I’m an American author and writing teacher for both Harvard and Oxford’s online writing programs. I am also a mother of two who lived three years in a tiny backyard guest house with my family in an effort to focus more on what we love. Editing books is a practice I have honed over decades, and when my family was stuck in a living situation that felt unsustainable, the clearest way forward was for me to ask myself how I might edit our way out of it. It worked! In this book, I share the most valuable eight principles that we learned through the process.
I wrote
Edit Your Life: A Handbook for Living with Intention in a Messy World
A candid look at how we spend and how we feel about our spending. Vanderkam braids examples from her own life with deep research and statistics on the relationship between happiness and money. A memorable, practical read that I refer to often.
I love all of her books—she is definitely my continuing education for adulthood—but this one is probably my favorite.
How happy would you be if you had all the money in the world? The universal lament about money is that there is never enough. We spend endless hours obsessing over our budgets and investments, trying to figure out ways to stretch every dollar. We try to follow the advice of money gurus and financial planners, then kick ourselves whenever we spend too much or save too little. For all of the stress and effort we put into every choice, why are most of us unhappy about our finances?
According to Laura Vanderkam, the key is to change your perspective.…
A single read of this book saved me hours in the years that followed. Newport looks critically at how we bring technology into our lives and suggests that we hold a higher bar to which digital tools we allow into our days.
This book got me rethinking my balance of deep work (what only I can do, when at my best) and shallow work (needing less focus/expertise) and how my digital tools support or disrupt that balance.
This book is a gem! This book is a gem! Its common sense about organizing is sound and wonderfully useful.
It is humbly written, sweetly funny, and applicable to many areas of life. It is the book I reread whenever I am stressed out, the book whose principles have impacted how I teach, write, parent, and organize my home and my life.
The New York Times bestselling guide to putting things in order. Put America's #1 organizer to work for you.
Getting organized is a skill that anyone can learn, and there's no better teacher than America's organizing queen, Julie Morgenstern, as hundreds of thousands of readers have learned. Drawing on her years of experience as a professional organizer, Morgenstern outlines a simple organizing plan that starts with understanding your individual goals, natural habits, and psychological needs, so that you can work with your priorities and personality rather than against them. The basic steps-Analyze, Strategize, Attack-can be applied to any space or…
One that I give to anyone who is stuck in a pickle. Saunders’ book for young readers, illustrated in the oddball style of Lane Smith, tells of a girl named Capable who does her best and finds that it is still not good enough. So she makes an unthinkable change.
Reading this book to my children led to a eureka that we might change our own family life in a similarly unthinkable way.
A gapper is a bit of a 'burr' but it is a dangerous thing. When it attaches itself to the goats the goats become very unhappy and even stop giving milk. There is nothing gappers like more than goats and nothing goats hate more than gappers. When gappers get your goats it means trouble. In one small town gappers are a real pest and it takes the ingenious approach of Capable to find a soution - if a solution exists at all.
A powerful case for thinking deeply and clearly about what legacies we leave behind for those we love.
Leder suggests that an ethical will—unlike an ordinary will—be a summary of our life’s wisdom. Asking such questions as ‘What do you regret?’ and ‘When did you lead with your heart?’ Leder offers a wise and inspiring way to live a life of value that is a blessing for others to remember.
From the bestselling author of The Beauty of What Remains, a guide to writing a meaningful letter about your life.
Writing an ethical will, a document that includes stories and reflections about your past, is an ancient tradition. It can include joy and regrets, and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life. Beloved Rabbi Steve Leder has helped thousands of people to write their own ethical wills, and in this intimate book helps us write…
Grounded in my 20+ years’ experience editing books and teaching writing, this book takes eight versatile editing principles and shows how they can be easily applied to any life.
In the words of one of the reviewers, Elizabeth Filippouli, Edit Your Life is “a book of distilled wisdom and a life-transforming guide inviting readers to personalize what an ‘edited’ life means to them and what they need to let go.”
I’ve become passionate about telling parents how to raise happy, resilient, creative, confident, entrepreneurial children who are doing something that gives them joy. So many young people are unhappy; parents don’t understand how to help. They think their children should follow their path, but that no longer works for many. For the last 10 years, I’ve been speaking to parent groups; I was an Advisor to EQ Generation, an after-school program that gives children the skills to succeed; on the Advisory Board of MUSE School, preparing young people with passion-based learning; and on the Board of Spark the Journey, mentoring low-income high school students to achieve college and career success.
This book shakes longstanding assumptions of parenting.
Through 99 stories of people who are now changing the world, it shows how to raise creative, confident, resilient children who are filled with joy and purpose. Based on interviews with top entrepreneurs and their parents, it guides you to help your children identify their passion and figure out how they can spend their professional lives doing something they love.
Parents' well-intentioned efforts often boomerang. By ignoring their children’s skills and interests, parents can inadvertently create pressure and anxiety, thwarting their children's ability to excel and find happiness. Too often, following your heart…
Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams - 99 Stories from Families Who Did
Learn how successful entrepreneurs were raised! Could your children start a company that disrupts existing industries? Or a non-profit that helps people around the world? Or follow their passion as an artist or activist? And most important, lead a life of joy and purpose, to be happy and fulfilled? Margot Machol Bisnow, mother of two thriving entrepreneurs, reveals how to raise creative, confident, resilient, fearless kids who achieve their dreams, through 99 stories of families who did it.
Read stories from 70 families who raised true game changers. See family photos of these thriving entrepreneurs, both when they were young…
