Harakiri. My latest Zone 2-watching, trying-to-become-a-film-buff movie was this 1962 Japanese samurai film directed by Masaki Kobayashi. It’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. The cinematography is amazing; nearly every scene could be a photo you could hang up in your house. But the story and acting are what make this film great. Harakiri is set in 17th-century Japan, during an era of peace that had left thousands of samurai without masters or livelihoods, and it explores how those warriors dealt with decline, along with the sometimes brittle nature of honor culture. There’s a scene where a young ronin is forced to commit seppuku with a bamboo sword. I’m still thinking about it. Absolutely brutal. 

“Pray Without Ceasing” by Wendell Berry. Wendell Berry died this week at his farm in Port Royal, Kentucky, at age 92. He was one of my favorite writers. Jayber Crow is my favorite of his novels (I’ve recommended it before), and I’ve also enjoyed his poetry and his non-fiction about agrarian living, the importance of community, and not letting money and technology overtake our lives and dictate our values. One of my favorite short stories of his is “Pray Without Ceasing,” which appears in Fidelity: Five Stories. It takes place in Berry’s fictional town of Port William, the setting for a lot of his fiction. The story is about a guy who was shot and killed by his friend, who was drunk and despairing after mortgaging away his farm to cover his son’s debts. When a crowd gathers to avenge the murder…well, I’ll let you read it to see what happens. The story inspired one of my favorite songs, “Decent Man” by James McMurtry, son of Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry. Give the story a read and pick up some other works by Berry while you’re at it. You won’t regret it.

Osprey Atmos AG 65. Fall is here, and with it, prime backpacking season. My go-to backpack for the past several years has been the Osprey Aether Go AG (the AG stands for “anti-gravity”). The anti-gravity system is a tensioned mesh panel that suspends the pack away from your back, which keeps you nice and cool and just feels nice to wear. It’s comfortable. Osprey discontinued the AG suspension in the Aether line, but they still use it in their Atmos packs. If my Aether ever gives out, the Atmos AG 65 is what I’ll probably replace it with. If you’re looking to get into backpacking, check out our guide on how to take your first backpacking trip. Backpacking is certifiably the best form of outdoor recreation (while car camping is the worst!).

Ordinary Abundance. This fun, interactive website takes you on a scrolling tour through a modern apartment, stopping at everyday objects (a lamp, a fridge, the washing machine) to show you what people said about these things before they were invented or when they were brand new. In 1888, Edward Bellamy imagined that being able to queue up whatever music you were in the mood for, on demand, would represent the attainment of “the limit of human felicity.” An observer who was around for the advent of the telegraph called it a “perpetual miracle, which no familiarity can render commonplace.” Modern comforts and innovations now seem so ordinary that we take them for granted and walk past them without giving them a second thought. This site really puts things into perspective about how fortunate we are to be living in 2026.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published 16 Pieces of Practical Life Advice From William James.

Quote of the Week

No true man can live a half life when he has genuinely learned that it is only a half life. The other half, the higher half, must haunt him.

—Phillips Brooks

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Americans love hamburgers, and few foods have been interpreted in as many different ways. From Connecticut to Southern California and everywhere in between, cooks and grillmasters have developed their own regional takes, each with a particular ingredient or preparation methodology that sets it apart.

Regional burgers are perhaps a little less rigid than you might expect (especially when compared to regional hot dogs). While some styles have strong traditions around their toppings, most are defined less by a strict list of ingredients than by one key cooking method or signature ingredient: cheese sealed between the patties, peanut butter melted over the patty, or a pile of hot pastrami, for example.

In most cases, what matters is nailing the element that gives the burger its regional identity. Consider this a guide to the essential character of each style rather than a set of hard-and-fast rules. 

The only thing left is to either embark on the great American road trip to test them out or simply do some experimenting in your own kitchen or backyard. Dig in! 

Illustrated by Ted Slampyak

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Professor of psychology Angela Duckworth is famous for her work on grit — the combination of passion and perseverance that leads to high achievement. But she’s come to an increasing appreciation for the fact that success isn’t just a matter of the qualities inside you; it’s also driven by what’s outside you — your peers, your mentors, and even your zip code.

