3 Books With Neil Pasricha

“Happiness is a choice.”   Heard that saying before? Betting you have. We all have! It’s almost cliché. And yes, while research shows that a good deal of our happiness really is a choice, the saying gives us a “what” without a “how.”     And if your life is anything like mine, you have a million things going on—emaisl! texts! driving kids to soccer practice! finding time for date night!—and you need a "how" that can get you there fast, especially when your night time angst bubbles up, that dangerous mind that rears its ugly head after the dust of the day has settled and your resilience is low.      So in this special Fall Equinox Bookmark, I want to share this simple—dead simple, ruthlessly simple—system to help get you back on track. All you need is two minutes around the dinner table with your family or lying in bed to scroll back through your day. It's like wiping a wet shammy over the blackboard of your mind, and is backed up by science, too.     Ready to wind down your brain with intention? Let's flip

‘The Help’ by Kathryn Stockett. ‘Big Little Lies’ by Liane Moriarty. ‘Let's Pretend This Never Happened’ by Jenny Lawson. ‘American Dirt’ by Jeanine Cummins. ‘This Is How It Always Is’ by Laurie Frankel. ‘Listen for the Lie’ by Amy Tintera. ‘We Begin At the End’ by Chris Whittaker. ‘A Higher Loyalty’ by James Comey. ‘The Book of Awesome’ by Neil Pasricha.     What do these books have in common? The famed but invisible editor pulling the strings from behind the curtain: Amy Einhorn     Fifteen years ago my seven-month-old blog ‘1000 Awesome Things’ was nominated for ‘Best Blog’ from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. I was approached by literary agents and my new agent Erin Malone told me she wanted to auction my blog to publishers … next week. Suddenly I was in the foreign position of interviewing editors who were somehow clamoring to publish my book.     I signed with Amy Einhorn—a woman I’d never heard of, who had just started an eponymous imprint I’d never heard of, within Putnam Pub

Happy new moon, everybody! I am going to release a few of my favorite classic chapters of 3 Books. Let's start with Seth Godin! I flew down to New York to uncover and discuss the most formative books of the one and only Seth Godin (​@ThisIsSethsBlog​) from his Hastings-On-Hudson studio. Seth is the bestselling author of '​Linchpin​', '​Purple Cow​', '​Tribes​' and ​many more books​ and is known as one of the world's biggest thinkers in communities such as ​TED​ and the ​Marketing Hall of Fame​. And did I mention he writes one of ​the most popular blogs​ in the world? In this interview we discuss where Seth sees publishing going and his thoughts on the changes we're seeing in how people read and spend time. Seth shares his opinions on blurbs, acknowledgments, and his unique perspective on work-life balance. He also gives insights into how we can change our own world by changing the narrative inside our heads. I sat in Seth's studio transfixed, mesmerized, and hypnotized by one of the world's best brains.

I was at a coffee shop on College Street when the barista Tony yelled “Hey! There’s that duck!”     I turned and, sure enough, out the front window was a…  duck. A giant pixelated-looking green-headed Mallard set atop a rubber-tire-sized body on top of orange-stockinged legs and a pair of orange Converse. And he was just … walking by.     Like some kind of interdimensional tumbleweed.     Uh, what … was this?     Some gimmick from the local radio station? An ad campaign for a boot company? I ran outside with my friend Ateqah and was puzzled that … she seemed to know him!     “Hiiiiiii Lewis,” she cooed. “You’re looking great, Lewis! How’s your day going, Lewis?”     He just … quacked at her.     I had so many questions: “Who are you? What are you doing? What is the meaning of this?”     But, of course, he just … quacked.     Ducks can’t talk!     Then he turned and did a 1920s-pauper-finding-a-penny-style heel-click a good three feet in the air and I was left standing on the sidewalk, stunned, with a big smil

Maria Popova was born in communist Bulgaria and emigrated to the U.S. six days after her 19th birthday back in 2003. She studied at the University of Pennsylvania after “being sold on the liberal arts promise of being taught how to live.”     Did it work?     Well, yes and no.     She spent her family’s life savings in the first few weeks on textbooks and, despite attending an American high school in Bulgaria, found herself in a bit of culture shock. “I mean, fitted sheets? Brunch?” She worked hard, a defining Popova characteristic, sometimes eating store brand canned tuna and oatmeal three times a day to get by. “I figured it was the most nutritious combo for the cheapest amount.”     At one of her jobs in 2006 a senior leader started sending out a Friday email of miscellany to provoke innovation and then Maria took the project on herself—weaving together write-ups on seemingly unrelated topics. One day was Danish pod homes, another the century-long evolution of the Pepsi logo, another on the design of a non

