The broadcaster Claudia Hammond’s book gives you all the permission you need to rest, in whatever way you need, whether it’s taking a nice hot bath or watching TV. Hammond breaks down the top ten ways that people say they like to rest – the top spot goes to reading – and then gives our instincts scientific backing. If you need inspiration for how to rest, this book will give you plenty.

“So this gives us two chief ways in which reading is restful. Sometimes it distracts us from our own worries and at other times it does the opposite. Rather than taking us away from our own world, it allows us to reflect on our own lives as our minds wander. Yet again we see this conflict at the heart of rest. It distracts us but also brings us face to face with ourselves, allowing us to mentally time travel back into our own pasts and forward into our own futures. We can both use it to block our own self-awareness or to enhance it.” — Claudia Hammond

This book is for anyone who is looking to have a healthier relationship with the tech in their lives. It’s about, as Emma Gannon says, ‘being human (and retaining that humanness) in an increasingly technological world’. While recognizing that it’s not possible to completely abandon our online lives, Gannon offers intentional steps we can all take to use tech more positively in order to have a better, kinder, and more authentic experience. Check out the prompts specifically, small activities to shift how we relate to the tech in our life and how we choose to use it (or not).

“There is something to be said for how we might quite like the endless easy excuses and distractions, or the constant ability to reach for our phones and laptops whenever we want. It's a place to get lost in, an easy place to numb out and ignore some of the not-so-fun parts of life. It's a cosy comfort blanket that we can pull over our heads when things get too much.” — Emma Gannon

In this fascinating series of essays, journalist Pandora Sykes gives her perspective on the many modern life dilemmas faced by millennial women. If you’ve listened to the now-ended beloved podcast The High Low, you’ll recognize the tone: smart, witty, personal, and insightful. Sykes gets into the meat of quite startlingly a huge array of things conspiring to make life really hard and includes her takes on how she figures out a way through these: like — and these are just a handful — how the wellness industry exploits an idea of personal deficits, how we can build a sense of spirituality that best represents our values, how fast fashion impacts our sense of self and homogenizes our style, how women’s are being fragmented, particularly as viewed through our bodies, how we can come to terms with the coexisting realities of motherhood, and how work (rd. busyness) doesn’t bring the happiness we’re led to believe it might. This isn’t a self-help manual, more a book to hold in parallel with our lives – giving a much needed corrective to much of what we accept as given and most of which we need to push against so that we can live a life that is ‘good enough’.   

 “And yet we live in a world where we expect to know everything about ourselves, like hyper-vigilant self-guards, in order to live our most optimal lives. As a generation, we’ve been rushing towards this moment since we could walk. We grew up alongside the positive psychology movement of the ‘90s, also known as the study of ‘the good life’, telling us that the key to happiness lies within. We were raised by boomer parents and the constant reminder that, unlike them, we have So Much Choice. We were safe in the knowledge the ceiling had been broken and that we had all the tools in the world at our disposal. We can be whoever we want to be! And yet there is a widespread feeling of restlessness among millennial women. Like something is not quite adding up. Like we might be getting life wrong.”  — Pandora Sykes

We’ve often found ourselves at a loss for how to deal with some situations that feel like they could only be played out today: like the etiquette of the Out of Office and not oversharing on social media, but also the more ideological conundrums, how to be alone and how to think about shame. This book by The Gentlewoman gives us some strategies for negotiating our modern world by some of our favourite writers, such as Ann Friedman writing on how to have a solitary drink and how to be idle. A book of modern manners written by women who have figured some of this out.

“Knowing when to break the rules, throwing caution to the wind in just the right way, is the sign of an evolved adult.” – Sophie Hastings

Though short and, in spite of the title, this pocket-size manifesto does not offer quick fixes for navigating the world. What it does is allude to our hope for answers when faced with a pandemic, the rise of nationalism, the Black Lives Matter protests, the dominance of social media and the emergence of AI, etc, etc, etc. This list which writer Elif Shafak sees our defining ‘our threshold-moment’ could go on and on.  

To us, Shafak’s book argues for complexity as maybe a framework in which to work, nuance as a stance in itself. Through personal stories and social observations, Shafak identifies the left out, the marginalized, making the case for existing within uncertainties and within multiple belongings. Shafak writes of the need to tell our stories and in turn listen, and feel, and learn. The answer to that pressing question of how to stay sane isn't spelled out in capital letters here, but our ongoing reach for it can be an exploratory, thoughtful, and even positive experience. 

“But the experience, vivid and visceral as it was, taught me an important life lesson: when you feel alone don’t look within, look out and look beyond for others who feel the same way, for there are always others, and if you can connect with them and with their story, you will be able to see everything in a new light.” — Elif Shafak

We watched this with our pre-teens and it was terrifying for all of us. Netflix’s recent documentary on how social media is in effect destroying our mental health, our politics, our democracy, our compassion, and our lives, had us banning phones from our bedroom and dinner tables, turning off push notifications, and aspiring to be much savvier about how we access social media. As tech changes who we are and tilts our behavior in ways that we’re not even noticing, exploiting the vulnerabilities of our minds and acting as a pacifier for all the uncomfortable feelings, The Social Dilemma uses the words of the very builders of this world – the engineers, venture capitalists and designers behind Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter – to show us what we haven’t seen before and what they hadn’t anticipated.

“Social media isn’t just a tool that’s just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them.” — The Social Dilemma

We admit to struggling with our relationship with social media, the requirement to engage when we might feel otherwise versus the wonderful connections (and friendships) that we’ve made when we might not have expected them. This podcast has helped us evaluate what social media can mean in a positive way, and how we can authentically engage with it, through thoughtful conversations with entrepreneurs and creatives who use it every day. Pair with Sara Tasker’s newsletter, book and Insta Retreat.

“Each week we dig into the different aspects of sharing creative work online and talk to the people who are making it work for themselves and their businesses. From the practical to the philosophical, Hashtag Authentic covers all areas of online creative life to dose you up on inspiration & information, and help you feel a lot less alone.”

Poetry to us often feels like an antidote to modern life. So we turn to The Slow Down, a handpicked poem introduced by host Ada Limon every weekday. We use these tiny episodes (many just 5 minutes long) as a way to ground us, to reorient ourselves in days drifting in directions that we can’t quite follow. Discover recent episodes: Lavender and Pegasus Autopsy, and sign up for the newsletter for a daily poem delivered to your inbox.

“I have often thought that moods have colors. The green of calm and creativity, the red of anger and of passion. When I get sad, I say I have the blues. I say I am blue around my edges. And it makes sense to me. It makes more sense than saying “depression” or “sadness”…just a little blue, just some blues today, that’s all. Sometimes it’s my way of saying that I know it’s nothing to get worked up over, nothing anyone should worry about.” — Ada Limon