Today on the show, Angela, whose latest book is Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best, shares how our environments play a much bigger role in shaping us than we realize. She explains the three-box model of behavior, why relying on willpower is a fallible strategy for altering your habits, and why the most effective way to change yourself is to change what’s around you. We discuss how different situations bring out different versions of ourselves and how to shape your surroundings to encourage good habits, mitigate bad ones, and become who you want to be — whether that means rearranging what’s on your desk or moving across the country.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Angela’s previous appearance on the AoM podcast: Episode #210 — Got Grit?
• AoM Podcast #887: The Golden Rules of Success With Bob Bowman 
• AoM Podcast #1,023: Is Self-Control Overrated? With Michael Inzlicht
• Dying Breed Article: The Power of “I Like,” or Why Do People Hate the Idea of Motivation?
• AoM Article: Alexander Graham Bell’s Secret to Greater Productivity
• AoM Article: The Ceiling Word Art of Michel de Montaigne

Connect With Angela Duckworth

• Angela’s website
• Angela’s faculty page
• Angela on LinkedIn
• Angela on IG

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Transcript Coming Soon

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

On a recent episode of the AoM podcast, I talked with Jordan Grumet, a hospice doctor and the author of The Purpose Code.

In our interview, Jordan drew a distinction between what he calls “big P purpose” and “little p purpose.” While the former focuses on your why, the latter is about your what.

Big P purpose is the singular, change-the-world project many people feel they’re supposed to discover and build their lives around — the thing they were meant to do. The problem with big P purpose, Jordan says, is that a lot of people can never figure out what their overarching thing is. They spin their wheels for years searching and searching for their one true calling in life. Some even start feeling bad that they haven’t found it and experience an angst psychologists call “purpose anxiety.”

But when researchers define purpose, they’re just looking at things that give someone a sense of action, direction, and goals, and those are qualities that can be had in a much smaller, less existentially fraught form.

Little p purposes are any activities you enjoy doing for their own sake. You’d do them even if they didn’t come with pay or accolades. They’re intrinsically pleasurable pursuits that just light you up. A little p purpose could be fixing old motorcycles, collecting baseball cards, running half-marathons, or volunteering at a soup kitchen on the weekends.

You can have more than one little p purpose, and even though they’re small pursuits, they can add up to significant meaning and a lasting legacy.

When Jordan was describing little p purposes on the podcast, I kept thinking of one person who exemplified the truth of just how life-enriching they can be: my grandpa, William “Bill” Hurst.

Bill Hurst, Little P Purpose Stacker

I’ve talked about my grandpa, Bill Hurst, before on the site. I published the eulogy I gave at his funeral ten years ago. He’s a big inspiration behind AoM.

Bill was a third-generation forester who worked for the U.S. Forest Service for nearly 40 years, finishing his career as Regional Forester of the Southwestern Region, where he managed the national forests and grasslands of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma.

On paper, his Forest Service career looks like it was a big P purpose for Grandpa. And I’m sure it was. Bill was very proud of his work and his family’s legacy in helping to manage federal land and its natural resources.

But his Forest Service career wasn’t the only iron he had in the purpose fire. Outside work — and especially after retirement — Grandpa stacked together a bunch of interests for himself: hobbies, clubs, service projects, and causes.

To inspire your own pursuit of little p purposes, I’m going to walk you through those my grandpa cultivated from his 40s into his 90s.

Restoring Antique Horse-Drawn Buggies

An article the Albuquerque Journal did about my grandpa in 1972.

When he was in his 40s, Grandpa started collecting and restoring horse-drawn buggies from the 1880s to the 1910s.

Why the interest in buggies? Well, Bill grew up riding and driving a horse and buggy in Southern Utah. As he told an Albuquerque Journal reporter who did a story about him and his hobbies, “[the buggy] was the only transportation we had until I was 16 or 17, and even after Dad got a Model T, we still had the buggy.” In his early work as a forester, he’d often use a horse and buggy to get around places. So there was a nostalgia factor that drew him to this hobby.

Grandpa not only enjoyed fixing up buggies, but chasing after the parts that made the restorations possible. Restoring 19th-century buggies in the 1950s and 60s — before the advent of the internet — required a lot of on-the-ground sleuthing.

Grandpa posing with a charcoal buggy heater. You’d put charcoal in the heater, light it up, and keep it by your feet when you were driving your buggy in the cold.

