A longtime reader emails me every five years or so, to say that he still thinks of me every morning when he makes his bed. Back in 2009 I wrote a post about the psychological benefit of immediately making your bed when you wake up. (It’s an easy little mission that gets you shaping your day right away – a foolproof first move to carpe your diem.)

There’s a different reader I think of on a daily basis, one who invited me to visit him at his home in Norway. While I was there, he gave me an AeroPress coffeemaker and showed me his brewing method. After spilling hot coffee grounds all over his kitchen on my first attempt, I got the hang of it. I still think of him for a moment every single morning, when I stir the grounds with the bamboo stick he gave me.

When I’m at the car wash, I always think of my dad, because he once said, “Nothing gets clean without the foamy brush.” I always use the foamy brush and my car always comes out looking great. It’s a bit of my dad’s insight living on in me, among many other bits.

On the wall of my office I put up a Tolstoy quote in 32-point text:

A man on a thousand-mile walk has to forget his ultimate goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.’

I find it much more instructive than the standard “big things happen gradually” clichés: Rome wasn’t built in a day, a thousand-mile journey begins with a single step, how do you eat an elephant (one bite at a time), and the rest.

Tolstoy’s twenty-five miles is like the serious version of those throwaway adages. It’s for the person who genuinely wants (or needs) to cover a thousand miles, rather than just have another way to say “Oh well” after a disappointment. When someone says, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” it implies that Rome will get built eventually by the way you’re going about things now, but there’s no reason to believe it works like that. Romes don’t get built very often.

Covering twenty-five miles is a serious day’s effort, even though it’s only a tiny fraction of a thousand. It takes a real push, but it is doable, and days like that will add up to vast distances quickly. Note that Tolstoy was talking about hardened French soldiers crossing the Russian steppes; we can scale that twenty-five-mile march down to “A real effort you could achieve daily, but which you’ll only bother with if you’re serious about getting somewhere.”

When I want a thrill, I walk to the corner store without my phone. Leaving the house like that, with only wallet and keys, feels physically strange and wrong, like I forgot to wear underwear.

Even though I didn’t have a mobile phone for the first half of my life, ten minutes without it somehow feels unsafe. If I need to call in an emergency or something – or, much more likely, if I want to ignore my surroundings and check email while I’m waiting in line – I will be utterly helpless.

This uneasy, lost-at-sea feeling isn’t caused by being without phone access for a few minutes. It’s just what it feels like to defy a powerful habit. After all, the more often I do the thing, the weaker that feeling gets.

The mind just doesn’t want you to deviate from habits, whether they’re good or bad ones. “You can’t do this to me!” it shouts, as you lock the door with your phone sitting on the kitchen table. “We had a deal!”

I’ve been reading Lord of the Rings for two months and I’m just at the end of the first part. It’s not because I’m not enjoying it. It’s one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I can remember.

From the beginning, I’ve read the whole thing aloud. I’ve found reading aloud helpful for staying engaged — limiting myself to mouth-speed rather than eye-speed means I won’t rush, miss important details, and then lose interest, which has always been a problem for me.

At first I was anxious to read a 1,500-page book this way, because it would take so long. But, as someone pointed out to me, if I’m enjoying it, why would I want to be done with it sooner?

So I tried slowing down even more, and discovered something. I slowed to a pace that felt almost absurd, treating each sentence as though it might be a particularly important one. I gave each one maybe triple the usual time and attention, ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of pages to go.

This leisurely pace made Middle-Earth blossom before my eyes. When I paused after each comma, and let each sentence ring for a small moment after the period, the events of the story reached me with more weight and strength. That extra time gave space for Tolkien’s images and moods to propagate in my mind, which they did automatically.

The human being is the only animal that can say no to treats. That’s what makes us special.

A hungry dog, fish, sheep, centipede – none of them can have their favorite food in front of them and voluntarily refrain from gobbling it up, unless it’s dangerous to do so. A trained dog might hold back for a bit, but it’s really just angling for another reward (pleasing its master) and it knows it’s getting the treat anyway.

The human being can – but might not – simply refrain from gobbling the fudge-covered Oreo sitting in front of him, however it feels to do so.

He might do that because he prefers a competing reward, such as losing weight or not having to brush his teeth again tonight. But he also might do it solely to free himself from the Oreo’s dominance over him. If you can’t not gobble the Oreo, it owns you. It will turn you into its marionette, operating your arms and mouth, insinuating itself into your mind, and then your body.

Imagine two very bored castaways on a desert island, who have food and shelter but nothing to do. They spend the day throwing coconuts at each other for fun.

One day a crate washes up, with its cargo intact: hundreds of classic paperbacks! Melville, Hugo, Tolkien, the Brontës, and more. The men celebrate, and immediately begin throwing the books at each other. They invent a game like Jenga, but with books instead of wooden blocks.

Life on the island does improve somewhat, with these new forms of throwing and stacking games.

Both men can read well enough, but they regard classics as too boring to bother with, and they’re already bored enough.

A month later, the novelty of book-Jenga having worn off, one of the men decides to focus his energies on working through The Lord of the Rings. He has to steel his attention repeatedly to get through the opening section on the domestic life of creatures called “hobbits.”