-ed about delight that I wrote for the New York Times, and had decided to put a tech columnist spin on the idea by making his phone itself more delightful.

I know Kevin because a couple of years ago, I served as his “phone breakup coach” for a fantastic article he wrote titled “Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain.” (In fact, you may have read that article—it ended up going totally viral.) In a fun twist, it led to me and Kevin being invited to be on The Today Show together.

We’ve kept in occasional touch over the years, and I always have a lot of fun talking with him, so I decided to reach out to Kevin to see if he’d be up for chatting with me for this newsletter about his new, delightful phone—I was curious both about the technical details of what he did, and why he felt the need to make his phone more delightful in the first place.

Why Kevin Made His Phone Delightful

Kevin wanted to make his phone more delightful because he had realized that in its current state, his phone was basically a delivery device for horror and stress. Every time he checked it, he’d be presented with a terrible news story, or an anxiety-provoking email or text. And since, as a tech columnist, he checks his phone a lot, this meant that he was exposing himself to negativity multiple times an hour.

I write about this issue in How to Break Up With Your Phone using the analogy of a Pandora’s Box: every time you open your phone, you’re going to encounter a new emotional trigger, and once that emotion has gotten into your brain, you’re not going to be able to stuff it back into the phone. Unfortunately, most of these triggers are negative.

That’s why I recommend getting in the habit of asking yourself, before you check your phone, what your current emotional state is and how it’s likely to change if you look at your phone. For me personally, this is often an effective deterrent: I realize that I’m likely to feel worse after checking, and so I don’t check.

I also have taken steps to make my phone as emotionally neutral as possible. For example, I don’t have photos on my lock or home screens, because I don’t want to conflate looking at my phone (and seeing, say, a photo of my family) with actually spending time with those people in real life. In an attempt to reduce impulsive app checks, I also took all the apps off my home screen (I open apps by searching for them individually in the search bar, instead of tapping on their icon). My phone is basically a boring field of grey.

What Kevin Did

Kevin has done a version of this—for example, he has created a folder for himself of “red flag” apps that he knows are likely to be time-sucking, and has designed his home screen to primarily offer him apps that are either practical or that support a habit he’s trying to cultivate. (I think of this as turning your phone from a temptation to a tool.) But he’s taken my advice an intriguing step further: instead of designing his phone to have a neutral effect on his mood, he has designed it to spark delight.

Here’s how he explained his logic: if he had a room in his house that consistently made him sad, angry, stressed and depressed (let’s call it a Chamber of Horrors), he could decide to shut the door and never go into that room again—or he could redesign the room. (We decided to call this a “Den of Delight”—trademark pending.) When it comes to his phone, he’s decided to experiment with the latter.

How to Turn Your Phone into a Den of Delight

Kevin started by making a photo album on his phone of people and things from his life that spark delight. (When he and his co-host Casey talked about this on Hard Fork, they took a selfie of themselves in real time to add to Kevin’s delight album.) Then—and here’s where you know he’s a tech columnist—he adjusted his phone’s settings and created a widget so that whenever he looks at his lock or home screen, he’ll be presented with a randomly selected photo from this album. (Want to try this? Here are instructions for how to create your own photo widget.)

Kevin’s hope is that now, instead of bringing him down, glancing at his phone will brighten his mood. What’s more, the process of gathering new entries for his delight album might help him tune in more to delight in general—retraining his brain to focus on everyday joys and wonders instead of horrors. And what a wonderful outcome that would be!

So click the player above to listen to our conversation, and feel free to share your thoughts.

To scrolling less, living more, and finding more delight in all areas of our lives,

Catherine

Share

Leave a comment