When you think of books you can devour in one flight, thrillers and other edge-of-your-seat pageturners immediately come to mind. Not necessarily research-driven nonfiction. But when I started reading Jonah Berger’s Contagious two years ago on a flight to Tennessee, I couldn’t put it down. Even when we reached our destination. It’s that compelling. The…

Publishing our first cookbook was nerve-wracking for me—not the cooking, recipe-testing or food-photographing, but the part that happened once the book was live on Amazon: Actually announcing it to the world and, you know, selling it. [Insert full-body shudder here.] I hated asking for the sale, and I’d get so uncomfortable pitching our book to…

Deep down, I’m a peacemaker. I always want to smooth edges, help people understand the other person’s side, and deflate a tense situation as quickly as possible. That tactic has helped me as a manager, student advisor and coffee-date companion over the years, but there’s an ugly shadow side to that need to cool things…

“Sorry” is today’s version of “like.” It’s practically a space-filler, joining together two sentences while simultaneously smoothing things over: when we’re running late (sorry), when our arm grazes someone’s in a crowd (sorry), when we accidentally hand someone two meeting agendas instead of one (sorry).

As someone who loves creating to-do lists and planning goals, today’s Takeaway Tuesday really hit home. All too often I fall into that trap of, ‘If I do X, Y and Z, then this will happen!” and I’m bummed when things don’t work out according to plan. -Candace Tuesday Takeaway: Packing Light by Allison Vesterfelt…