  I remember getting the knife.     It was near Christmas about 10 years ago and Leslie and I were zipping up a tiny suitcase before a beach trip with her grandparents and extended family. We weren’t married and I was making a desperate last-second plea to stuff a 576-page novel called ‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen into our bag. “It just won’t fit,” Leslie said. “You have … 100 pages left? Want to leave it and read it when we’re back?”     I did *not* want to do that.     The book was slipping under my skin—serrating my soul.     So I remember getting that knife.     The deep blasphemous pain I felt slicing the paperback spine and carving the last 100-ish pages off the book was far outweighed by the exquisite suite of pleasures I had slowly savoring it on the beach all week.     I had never read anything like ‘The Corrections’—with a clarity of character, wildly spinning plot, and unique three-dimensional *realness* that, page by page, twist by twist, left pits in my stomach, lumps in my throat, and t

I just got back from St. Louis.   It was my first time there and I met a wonderfully rich collection of people who I’m so excited to introduce you to in a special on-the-ground, in-the-street, from-the-backseat Chapter of 3 Books.   On the way from the airport to the hotel, the driver regaled me with St. Louis trivia from a deep well of St. Louis pride. “Did you know we hosted the World Fair and the Olympics the same year?” he asked. I knew about the World Fair! “Most do,” he said. “But not many know about the Olympics. 1904 was a banner year here. We were the fourth largest city in the US at the time!”   The next day I had time to explore. I knew there was a local bird species that didn’t exist anywhere else in the country! The Eurasian Tree Sparrow was one of six species of birds brought to St. Louis in 1870 by German immigrants. The other five died that winter, but the Tree Sparrow still lives near Lafayette Park where it was first released. It has thrived without expanding its range or disrupting the loca

Cal Newport is a guide, a visionary, a role model to me and millions of others on living an intentional and productive life amidst our noisy, scatterbrained, tech-drenched world. He’s an MIT-trained computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of 10 books which have collectively sold over 2 million copies including ‘Deep Work,’ ‘Digital Minimalism,’ and his latest bestseller, ‘Slow Productivity.’ “I sometimes joke that my entire career is built on giving two-word terms to things everyone thinks and knows,” Cal says, but the truth is he’s doing a lot more than that. Take ‘Slow Productivity.’ He’s boiled this new phrase down into three principles: 1) Do fewer things, 2) Work at a natural pace, and 3) Obsess over quality. Sounds simple, right? Trite, even! But that’s when you raise your head and realize the world is conspiring against you doing any of these. Doesn’t our world today reward… doing *more* things, working at an *unnatural* pace, and obsessing over *quantity*? There’s a reason

I got an email from longtime 3 Booker Bo Boswell who told me he found an enticingly-titled thread on reddit called “What’s your field or study (hobbyist or professional) and what’s a cornerstone beginners book for that topic/field?”     The most upvoted reply on the thread read: "Librarian here, Susan Orlean’s ‘The Library Book’ is at first glance a true-crime book about tracking the arsonist who set fire and burned down the main library in Los Angeles, but it also gives a comprehensive glimpse into contemporary libraries and their issues, especially updating a view of them if you haven’t been inside one since you were a kid."   Bo picked up the book, loved it, and then wrote to me that "the amount of research and bizarre detail Orlean puts into her work is so engrossing.” Bizarre detail! I was convinced. I picked up ‘The Library Book’ and it blew me away. Reading it was like … wandering a library. Surprising curiosity trails at every turn. I ended up putting the book in my Best Of 2023 and then went deeper

It’s Oscar season!   I was so thrilled to see ‘Past Lives’, the astounding slow-moving-yet-somehow-fast-paced debut film from Celine Song nominated for Best Picture. Best Picture! On her very first film. Oh, and no biggie, Best Screenplay, too. This following a slew of other noms like 5 Golden Globes, 3 Critics Choice Awards, 3 BAFTAs, and a recent Director’s Guild of America win for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for a First-Time Feature Film.   Leslie and I loved ‘Past Lives’ so much we went back to theaters to see it again. The film had such unique energy as it told the story of Nora and Hae Sung, two childhood friends in South Korea, who lose touch when Nora’s family emigrates, and then seem to be forever-chasing the goodbye they never had.   The film opens with a late-night bar scene of Hae Sung visiting Nora and her husband in New York before scrolling back to tell the unpredictable, jumping-around-the-decades story of how they got there. Every shot was such a sumptuous visual feast — from silhouet

