Stress and Anxiety in the New Year

THE STRESS PRESCRIPTION (Seven Days to More Joy and Ease) by Elissa Epel (co-author of The Telomere Effect) is part of a series; other titles, also written by experts in their respective fields, include The Love Prescription and The Sleep Prescription. Epel is the director of UCSF’s Aging, Metabolism, and Emotion Center and serves on scientific advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health and the Mind & Life Institute. In this primer, she encourages readers to “read a chapter a day or a chapter a week” and offers one new skill (e.g., Embracing Uncertainty and Openness) per chapter. Epel provides a great deal of reassurance and plenty of personal examples, but not as much practical advice as I had envisioned. To me, there was simply too much emphasis on her own stories (e.g., running out of pipettes due to supply chain issues) and less on helping readers to really adopt some lifestyle practices. A positive element is that her suggested activities “need no special equipment, and at most take five to ten minutes.”  That short timeframe may make her recommendations attractive and “do-able” for readers.  Almost twenty percent of the book is devoted to a listing of further reading and resources and extensive notes.

HOW TO CALM YOUR MIND by Chris Bailey is about “Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times” and is also published by Penguin Life. Like in his earlier work, Hyperfocus, Bailey offers suggestions primarily for adult professionals. He notes, for example, “When you see everything you do through the lens of the accomplishment mindset, everything in your life looks like something you have to get done. In this way, an accomplishment mindset compromises how much joy you experience each day, as you alternate between periods of productivity, as well as guilt.” Bailey acknowledges investing in self-care through activities like meditation, exercise, getting a massage, and/or adopting a better diet, but he advocates doing more to reduce chronic stress, burnout, and anxiety. Bailey uses personal experiences to illustrate his points; plus, over ten percent of the book lists notes, including references for numerous scientific papers, which support his contentions. 

Concerns about stress and anxiety apply especially to young people; on a related note, see the article in today's Wall Street Journal from the Weekend Interview about "Jonathan Haidt on the ‘National Crisis’ of Gen Z." It is a sobering piece. 

Picture in the Sand by Peter Blauner

PICTURE IN THE SAND by Peter Blauner is an intriguing work of historical fiction. The novel alternates between 1954 Egypt and present day. The majority of the story is told by Ali Hassan, grandfather to Alex (call me Abu Suror) who has been radicalized and has left the States to be with his brothers in arms. Ali Hassan establishes tenuous contact with Alex via email and begins to relate his own life story: infatuation with films and a young wanna-be starlet, production assistant on The Ten Commandments movie, and involvement in religious and political dissent in Egypt. Featuring well-known people like Cecil B. DeMille and Gamal Abdel Nasser, Blauner provides an engrossing look at inflated egos, terrorist plots, and power struggles in Egypt from a time when, according to Blauner, “many historians say the rise of radical Islam, al-Qaeda and ISIS began.” Although sometimes violent (readers are warned early on that a main character loses an eye), this is a suspenseful thriller combined with an excellent coming of age story. Ali Hassan writes to his grandson, “It’s painful and deeply unsettling how much I recognize of myself in you. …. sometimes I think the old trying to talk to the young is like the dead talking to the living.” Blauner is an Edgar Award winning author and his publishers describe his latest novel as “the culmination of two decades of writing and research that took him from Brooklyn to Cairo a half-dozen times.” Hard work is evident: PICTURE IN THE SAND received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and prolific writer Stephen King said, "On rare occasions I read a book that reminds me of why I fell in love with storytelling in the first place. This is such a book."

Escape from Model Land by Erica Thompson

ESCAPE FROM MODEL LAND by Erica Thompson is subtitled “How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It.” Thompson, a statistician and senior policy fellow at the London School of Economics, provides a somewhat dense but thought-provoking reflection on the limitations of the many mathematical models on which we rely. One key point she addresses is the inherent bias of model designers, noting for example how educated middle-class modelers during the pandemic under- and over-valued certain costs for lockdowns and other policy decisions. Making this easy to remember, she notes the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Developed) assumptions which may underlie a model without the developer’s conscious knowledge. Stressing that models are “ubiquitous now in everyday life,” Thompson encourages readers to use them for exploration, to gauge their sensitivity, and to ask probing questions: “How are models constructed? To whom do they deliver power? How should we regulate them? How can we use them responsibly?”  ESCAPE FROM MODEL LAND received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly and was reviewed recently in both The Economist and The Wall Street Journal.

It is also interesting to think about these questions in the context of new OpenAI chatbot programs. Some provocative articles include:
The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT (Dec. 5, 2022; New York Times)
Cheatingwith ChatGPT; Can an AI Chatbot Pass AP Lit? (Dec. 21, 2022; Wall Street Journal)
Did a Fourth Grader Write This? Or the New Chatbot? (Dec.  26, 2022; New York Times)
Is AI the Future of Test Prep? (Dec.  27, 2022; New York Times)
It is fascinating to look at this new tech and how data works.

One Year to an Organized Life by Regina Leeds

ONE YEAR TO AN ORGANIZED LIFE by Regina Leeds was previously published in 2008; these comments are about the first Hachette Go edition, published this month. This “Week-by-Week Mindful Guide to Getting Organized for Good” divides comments into 4 week segments on topics like time management, surviving a move, back to school season, and entertaining with joy. Leeds, a professional organizer for more than thirty years, does include a set of resources about charities, donations, tech organizing aids, and more. She utilizes personal anecdotes and a conversational tone; for example, she encourages readers to think about items forgotten in the past as well as four items the person takes on a trip but never uses. Then, Leeds challenges readers to leave those at home so as to travel lighter. Although ONE YEAR TO AN ORGANIZED LIFE could benefit from further updating (she refers to hanging folders and labelling tabs), overall it is a nice compilation of mostly commonsense ideas offered in a helpful, friendly manner.