The hardest lesson to deliver about writing, especially to my students, is the benefits come from the process and not the product. This is especially hard to teach in schools where rewards , in the form of grades, are product driven and you write to hand something in.

However, this misses the most valuable lesson the act of writing has to offer, which has been picked up by mental health experts, bloggers and even athletes.

The act of writing helps to clarify your thoughts, organize your mind and reflect on what’s really happening with you. It’s the reason Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages are such a life changing habit, or why the act of journaling is necessary for progressing in our mental health wellness.

Hell, it’s even recommended by David Goggins, who isn’t known for holding back on what he considers to be bullshit.

From my experience, the act of writing hasn’t turned me into a different person as age, experience, kids and a loving partner have done all that. What it has done has helped me pay attention to the flow and structure of language. More specifically, the way I communicate.

My mind has always been a scattered mess, overthinking everything. It was very common for me to spend inordinate amounts of time processing what people were telling me and preparing what I was going to say, only to have it come out a complete jumbled mess. It was like my mind was trying to get my mouth to say five things at once.

The act of writing, which is a form of communication that happens through the hands instead of the mouth, has given me the practce to drastically diminish this hurdle. I actually think clearer now.

My personal experience aside, writing as an act of clarity is the single greatest benefit to engaging in it as a habit. Its usefulness can be catered to whatever you need without ever having to engage with it more than the process.

I highly recommend it.

Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution asked his readers to share a book they loved that no one else did. I am pressed to think of any because I tend to go in the opposite direction and not care for books that others have loved.

Then again, I also veer towards very niche genres and books; ones which have a cult following, but difficult to recommend to others. Be as it may, here are a list of my favourites within that particular parameter:

Anathem by Neal Stephenson—Stephenson is an author I rarely recommend to people. You have to love info dumping and navigating through many pages of non-fiction within his ficton to gain an appreciation for his work.

Anathem is the extreme end of this, requiring you to pay close attention because you are hit with a lot of math and science, all set in a world that is not Earth and therefore, the terminology is different. However, the end result is a masterpiece.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore—Not an obscure title as it has quite the following, but wow, I’ve never laughed so hard at a book. It’s completely irrevarent, witty and worth every moment I lost my breath as a result of those belly laughs.

The Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind—Yes, I agree this author has some serious issues. I also agree this series goes in some horrendous, weird and dumb places. I also couldn’t stand more than 20 pages of his attempted sequels and gave up on trying.

But you know what? I kept flipping pages until the very end.

The Gum Thief by Douglas Copeland—One of three authors who have influenced my own writing style and most known for his seminal work, Generation X.

This book by him is by far my favourite, introducing a flow I had never seen but that works magnificently. It pains me this book isn’t for everyone because it’s the one book that I would want everyone to read.

More Than This by Patrick Ness—Ness is a tremendous author. A Monster Calls, in my opinion, is a shining example of perfection in literature. I recommend it to everyone and I don’t say that lightly.

This particular book was recommended to me by one of my students and the best way to describe it is Incepton meets The Matrix meets Kierkegaard. Very hard to pin down, but oh wonderful to read.

Heartstriker Series by Rachel Aaron—Combine anime, video games and an urban fantasy world and you get this series. It was rather enjoyable, especially when the most significant and powerful character in the book… is named Bob.

As for books that everyone loved that I just couldn’t… that’s for another day.

Besides, the last thing the world needs is another pretentious critic.

My first published book, “How to Slack Your Way to Success,” is a prime example of a work of its time. Subsequently, it’s been taken off the market for that very reason.

If I were to rewrite that book today, it would follow the clickbait title of this article.

The importance of sleep cannot be overstated—both in quantity and quality. The research done and continues in this area consistently shows the benefits (and necessity) of a good night’s rest:

Increased cognitive function
Better health (mentally and physically)
Emotional health
Self-regulation
Focus
…and the list goes on

It’s the one part of the human condition we need to have mastery over to really gain the full enjoyment of life. If we can figure this part out, then we’ve actually figured out many other parts of our life. It’s the biggest bang for our buck.

Perhaps the most important reason is a consistent good night’s sleep might help us wake up to the reality that most of what bothers us, doesn’t really matter at all.

The problem of staying focused isn’t a new one. After all, there was a book written about it in the 1900s, but our current technology has exasperated this problem to astronomical levels.

While there is something to be said focusing on a task, the bigger challenge (for me, anyway) has been to stay focused on a path.

Rather than give things their proper time and focus, dare I say discipline, it’s one skip along a path before jumping to another. This has resulted in countless abandonned proejcts and half-hearted attempts at numerous avenues.

Although it pays no dividends to stick with something you absolutely hate and have no desire to pursue—anything worth doing must be given a fair chance. There are no promised outcomes, but there can be no progress.

I think the bigger fear is knowing there is only twenty-four hours in a day and considering most lives last approximately four thousand weeks, you want to enjoy as much of it as possible. In other words, the limitation is time.

To be able to enjoy life is one thing. To be able to experience what it has to offer? That comes at learning how to live each day and understanding in our limited time, we can have a full experience of a few things… or a shallow experience of many.

I’ve come to believe the entire purpose of my morning cup of coffee is to get me to the next one. Even with the many instances I’ve stopped drinking the stuff completely, I always come back to those two cups.