Back in Chapter 101 of ‘3 Books’ we had a magical, eve-of-‘Everything-Everywhere-All-At-Once’-coming-out moment-in-time conversation with creative super-geniuses Daniels — who are Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. We were discussing the fascinating book 'Sex At Dawn' and our conversation led to discussing Dunbar’s Number.   Dunbar’s Number! Have you heard of Dunbar’s Number? It’s 150! That’s the cognitive limit on the number of social relationships we can have. We, as in humans. Limit, as in our brains can’t handle any more. The number was coined, of course, by Oxford Emeritus Professor, Anthropologist, Evolutionary Psychologist, and General All-Round Super-Genius Robin, yes you guessed it, Dunbar. “There are only eight people with numbers named after them,” Robin says, with a grin. “And the other seven people are dead.” (Shoutout to Avogadro!)   Now: 150 is one in a series of numbers. More intimately: We have 15 ‘shoulders to cry on friends’, those who’d drop everything to help us or for whom we’d drop every

Buckle up! We are heading down to the fields of Clemson, South Carolina!   I got an email from 3 Booker Rumble D. back in February which said “Neil, I have a guest suggestion for you. J Drew Lanham is a 2022 MacArthur fellow and an American ornithologist. I loved his book and would love to hear you interview him (maybe while you guys go birding?)” Intrigued, I looked him up and discovered I … sort of already knew him? I had read and loved his wonderfully thoughtful and nuanced essay last year called "What Do We Do About John James Audubon?" and his viral YouTube clip called "Rules for the Black Birdwatcher". (“You’re gonna need at least two pieces of ID. And never wear a hoodie. Ever.”)   So I bought Drew’s memoir 'The Home Place' and found it completely entrancing. His writing is poetry — vivid, transportive, meditative. After that I reached out to Drew and we set a time to make the 10-hour haul down to Clemson farm country, wake up at the crack of dawn, and then get picked up by Drew in his Dodge Ram to spe

Another year around the sun! It is the Winter Solstice which means it is time for our sixth annual "Best Of" episode of 3 Books. 3 Books began ​back in 2018​ with a simple goal of counting down the 1000 most formative books in the world ... 3 books at a time. We wanted this show to help all of us read more and read better and we wanted to do that by being different -- with a lunar-based schedule and a deep intention of being an ‘intrinsically-motivated journey’ with no ads, sponsors, commercials, or interruptions. We started collecting ​values​ like: "No book shame, no book guilt", "Humans are the best algorithm", and "You are what you eat and you are what you read." Over the years this journey has been a warm ray of sun in my life. I hope it’s felt the same for you. My goal with the “Best Of” is to reflect on the year by picking a snippet from every Chapter and Bookmark that helps us pause and ponder. You'll hear (or re-hear) wisdom from our chats with ​Steve Toltz​, ​Timothy Goodman​, ​Johann Hari​, ​Ta

“Your airbag” by Ralph Nader. “Your seatbelt” by Ralph Nader. “Your cleaner air” by Ralph Nader. “Your safer food” by Ralph Nader. “Your lead protection when you get dental x-rays", “Your warning labels on cigarettes”, “Your right to know if you’re exposed to dangerous chemicals at your job”. By Ralph Nader, by Ralph Nader, by Ralph Nader.  We slap names on everything! Bylines. Authorship! We see names on everything in our ego-oriented society with commercialization and profit maximization near its core. But Ralph’s name isn’t on any of these things. Could be! ​Maybe should be​! But when you’ve spent nearly seven decades — seven decades! — as a tireless consumer advocate, fighting to achieve protections for a healthier and safer society for all, well, maybe you don't focus on credit. You just focus on change. “Dissent is the mother of ascent,” Ralph reminds us in ​Chapter 130 of 3 Books​, one of many calls-to-arms issued by the four-time Presidential candidate and author of the new book ​The Rebellious CEO​

Today I'm putting out a special Bookmark episode of 3 Books featuring my incredible wife ​Leslie Richardson​. If you've been listening to 3 Books for a while you've heard Leslie interviewing guests like ​Brené Brown​, ​Kristen Neff​, and ​Rebecca the Sex Therapist​. And, of course, I started the show by interviewing her way back in ​Chapter 1​. But this time she takes center stage on a topic she's deeply passionate about: parenting. And, specifically here, how to nurture self-compassion as a parent when riding the waves through challenging times. This recent interview Leslie did with Dajana Yoakley at the Self-Compassionate Parenting Summit was going viral on my family group texts and I knew I had to share it with you. Thank you to Dajana (​delightinparenting.com​) for letting us share this wonderful conversation touching topics like: the antidote to shame, the importance of guilt and regret, the 5 'R's' of good Repair, what to promise your child, growing your self-compassion muscle, resources for parents wh