If he couldn’t find a part or replacement that fit exactly, he’d have to machine something or tweak modern materials to make them work. This was another appeal of buggy restoration: the improvisation. Grandpa credited his career in the Forest Service for instilling this ability to alter and jerry-rig: “In the Forest Service you have to be self-reliant and build things yourself, so I don’t have any trouble with a piece of work,” Grandpa said in his Albuquerque Journal interview.

Restoring Phonograph Players

Grandpa with one of the phonographs he restored. He carved that ornate panel with nothing but a pocket knife.

Besides restoring antique buggies and surreys, Bill also developed a passion for restoring phonograph players. I’m sure there was a nostalgia factor with this hobby, too, but what specifically kickstarted the interest was inheriting a broken 1920s Sonora player from his grandmother. When he couldn’t find anyone to repair its broken spring, he decided to do it himself.

After plenty of old-school gumshoe work to find a replacement part, an Arizona antique dealer connected Grandpa with a parts dealer out of Richmond, VA who went by “A. Nugent.” Grandpa wrote Nugent, Nugent mailed back the spring with an invoice, and Bill got the Sonora working again. Nugent became Grandpa’s source for parts, and he was soon restoring other phonographs too.

Just as with the buggies, Grandpa often had to improvise during his phonograph restorations. For one cabinet player, the scrollwork panel that covers the horn where the sound comes out was broken, so Grandpa carved a duplicate with just his trusty pocket knife. How’s that for handy!

Several of the phonograph players Grandpa restored are still in the family. My mom has one, along with a large collection of records. I’ll be fighting my siblings for it. I want that thing!

Horse Pack Trips

When retirement came, Grandpa continued his buggy and phonograph restoration, but he also developed other little p purposes to fill his newly acquired free time.

He’d go on regular horse and mule pack trips through the mountains of the West, from New Mexico to Oregon, well into old age. He’d often go with his son or with a group called the Wilderness Trail Riders. Sometimes he went on these pack trips by himself.

Reading through his memoirs, it looks like Grandpa didn’t hang up the reins on his last pack trip until he was in his early 80s. He loved his horses and being out in nature.

Clubs and Service

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was an American male archetype called “the clubman.” This was a guy whose wallet was stuffed with membership cards to all sorts of clubs and fraternal organizations. Grandpa Hurst was definitely a clubman. Like a lot of Greatest Generation men, he was a joiner.

Grandpa belonged to the Rotary Club, the Lions Club, the Society of American Foresters, and the Society for Range Management and earned awards from all of those organizations for his service. Grandpa was also active in Scouting as an adult leader and was awarded the Silver Beaver for his years of distinguished service.

Through his involvement in these groups, Grandpa was able to scratch his itch to serve and be useful. It also provided a social outlet for his affable temperament.

Through the Rotary Club, Grandpa got involved with Meals on Wheels as a food deliverer. I remember visiting him in New Mexico as a kid and watching him go out for his deliveries. He was probably in his 80s when he was doing this, and I remember thinking, “Shouldn’t you be the one getting food delivered to you? You’re the old guy.” But Grandpa was spry and liked to be helpful. He understood being old often meant being lonely, so he thought it was important to spend time with his elderly, less mobile peers.

Staying Connected to Conservation

Even after retiring from the Forest Service, Grandpa stayed in the conservation game. He was a charter member and past president of the Society for Range Management. He continued writing papers to help influence policy on the state and federal level. He’d regularly meet with congressmen and governors about forest and land issues. He spent several decades of his retirement organizing his papers and diaries about his Forest Service work so they could be donated to Utah State University. 

Protecting the Kaibab Squirrel

When my grandpa was in his late 90s, he started an advocacy group for a squirrel.

When Bill was nine years old, he encountered a Kaibab squirrel, a subspecies of the tassel-eared Abert’s squirrel found on the Kaibab Plateau in Northern Arizona and nowhere else on earth. He took a keen interest in the critter from then on and looked out for it during his years as Regional Forester.

As he approached his 100th birthday, he rounded up some friends and family and formed the Friends of the Kaibab Squirrel, a group dedicated to educating government agencies and citizens about the animal so its population wouldn’t decline. It’s still going. You can buy a lapel pin to support the organization.

Grandpa Hurst’s Little P Purposes Left an Outsized Legacy

One of Jordan’s arguments for pursuing little p purposes (besides being intrinsically enjoyable) is that they’re one of the best ways to find and foster community — and that community is one of the best ways to find joy and meaning.

