There’s rest, and there’s “rest.” The former is when you’re not only committed to relaxing but also spending your recovery time doing actually restorative things. A walk without music. A long shower. Watching a whole movie without checking your phone. It’s rare, isn’t it? Perhaps a bit too rare, maybe?

I, too, spend way too much time “resting” the latter way: You’re not doing anything productive, but you’re still busy. Your brain is on. Your mind is racing. You’re speed-tapping through Youtube videos, trying to get smarter from a podcast while cooking, or incessantly checking the news for no reason. That’s not rest. It’s a different kind of exhaustion.

You can’t always rest when you want to, but you can cultivate a calm mind that’ll stay level even in difficult situations. In order to do that, however, you’ll need to actually rest when you truly have the chance.

Don’t waste your recovery time. Protect it as strongly as you fight for your productive hours. Don’t let busyness creep through your workday and into your much needed recuperation. When you rest, rest, and you shall return with seemingly infinite energy.

I just watched a 2.5-hour Q&A to figure out how CoolTrainerRyan amassed his vast, million-dollar Pokémon card collection. Of course, I already knew the answer.

Ryan talked a bit about how he got back into the game. He talked about his day job, how everything was cheaper a few years ago, and how grading companies turned around submitted cards a lot faster. But everything you need to know about “making it,” be it as a collector or anything else, you could learn from a single sentence: “I took that shit eleven times.”

“That shit” is the CPA exam, which verifies your ability to work as an accountant at the highest level — if you pass it, that is. The exam consists of four big sections, tested in four hours each, and you must pass them all within 18 months to get the certification. Ryan didn’t make it the first time around. Or the second time. Or the third. Then, he started studying. Four hours a day. Eight hours a day. Twelve hours a day.

Eleven times. That’s more than a week’s worth of pure exam-taking time — studying not included. Nor the emotional turmoil or physical fatigue. As soon as you know this one little fact about Ryan, you know it all. You can picture him refreshing the new eBay listings every ten seconds. You can imagine him driving a U-Haul halfway across the country to pick up a huge collection on the cheap. And you just know he worked like crazy to build up his collection.

If you really want it, get it. It’s only a matter of work and dedication, applied over a long enough period. And if you must retake the exam? Then you show up five, eight, eleven times — until you pass the test, make the deal, or hit 100,000 subscribers.

The next time might be the one that breaks the dam. Keep believing, and don’t quit too early.

April being April, we went from 24 degrees Celsius on the weekend to 2 degrees and snow this Thursday. You can only weather so many changes of the elements before one catches you off guard, and so by the time I got to my train, my shoes and socks were completely soaked.

After I arrived at WeWork, I took off my socks and hid them in a corner, hoping they’d dry by day’s end. But what to do in the meantime? My fabric sneakers were still wet too, but I couldn’t run around a co-working space barefoot either.

When I went to the toilet and looked at the paper towels, lightning struck: “I’m gonna make my own socks!” I wrapped some of them around my feet, and after some experimentation with how many layers I needed where, my paper socks were ready to go — and once again, so was I.

I ended up wearing my makeshift socks all day long, and, thankfully, when I went home at night, my socks were dry enough for me to put them back on. Mission accomplished! End result? Not bad.

For all our technology, prediction algorithms, and convenience at the push of a button, sometimes, the best days are those where you go back to the Stone Age. Where you’re facing a simple, foundational problem and come up with an equally simple but elegant solution. Start a fire. Fix a chair. Put together makeshift socks.

The plot twist may be benign, but the feedback it sends is real: Even in our world of highly specialized and complex everything, you can still make change. You can affect things. Transform them. And make the world better for it — even if, at first, it is only your own little one that benefits.

Remember the basics, and be proud of your makeshift socks.

At some point in Vikings, boat builder Floki leaves his hometown of Kattegat. His wife and daughter both have died, and so he surrenders himself to the sea. After weeks adrift, he ends up in Iceland, a desolate but beautiful place.

Having explored the island for a while, Floki finally begins to see his new mission: Tell his people about his discovery, and bring new settlers into this foreign land. He sails back, he manages to convince a few folk to join him, and together, through great peril and hardship, eventually, they reach Iceland.

But what is this? The land is barren. One can hardly farm. The temperatures are even colder than in Kattegat, and there’s almost no game one can hunt. What hellhole has Floki brought them to? Naturally, Floki’s followers are angry, and fights soon break out among them.

The whole idea of settling eventually fails in spectacular fashion, and not too long afterwards, Floki once again finds himself adrift at sea. One day, he will indeed discover a new home, but for now, the boat builder hasn’t built his last vessel just yet…

There’s a beautiful balance in Floki’s story. Sometimes, he knows exactly what he wants, and he runs right towards it. At other times, he is completely lost. Everything feels pointless, and so he does nothing on purpose in particular. And sometimes, Floki knows he is lost but refuses to accept it. At those times, he chases a random goal — mostly to chase something until a better target comes along.

