Author: NPR

Every time the new year rolls around, many of us start trying to "better ourselves." Maybe you decide to read more or clean out your entire house only to find yourself falling short. Author BJ Fogg wrote a book about how not to do that called Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. Fogg told Life Kit's Maria Godoy that everyone should try and lower their expectations. It's actually much easier to accomplish goals you set for yourself if they are much, much smaller. Say, instead of cleaning out your whole house, start with one room.

Planet Money's Stacey Vanek Smith has reported on business and the economy for over 15 years now. She told NPR's Guy Raz that over that time, she's seen the same barriers blocking advancement for women in the workplace again and again. Recently, she's started to recognize that a lot of tools to move past those barriers can be found in the work of Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli. Vanek Smith lays out these solutions in her new book, Machiavelli for Women: Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace.

Both our interviews today deal with the pressures we put on ourselves. First, Olympic runner Alexi Pappas on her memoir, Bravey. On the outside, Pappas was living what looked like a great life; she was breaking Greek Olympic records and her movie got a distribution deal. But, she told NPR's Ari Shapiro, she was still deeply sad. Next, an interview from early in the pandemic when women were disproportionately feeling the burden of our new reality. Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed, told former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that "every woman on earth needs to lower her expectations for herself."

Poet and author Kwame Alexander was feeling the weight of being Black in America last summer and didn't know how to make sense of his feelings. So, he made sense of them through his book of poetry, Light For The World To See: A Thousand Words On Race And Hope. It's three poems on three historic events: the murder of George Floyd, Colin Kaepernick's protests, and Barack Obama being elected president. Alexander told NPR's Rachel Martin he wrote this as a call for Black people to remember their humanity.