Maybe my brain has always been a bit slow, or sluggish, requiring some kind of external encouragement to get it going. Whatever the case, I take solace in knowing I’m not alone on in my morning endeavour.

There’s something about a morning ritual, even one as innocuous as coffee, that centers us for the day. It starts us off on certain footing, allowing us to tackle whatever may come.

Ritual is at the heart of human experience. The one qualifier that unites us even if the details differ across households and cultures. It unknowingly gives us a sense of purpose and helps us make sense of the world.

It may not always give us the desired outcomes (in fact, it probably rarely does), but helps us grasp a sense of time that is much larger than the moment we live in.

Sure, two cups of coffee isn’t much of a ritual and almost seems silly to call it one. But hey, it’s mine.

Maybe there’s too much of a population today for this to happen, yet that’s precisely the reason it should.

When you look at the broader strokes of human history, it is filled with nameless, faceless people who merely lived their lives. A few pockets of stories—some great, some not, but nothing more remarkable than a few lines in a historian’s book.

Yet, periodically, you get a culture bomb of a figure: Plato, Alexander, Michelangelo, Cleopatra, DaVinci, Isaac Newton. A litany of biographies that fill libraries and shape history. But, why so few? And why so few today?

You would think with the unlimited access to knowledge and seemingly endless opportunities at our disposal (not to mention the tools), the great figures of the past would be the stepping stones as opposed to the goal. I am dumbfounded that we are on the threshold of unlocking some big mysteries of the universe and yet science teachers are still pulling their hair on trying to engage students.

That we are facing some of our greatest challenges and endless people are claiming to be bored.

Have we become so accustomed to an easy life that we no longer strive for more? Or we have we always felt this way?

In a world of eight billion, it would seem that some culture bombs of figures should emerge to shape the future and while there are many great people today, what we need are extraordinary ones.

Where are they?

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

John Adams

I think it’s quite fortunate that at this time, in this part of the world, we can raise generations that do not need to prepare for war. The sacrifice of the brave who faced the reality of utter carnage, the likes of which the world still can’t wrap its head around, has given us the freedom to shape a future of our own design.

Yes, there is still war in this world and there may continue to be war for some time, but it’s not a desirable course of action when you consider the global response. Statistically, it’s actually one of our most, if not most, peaceful times.

The efforts we’ve been making to build a more peaceful world are working, and will continue to work, if we keep going. We just need to constantly remind ourselves of what has been and be thankful for those who believed a future like this could be possible. 

If we’ve never had to prepare for war, let us remember why.

This is a book that’s been on my to-read list for ages and I’m finally mustering the courage (well, patience) to read it. There’s no doubt Wallace was incredibly bright and l absolutely loved the insights from his essays and interviews, but to dive into a brick of a book that became the siren call of the hipster generation?

I had my serious hesitations.

For one, I didn’t want to fall prey to a book that everyone claims to get, but doesn’t.
Or has on their shelf with the implicit claim they’ve read it, but haven’t, which, I think is  the more likely candidate.

However, curiosity got the better of me and I finally picked it up.

This is turning into an excellent decision because I keep finding myself wanting to dive into it at every chance. There’s something compelling about the writing and the incoherence of the greater plot, which serves as a reminder there’s still a market for people who want something more than the usual formulas. It’s a breath of fresh air in a world built on endless sequels, remakes and series that just won’t end.

At the time of its release, the world was ready for a book like it. While it might not stand up today, the core of what it stood for is desperately needed again because we need to be challenged out of our familiarity once more.

My favourite lesson of the year is when I give my students an existential crisis by letting them know that all choice is an illusion. I spend the better part of the class dissecting why their lives are completely deterministic before ending with,

“You are nothing more than a predictable cog in the machine of the universe.”

Their reactions are something to behold.

I mean, last year, one of my students informed me that he didn’t sleep for three nights thinking about it. Not one wanting to cause harm to any student, I eventually land the plane where they start to think for themselves and have them play back at me.

Although the prevailing consensus right now really does suggest free will is an illusion, it’ll just take one more discovery before we pedal back and reconsider the whole argument.

It’s happened many times before and will happen many times again. After all, when it comes to understanding the universe, we are always at the beginning of infinity.
And when it comes to understanding God, we’re always further away than that.

There is a choice in all we do as long as we open ourselves to the possibility.

One of my biggest health worries is making sure my mind stays in-tact. Watching my grandfathers succumb to ailments where they lose all sense of reality was a wake-up call.

I suppose this is one of the reasons I became a voracious reader, but it turns out there’s a myriad of ways to protect the brain and unfortunately, none of those can beat genetics. However, there’s a huge advantage to living today and that’s access to decades of research alongside medical advancements.

The real irony to watch for is getting so stressed about it that the stress exasperates the problem. So what to do?

To start, a variety of everyday actions that will build a healthy brain and body:

Some exercise
A variety of nutritious food
Connecting with those I love
Challenging the mind
Self-reflection
Hobbies
Finding the joy in the every day

For me, the biggest thing to avoid is isolating myself in my own world and forgetting that what happens in my head is of my own making. To protect my mind, I need to step out of it.