When you pursue something that lights you up, other people take notice. People want to mentor you and learn from you and collaborate with you. Little p purposes attract others and bring people into your life.

That was Grandpa’s life exactly. When his buggy restoring pastime got write-ups in a farming magazine and the Albuquerque Journal, strangers started calling to offer him buggies. It connected him to an Oklahoma City craftsman who restored buggies for the Cowboy Hall of Fame and to collectors all over New Mexico and Utah. His phonograph restoration hobby turned that mysterious parts dealer in Richmond, “A. Nugent,” into a pen pal and made Grandpa the guy the local paper’s help hotline sent its phonograph questions to. His range society work had him rubbing shoulders with everyone from ranchers to U.S. senators. His Meals on Wheels volunteering kept him in regular contact with other seniors in his area.

What’s more, my grandfather’s life affirms the argument Jordan also makes that pursuing your little p purposes often creates the legacy many people are looking to leave when they search for their big P purpose.

The small contributions Bill continued to make to conservation during retirement definitely left a mark. And watching Grandpa tinker and volunteer and squirrel-advocate his way through four decades of retirement shaped how I and the rest of his grandkids think about what a good life looks like. He kept himself busy being useful and being curious about the world and other people for all of his life. When I grow up, I want to be like my Grandpa Hurst.

Small Purposes Add Up

If you’ve spent years trying to figure out your life’s purpose and keep coming up empty, my grandpa’s example points to a different way to go about it. Quit hunting for the one big thing you were meant to do and start pursuing some little things instead.

If you’re wondering where to start looking for your little p purposes, Jordan suggests thinking back to what lit you up as a kid. If you look at my grandpa’s little p purposes, most of them were sparked in his childhood. He grew up with buggies and phonograph players and found an itch to restore them. He met a rare squirrel when he was nine, and it inspired him to start an advocacy group for it when he was 100.

Bill Hurst’s life shows that when you follow your small interests, you can create a big, meaningful life for yourself.

Be sure to listen to my podcast with Jordan Grumet about how to find your little p purposes:

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

In the two-way dance of social interactions, there’s plenty you can do to act smoothly yourself — from smiling and giving good eye contact, to asking good questions and demonstrating genuine interest.

But there are also ways to make things as easy as possible for the other person to execute their end of the exchange. Instead of making them feel awkward and really sweat to get to know you, you facilitate their social prowess. This not only enhances their “performance,” but makes the mutual interaction more enjoyable and successful for the both of you.

Here’s how to give a new acquaintance a helping hand:

Wear a Conversation Piece

One of the things people struggle with most is simply initiating conversation in the first place. They don’t know what to say to break the ice.

You can make it easier for folks to approach you by wearing something that naturally elicits a compliment or question. Not something cheesy or kitschy — while people may notice an outright novelty item and ask you about it, they’ll have already formed an impression of you as a bit of a clown. Rather, display something like a watch, tie, or lapel pin that’s subtly different or interesting, or a t-shirt emblazoned with a band, team, or place someone may also have an affinity for or want to know more about. From experience, I can also say that having a mustache is a can’t-miss conversation starter.

Make Your Name Easy to Remember

Exchanging names is typically Act I in meeting someone new. Yet we all know from experience how easy it is to forget someone’s name literally 10 seconds after they say it. Once this happens to someone, the realization will nag at the back of their mind, distracting them from the conversation. They will also be more hesitant to say your name again and will feel less confident about interacting the next time they run into you.

It’s so easy to forget a name because the stress of small talk blocks it from being absorbed. The following tips work against this phenomenon, and can help your new acquaintance more readily remember your name:

Say it clearly. This seems like common sense, but when you tell others your name, do they often respond with “Huh?” or “What’s that?” If so, you need to articulate better (watch the mumbling), and maybe slow down some. If you’re in a noisy place, make sure you say your name with sufficient volume.

If your name is foreign or unusual, you’ll want to say it even more slowly and deliberately. Communication expert Carol Fleming recommends prefacing your offering of it with “My name is quite difficult for most people.” Since “you’ve warned them about your name, they’ll put extra effort into listening to it.”

If your name rhymes with something, pairing it with that can help too. “My name is Gower, which rhymes with tower.”