I flew down to New York City and sat in a plush purple corner booth at the pricey and exclusive Core Club in midtown Manhattan. Sahil Bloom is the youngest member they have because, as he says, "If you get into the right rooms, good things start to happen."  Sahil Bloom is a fascinating, unconventional, maniacally disciplined, wisdom-distilling writer, thinker, and investor -- with a goal of motivating a billion people to live their best lives in a kind of Tim Ferriss or Robin Sharma for the next generation. He grew up with a Harvard dad, Princeton mom, and Yale sister -- but was coasting by in school and the resident jock. "My dad would come home and play catch before going back to work every night." His dad is David E. Bloom, one of the world's most-renowned social scientists, who would take Sahil on business-class flights as a kid. "I would eat ice cream and watch movies but I watched my dad working on the speech he was delivering the next morning for the entire 12 hours." Do we all need to become manicall

I started 3 Books back in 2018. I didn't fully appreciate how big, wide, and deep the core question of this 22-year conversation was at the beginning. "What are your 3 most formative books?" Sounds simple! But as you trace back which books inspired ideals, ignited passions, altered values, slingshotted directions...well, it turns out there's always a lot there.  That was definitely the case as I recorded Chapter 128 of 3 Books in a Washington DC hotel room overlooking the Potomac with writer, designer, and speaker Heather McGowan. Heather is a big thinker focused on the "future of work" and she has elegantly stitched her business and industrial design backgrounds along with some fascinating experiences into two bestselling books called 'The Adaptation Advantage' and 'The Empathy Advantage.' She has spoken at the World Economic Forum, TEDx, and SXSW, has written for Forbes and Harvard Business Review, and is an advisor to the Business Higher Education Forum and Innovate+Educate. We talk why empathy is essenti

Early episodes of Sesame Street from the late 1960s show five-year-olds walking streets alone, talking to strangers, and playing on vacant lots, but when those episodes were released on DVD years later a warning was added at the beginning saying “The following is intended for adult viewing only and may not be suitable for young viewers.” I read about this in ‘Stolen Focus’, the massive bestseller by Johann Hari, our guest in Chapter 121. Johann went on in his book to discuss how ‘the confinement of our children’ is contributing to our plummeting ability to focus and he brought the idea to light wonderfully in his book by spotlighting the activism of Lenore Skenazy. Lenore Skenazy is a Jackson Heights, New York mom of two who wrote a 2008 column for The New York Sun titled ‘Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride The Subway Alone.’ The article set off a huge media firestorm where Lenore was dubbed “America’s Worst Mom.” Undeterred, Lenore went on to coin the phrase “free-range kids”, write a bestselling book by the sam

I’ve been lucky enough to be invited onto ‘The Social’ (@TheSocialCTV) a few times. Do you know the show? It’s like ‘The View’, but Canadian, with four dynamic hosts sharing fast-paced opinions in a raucous, bombastic, high-energy exchange. Producers hand you the topics of the day about 30 minutes before you go on — formed by that morning’s early headlines — and then it’s time to form an opinion and get ready to, no big deal, share it live with millions of people a few minutes later. Definitely one of the most challenging jobs I’ve ever had and I can’t tell you how much I admire people like Melissa Grelo, Cynthia Loyst, Lainey Lui, and Jess Allen, who do it day after day. Since I’m guest-hosting it’s usually me onstage with three women — while one’s away — and we end up having full-on laugh attacks. Well, one day, early in the pandemic, during the “live from everybody’s basement” era, I showed up ready to go on and discovered I was one of *two* guest hosts. The other was Jully Black! Canada’s R&B Queen.

“All the time focus on the positive things. Not the negative things. Then the karma, it will come, it will reflect to you.” Meet Chef Osama Harwash and Chef Houssam Harwash. Two brothers who came to Canada as Syrian refugees and rented a food stall to begin crafting traditional recipes learned from four generations of Syrian chefs. Listen as they share lessons learned from their sheep-farming great-grandfather at the fall of the Ottoman Empire and then tell us how mint and cardamom help make the perfect lemonade for sweltering Torontonians. I was riding past a tight row of graffiti-covered food stalls on an absolutely scorching day in downtown Toronto when I spotted these two gregarious brothers wedged into a tiny four-foot by four-foot booth smiling, wishing “happy days to their brothers and sisters” while making them chicken shawarmas, beef kofta plates, and grape leaves for a non-stop line of faithful fans. A 4.9 rating with over 500 reviews on Google since they opened doesn’t lie.   But what makes them