Is Iceland really the best place for the vikings to settle? Probably not. But it’s a new, empty place they can settle. It might be worth a try…

When the settlers struggled to find their destination in their tiny boat, Floki could have tried to divert them to a different destination. He could have turned the boat around. But he didn’t. He kept laying out a beautiful — perhaps a bit too beautiful — vision of Iceland — because he knew that destination, any meaningful destination, really, might make the difference between his followers starving and pulling through.

Last year, I knew exactly what I was doing. I had a Trello board, milestones, and kept cranking away. Then, the plan stopped working, and while I adjusted accordingly — I stopped working on tactics that no longer showed effect — I’ve now been adrift for a few months. I can feel myself getting tired of that drift. I need something, anything, to sink my teeth into. And I’m starting to realize that, probably, any goal will do the trick.

Tune in to your inner compass. Find the right balance. When it’s time to meander, meander. When it’s time to be laser-focused, focus. And when it’s time to grasp for whatever rope will get you out of a slump, reach out and pull yourself up. Ahoy, sailor! May the winds be fair and the seas follow you wherever you go.

The EV revolution has a problem: Nobody wants to buy used electronic cars — at least in Germany. Dealers have been clamoring for a battery certification that will allow them to assuage their customers’ biggest fear: that given its previous usage, the battery won’t last much longer and will be expensive to replace.

When my dad told me about this phenomenon, I began to wonder: Is that actually true? I gave it a Google, and it turns out EV batteries last over 200,000 kilometers on average. That’s perfectly fine. You’d never buy a gas-powered car and expect it to have zero problems with that kind of mileage. The engine might last another 50,000 or 100,000 kilometers, but if it broke down, you wouldn’t be surprised.

But what about the cost? Are batteries more expensive than engines? According to Visual Capitalist, an EV’s battery costs between 15-30% of the car’s retail price. That’s a lot — but it’s also how much you might pay to replace your combustion engine. It all depends on the car, of course, but even a small engine in a $30,000 car can quickly rack up a $5,000 bill if in dire need of repair — around 15%.

Naturally, there are extreme examples of either case on either side, but by and large, it seems both the guaranteed lifetime range and relative engine replacement cost aren’t too far apart between EVs and internal-combustion cars. So what’s the deal? Why aren’t people buying? Because sometimes, perception trumps reality — and when it comes to EV powertrains, a simple everyday dynamic has had time to mess with our heads for decades.

How many internal-combustion engines do you use around your house? Zero. And how many batteries? Oh! Batteries are everywhere. In your TV remote. Your game console controller. Your music box. And guess what? Batteries run out all the time. We’re used to having to replace them. Unlike in our household, however, a car battery is not only much more expensive, we also have no clue how to actually fit it into our vehicle. It’s not something we should even worry about, but we’re used to worrying about it with our alarm clock, and so we do.

The most pernicious opponent for used-EV sales, however, might be the one other device most of us cherish as much as our cars: our phone. If you don’t charge your phone every night, you can’t use it. Electric cars are similar in that regard.

What’s more, however, with smartphones turning 20 soon, most people have now also experienced a common phenomenon: After a year or two or three, your smartphone’s battery starts to degrade. It’s an issue that’s improved in recent generations, but if you’ve had to replace three phones after three years each because they could no longer last until lunch — like me — that creates some serious battery-PTSD — and I think that’s one of the EV crisis’ driving factors (pun intended).

Whether it’s in sales, making friends, or getting a job: Sometimes, even when reality is on your side, perception won’t be, and that will make all the difference. Always look at situations from both angles, and if you find one is missing where the other should already do the convincing for you, work hard to align them — so that the show, just like your car, can keep rolling.

Even without virtual reality headsets, it’s already easy to get lost in the digital world. I can tell a real difference between days where my first act is to open a window, breathe in the smell of fresh grass, and hear the birds sing, and days when I go straight to my phone or computer.

20 minutes of scrolling crypto Twitter here, 15 minutes of reading the news there, and don’t get me started on Youtube. Every minute, 500 hours of new videos show up there. That’s three full weeks of new things for you to watch — without sleep — every 60 seconds! With that kind of infinite selection, could spend your entire life there, never get bored, and it wouldn’t even be an accomplishment.

In Japan, more than a million people spend their lives as “hikikomori.” Modern-day hermits, if you will. They don’t leave their houses. They don’t interact with society, except perhaps through a screen — and given the options of what you nowadays can do through a screen — which is everything — I can’t blame them entirely for their situation. It’s hard!

