1. This is scholarly and perfect and I love it and want to do a version for the elusive “lady bro”: Jeah! We Mapped Out The 4 Basic Aspects Of Being A ‘Bro’.  (Whispers: “Jeah, bro.”)

2. From The Paris Reveiw, Six Books We Could and Should All Write:

Every single thing I’m about to describe, you wouldn’t need any talent to produce it. You wouldn’t need any talent, and you wouldn’t need any understanding. All you’d have to do is stick with it. A little mimicry would help, but that’s really it. That’s why this list is good. Door’s wide open; everyone is invited. And you know what? You’d be producing something of value. At the very least, you yourself would value it. These are your models. Your versions will not be as good as these books. But they will be good just the same.

3. From Kottke again, Mr. Rogers would re-shoot parts of his show as needed to make sure they were still current.

1. Make It Work: Street Style for the Sensitive German Renaissance Man is your long read for the day, about a man’s illustrated log book of his entire life’s outfits.

2. It started with roller disco, moved on to You Can’t Stop the Music, and is now going deep into fringe disco artists, but my 70s obsession shows no sign of stopping. Currently in my head:

Wow. Weeks that end early are way better than weeks that start late, am I right?

1. I’ll read anything about anxiety lately and this, from Lenny, was like it was inside my brain: Good in a Crisis: The upside of lifelong anxiety.

“I mean, I’m still worrying over a History Channel special from five years ago about a rogue comet that could wipe out the globe’s electricity, plunging us into a food crisis. And I only watched the commercial. But when it comes to a sudden emergency, I snap to.”

2. This fine fellow has spent an hour a day throughout his college career learning different things and reports “I really haven’t found a single subject I’m not somewhat interested in.”

1. I usually don’t include bras in donations of clothing but it sounds like I should: The Huge Impact of Donated Bras

2. We get a long weekend! I’m so looking forward to not having an appointment or a class or a spring cleaning project. On Monday I’m going to sew and read on the deck and then top it off with knitting and a ridiculous movie.

1. What a week. Let’s watch this teaser trailer for a new biopic. As the headline says, Rami Malek Is Very Hot and Glamorous As Freddie Mercury (and that headline is not wrong, my friends).

2. The Guardian interviewed a bunch of writers for their “10 rules for writing fiction” and I loved this one from Hillary Mantel:

“First paragraphs can often be struck out. Are you performing a haka, or just shuffling your feet?”

Writing tips aside, I’m going to have to work that question into everyday life as much as possible.

1. I make to-do lists to help manage anxiety, but then when they get too long or I don’t check off as many items as I thought I would in a day, I get anxious about that. This system seems genius:

I tend to be very overwhelmed and demoralized by what I have to do, so I created a system where I have a list of things that require a lot of mental bandwith and a list of things I can do at the end of the day when my energy is depleted. There’s an easy column and a hard one. My daily goal, which is ridiculously low, is one item from each category. On most days I will do well more than [that], but I find it useful to set the bar really low in order to not get demoralized.

If it’s before lunch time and I’ve already done one from each column, then I find that motivating and get more done. But if I set a less achievable goal of 3-4 from each column, I’d halfway through the day realize that this wouldn’t happen and then it’s like “well, I broke my diet, so I might as well have two beers and chocolate cake” type of situation.

(From Rad Family, via Jocelyn Glei’s newsletter)

2. I’ve been on a 70s kick (more on that later) and these photos of NYC parks in the summer of 1978 are fantastic, even if the article gets a little excited in places. Scenes Unseen: The Summer of ’78

1. This article is both helpful and makes you want to smash things (the patriarchy), especially if you, like me, caved when pressed for past salary and didn’t think to inflate those numbers by 20%. How a Common Interview Question Fuels the Gender Pay Gap (and How to Stop It)

2. Remember when I was saying, “there has to be a German word for watching things again and again because they’re familiar?” There is and I already blogged about it:

How about some how-tos to read as you plan on improving your life? (Both of these via Jocelyn Glei.)

1. How To Balance Your Media Diet

2. A Modest Guide to Productivity (I really need this lately. Or do I just need a pencil?)

Get enthusiasm on the cheap by buying a fancy wooden pencil to write everything down. A $3 pencil is now more exciting than a $2,000 computer. Many people will do the most mundane work just to feel a good tool fly.

1. Old but I just found it (I was looking for a German word for “the comfort of doing familiar things”–still looking): On Repeat: Why People Watch Movies and Shows Over and Over.

One of the nice things about old movies is that they can’t surprise us. We know how they end, and we know how we’ll feel when they end. This makes the re-consumption of entertainment a bit like “emotional regulation,” Russell and Levy write. New books, movies, and TV shows can deliver spectacular thrills, but they can also waste our time and disappoint us. Old movies never disappoint us: We get older, they stay the same age. Returning to familiar entertainment is, to be perfectly stiff about this sort of thing, emotionally efficient. We’ll get exactly the emotional payoff we’re looking for—no surprises.

2. Funny! Maddening! But funny! If You’re Not Sure How a Male Author Would Describe You, Use Our Handy Chart

1. This profile of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has an excess of good pull quotes, but I like this one:

“I have a little different definition of evil than most people. When you have the opportunity and the ability to do good and you do nothing, that’s evil. Evil doesn’t always have to be an overt act. It can be merely the absence of good.”

2. Much like Dune, I don’t talk about my love for the J. Peterman catalog of the early 90s much because it’s just too hard to explain. But I am absolutely convinced Peterman is why I got into advertising, so I was happy to see a little piece on the illustrations over at Racked:

The original J. Peterman illustrator and art director was “a true artist”: Bob Hagel, who died in 2013. “If you look at the early art in the catalog,” Peterman says, “it was very, very artsy.” Hagel’s style set the tone for the Owner’s Manual; his paintings “didn’t always give you all the details of the product,” but they made sense alongside the stories of rebellious women in silky georgette and wickerwork pedicabs that take you to your seaplane.