Say “My name is . . .” rather than “I’m . . .”. Fleming recommends the former phrasing because it “gives the additional information that a name is coming, so the other person can be ready to receive it. The latter could go in any direction: I’m leaving now, I’m glad to meet you, I’m excited about the food, and so on.”

Add something about yourself. Part of the reason names are hard for people to remember is that they don’t yet have context to situate them in; there’s no mental scaffolding on which to hang the identifier. Therefore, Fleming advises, whenever someone asks you what your name is, also offer something about yourself. For example:

• “My name is Sam Lewis. My family just moved here from Toledo, and we’re looking for a new church to attend.”
• “My name is Jeff Jackson, and I was formerly in the accounting department but have been transferred here temporarily to work on the Acme Co. project.”

Adding a piece of information to your introduction not only makes your name more memorable, but it also gives the other person something to ask you about (“What prompted the move?”), helping them continue the conversation.

Give Expansive, Specifics-Filled Answers to People’s Questions 

Coming up with questions during conversation is a function of the information the other person shares. You tell me you’re from California, and I ask which part. You tell me you work in marketing, and I ask how you got into that field.

The less information you give when answering other people’s questions, therefore, the harder you make it for them to generate a good follow-up question, and the more likely it is that things will descend into awkward silence.

It would be nice if we lived in a world where everyone knew how to ask the kind of open-ended questions that elicit more expansive, information-filled answers, rather than close-ended questions that elicit just a single word reply, but alas, we do not.

Instead, chances are that a person you strike up a conversation with will primarily ask you the latter type: “Are you liking this class?” “Are you new here?” If you take the conversational bait and answer with a single word — “Yeah” — they’ll be lost as to what to ask you next.  

So give people a helping hand by offering more expansive, detail-rich answers, even if they ask you a closed-ended question. Don’t prattle on, mind you, but move beyond “Yes” or “No” to offer a full sentence or two. And pepper your responses with specifics on names, places, etc., as generalities give the other person little to latch onto.

• “Yeah, this class has been great. I was a history major, but taking Philosophy 101 convinced me to switch, and I’m really glad I did.”
• “No, you just haven’t seen me around because I just got back from doing a sabbatical in Germany.”

Hopefully, you’ve given them enough fodder to easily ask a follow-up question: “Who did you have for Philosophy 101?” “What did you do in Germany?”

Describe Your Job in Terms People Can Understand

Just as giving one-word answers throws a roadblock into the conversation, so does describing your job in a vague, confusing, or technical way. Asking what someone does is usually done very early in the conversation, and if the other person doesn’t know how to respond to your answer, the nascent exchange can grind to a halt.

For example, instead of just saying “I’m in finance” or explaining your job in venture capital with lots of insider buzz words, say: “I’m in the finance/investing world. I work for a venture capital firm that, instead of looking for “sexy” tech startups, finds family-owned companies in ‘boring’ industries like HVAC or billboards and helps the company to expand or the owners to retire. I’m the one who looks for companies that might be the right fit for us to invest in or buy.”

When you explain your job, it helps to supply the answers to three questions: What do you do? For whom? And how? In conveying this information, the other person will understand more about your work, and will be able to more easily ask you follow-up questions about it — keeping the good vibes of your convo rolling.

With our archives now 4,000+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in August 2019.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism by Robert D. Richardson. I’ve been on a real William James kick lately. I’m working on a piece about James for Dying Breed, so I’ve been reading through all of his writings. I also read this biography of James by Robert Richardson. Kate had long recommended Richardson, as he wrote two of her all-time favorite biographies (his lives of Emerson and Thoreau), but this was my first time reading him. He didn’t disappoint. Richardson does a bang-up job showing how his subjects developed their ideas and how their experiences shaped their philosophies. And James had plenty of experiences to draw from. He dealt with depression and other illnesses all his life, but he managed to take an optimistic, action-oriented stance toward life nonetheless. This book is incredibly readable, and Richardson not only highlights James’ insights, but offers his own in describing them. You’ll feel edified and smarter when you’ve finished it.

Maple Creemees. Our family recently got back from spending a week in Vermont, our second favorite state in the Union. We canoed down the Connecticut River, took a 30-mile e-bike ride through bucolic farms and small towns (like Kate, I’ve become a real e-bike convert), and summited a green mountain. But one of the highlights of the trip, and every trip to VT, is the maple creemee: what Vermonters call soft serve, flavored with real maple syrup. I had a maple creemee every day of the trip. The best I’ve had is at Tozier’s, a roadside restaurant in Bethel that’s been slinging creemees since 1947. You order at the walk-up window and eat at picnic tables under a stand of old maple trees. Great after an afternoon of tubing down the White River.