But when I spent too much time living digitally, the quality of my life deteriorates. And I don’t mean just the non-digital parts. I’m not as nice of a human being when all of that being happens online. For all the video calls and profile pictures, the web still separates us from other people, and the more time you spend in this isolated-yet-social modus operandi, the more that separation starts to show.

You’ll say things you wouldn’t say if you had just come back from a walk. You’ll reply to emails as if they go back to robots, not people. And you’ll feel lonely, no matter how many likes your posts get. The only way to remedy these effects? Keep a dose of reality at hand.

Start your days by unlocking your window, not your phone. Maintain your connection with the natural world from which you came, and you’ll also maintain your connection with us — regardless of whether you form it during a stroll through the park or a scroll through the app.

In preparation for a long meeting, someone who’s trying to get to know my business sent me a long questionnaire. It’s an 80-page document with hundreds of questions. Not all of them apply to me or Four Minute Books, and some of them repeat various times in slightly different phrasing.

It’s easy to open a document like this and think, “Oh god, homework. And lots of it.” But actually, a series of focused questions is usually a gift. A rare opportunity to reflect deeply about your work, life, or relationship with someone.

As I was scrolling through the document, thinking about the prompts, adding notes here and there, I caught myself plenty of times thinking: “Wow. That’s interesting. I never thought about it that way. Great question!”

Whether it’s a questionnaire, self-assessment test, or a thoughtful comment by a friend: Just because the timing of the prompt wasn’t perfect does not mean it’s not a good time to reflect. Without such unsolicited feedback, when will you ever? Life goes fast, and so do you. How easy for a year to pass without serious reflection and course correction!

The next time someone asks you to think about something, see it as a timely invitation instead of an untimely demand. Take a moment to breathe, reflect, and readjust your direction — because just like in school, the homework may seem like it’s only for the teacher, but in reality, it is — and always ways — for us.

When I sleep less than seven hours, there’s a good chance I might wake up with a massive headache. My nose will probably be blocked, and I’ll definitely spend the first 30 minutes of the day in a state of groggy defiance. It’s the worst, and I hate it. I wish I never had to do it again, but with me being human and life being life, that’s not very likely.

There is, however, one thing that tends to happen after short nights that makes the corners of my mouth twitch upwards ever so slightly: My hair comes out perfectly fine. I barely have to comb, let alone wash it. It just…works — and so, for all the huffing and puffing involved in catching an early-morning train, at least I save a solid five to ten minutes in getting ready.

Everything has a silver lining, and, unbelievable as it may sound, that “everything” includes the worst things in life. From petty annoyances to serious problems to life-threatening diagnoses, it all comes with a tiny sparkle across the horizon, the faintest of lights at the end of a long tunnel. Focus on that light. Don’t let the darkness get to you.

The sun always takes a good while to rise, but chances are, even when you slept too little, it’ll still show up.

The first two months of the year went by in a blur. I don’t remember much of what I’ve done. I can’t tell you to what places I’ve been, my amazing birthday trip being the one exception. I spent some time sick, much time working, and almost all of it looking at screens — but it all went by so quickly! How?

The answer is awareness. Or rather, a lack of it. The more I allow my brain to frantically plow through vast seas of information, the way it likes to do, the less present I am — and the faster time seems to go by. But when I take frequent breaks, sit and think before I act, and approach each task or activity with intention, I never feel in a rush. Yet, ironically, I get more done.

You can do the same work in four undistracted hours that you can do in eight while constantly multitasking, but you’ll feel much better after the former than after the latter. You’ll remember where your time went and why, and you’ll have actually experienced its passage. This is self-awareness the habit, the practice, the cognitive state. The more you master it, the less your brain will pull you inadvertently into the future.

We cannot fast-forward the clock, but awareness still determines the perceived speed at which we are going. You only have one life. Make sure you’re there to live it.

The recycling movement doesn’t need you picketing for its cause. It needs you to recycle your trash.

In the same vein, it’s nice to talk about supporting artists and rooting for the creator economy, but do you actually watch your friend’s Youtube channel? Do you turn off your ad-blocker when you do it? Do you buy your friend’s book on the first day it is released, or do you put it off until later, and then it never happens? Do you make time to visit your friend’s art exhibition? Do you skip asking for a free ticket?

Nobody’s perfect. We’ve all skimmed off the top here and there. We’re busy. Worried about our own problems. And yes, at times, just lazy. But when a beautiful piece of art lands in your lap sent right from within your circle, don’t ignore it. The occasional $10 spent on the causes of the people you know and love goes much further than any philosophical debate at a star-studded gala event.

Support art where you meet it and go to bed knowing that, just like in separating the plastic from the glass, you’ve done enough.