Thrasher by Brandon Flowers. Back in July, I shared “Plans,” a single off Brandon Flowers’ new solo album, Thrasher. Well, the whole album dropped last week, and it’s been getting a lot of playtime while I’m driving and working out. Flowers goes country on this album. He grew up listening to Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings in small-town Utah, and he recorded Thrasher at the historic RCA Studio A in Nashville with some of Music City’s best session players. “Tiger’s Blood” is probably my favorite. So nostalgic! “Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?” reminds me of an existential version of Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.” And “An American Dream” has an incredible chorus. Lots of other great songs on the album; Flowers’ sincerity and storytelling make him a songwriter unlike any other. Go listen to it. 

All This Staring at Our Faces Is Messing With Our Heads. I’ve always had an aversion to taking selfies and doing video calls. I don’t want to stare at my face all the time, and I’ve long thought that constantly seeing your own image makes you unhealthily self-conscious. It just feels weird. This New York Times essay by Catherine Shannon put words to my long-held video-call allergy. She points out that for nearly all of human history, people rarely saw their own reflection (mirrors weren’t even common household items until the mid-1800s), while today we can hardly avoid it. All this looking at ourselves probably isn’t good for us. Shannon mentions a 2010 study out of Italy where researchers had people stare at their own faces in a dimly lit mirror. After a while, the subjects started seeing deformed versions of their faces (and even strangers, animals, and their own parents looking back at them). The precipitous rise of reflection-gazing may explain why the prevalence of body dysmorphia and plastic surgery has increased — among women and men alike. 

Quote of the Week

If thou wouldst preserve a sound body, use fasting and walking; if a healthful soul, fasting and praying. Walking exercises the body; praying exercises the soul; fasting cleanses both.

—Francis Quarles

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Snacks are the bane of almost every attempt to eat well. Meals are easy enough to plan, and with a bit of seasoning or sauce of some kind, you can make almost anything taste good. Snacks are a whole other ballgame, though; when your options boil down to raw vegetables or packaged, highly processed treats (as is often the case), we all know which one we’re more likely to reach for. Throw kids in the mix, and the challenge becomes even harder. 

That’s why I like these no-bake protein energy balls: with peanut butter, oats, honey, and even a little chocolate, they taste like a dense cookie while their nutritional profile makes them a great option for a mid-morning strengthener or an after-school snack. The whole family genuinely likes them, and they’re affordable and easy to make. 

Here’s how to whip some up; in just 15 minutes, you can be well on your way to better snacking. 

Nutrition

The recipe makes 15 medium-sized balls, with each one containing roughly 140 calories, 14 grams of carbohydrates, 5 grams of protein, and 6 grams of fat. The numbers are estimates and will vary depending on the brands and quantities of ingredients you use and how large you make them. In our household, adults tend to eat 1-2 at a time, while the kids eat 2-3 (they work well for hungry kids who need some calories and good fats). 

The oats and honey provide carbs for energy, peanut butter and chia seeds add fat and fiber (plus omega-3s from the chia seeds), and the protein powder provides some satiating heft. The balls aren’t as sturdy as a protein bar but are more substantial than a granola bar — they’re a tasty, portable snack with a useful mix of energy and protein.

Cost

These homemade protein energy balls are considerably cheaper than buying similar products at stores and cafes (I’ve seen these offered in more and more coffee shops). Using average prices, I estimate the full batch at roughly $5 — just 30–35 cents per ball. For comparison, a single energy bite or protein ball from a cafe or grocery store will often run $1-$3, depending on the size and ingredients. This homemade version is quite a bargain! 

Portability

These protein energy balls work well on the go. They’re very portable in any kind of bag or container and not sticky at all (though they can get sticky if you add too much liquid). While you want to keep them refrigerated at home, they’ll hold together at room temperature. Because they contain milk, they should be treated as perishable but are fine being out for a few hours at school or on the trail. Just don’t leave them out for a whole day.

Ingredients

Makes 15 medium-sized balls

• 1 ½ cups old fashioned oats 
• ½ cup protein powder of choice 
• ½ tsp cinnamon 
• 1 tbsp chia seeds 
• ⅓ cup chocolate chips (or dried fruit of choice) 
• ½ cup peanut butter (or other nut/sunflower butter)
• 3 tbsp honey 
• 1 tsp vanilla extract 
• 3-4 tbsp milk (any milk or even water is fine)   

Directions

I like to make these with a food processor; you can actually use a mixing bowl and spatula, but it gets pretty thick/dense.  

1. Add the dry ingredients (oats through chocolate chips) to your food processor and blend for 5-10 seconds until it’s evenly chopped up and combined. 

2. Add the peanut butter, honey, and vanilla to the food processor. Blend for 10-15 seconds until it’s starting to come together — it’ll still be quite crumbly at this point. 

3. Add the milk — start with 3 tbsp. Process for 5-10 seconds; if it comes together when you squeeze, like a crumbly cookie dough, then you’re good. If it won’t hold at all, add another ½-1 tbsp of milk. 

4. Refrigerate for at least 45 minutes up to a few hours. If it sets too long, it can become too hard to form into balls. 

5. Form into 15 medium-sized balls, like a large cookie dough ball about to go in the oven. You can, of course, change the size as desired. 

Refrigerate in an air-tight container; they’ll keep for a handful of days. If you won’t get through them in that time, store the balls in the freezer and grab a couple as you’re heading out for the day or packing snacks. 

Customize

This is one of those recipes where substitutions are easy and encouraged.

Change the nut butter. Peanut butter is my favorite here, but we did SunButter when the kids were in a nut-free classroom. You can also go with almond or cashew butter. 

Swap out the chocolate. Use any dried fruit rather than chocolate if you want slightly fewer calories; though on the sugar front, dried fruit is actually sometimes worse.   

Change the sweetener. Honey is our go-to here, but maple syrup also works. You can also skip it; the honey mostly acts as a binder, so you’ll just need to add more liquid to compensate. 

Increase the protein. If you want more protein in the balls, simply up the amount of protein powder. You can add another ¼–⅓ cup and then add more milk as necessary to get the texture right.

If you want to increase the protein density — more protein per calorie — add extra protein powder while cutting back a bit on the oats and/or peanut butter. The result may be a slightly drier ball.

A Snack for Everyone 

These homemade protein energy balls are inexpensive, portable, easy to customize, and, perhaps most importantly, are something you and the whole family will actually want to eat.

I don’t love protein bombs or “health” snacks in general. For me, these hit the sweet spot between supplement and treat: a small, tasty package of energy and protein.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

The ancient Greeks believed the human soul had three parts: reason, appetite, and something called thumos. Thumos is difficult to translate into English. It encompasses anger, noble spiritedness, pride, ambition, a sense of honor, and the drive to act. The Greeks thought it was essential to living a life of manly virtue, and my guest thinks we could use a lot more of it.

His name is Mike LeBlanc, and he’s a decorated Marine, a Harvard Business School grad, a tech founder, and the author of What If Anger Is the Answer? Today on the show, Mike and I discuss how the angry energy of thumos can help you close the gap between who you are and who you should be. We discuss why physical training helps cultivate thumos, how it can be an aid in overcoming appetites, overthinking, passivity, and cynicism, and the role it can play in being an effective leader.

Resources Related to the Podcast

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

As summer winds down, folks are taking their last vacations before school is back in session (if it isn’t already) and fall arrives.

When it comes to the logistics of pulling off a vacation, most of the attention is spent on preparing for the trip, and it certainly helps to nail your departure plans. (Here’s a checklist to consult of 39 things to do before you leave.)

In contrast, very little attention is paid to the logistics of coming back from a vacation. But I’ve noticed over the years that the return poses its own logistical and psychological challenges. You’ve got luggage to unpack, no food in the house, and an inbox of a bajillion work emails waiting for you. On top of that, you’re probably pooped from the travel back home.

With a little bit of foresight, you can make your re-entry from vacation back into the real world go more smoothly. Here’s your game plan.

Take Care of Stuff Before You Leave

Post-return peace still begins with prior-to-departure action.

If I’ve learned anything from my decades of taking trips, it’s that the worst part of coming home is the stuff you didn’t deal with before you left.

So the day before you leave, knock out the chores that future-you would hate to come home to.

I take out all the trash, including the little cans in the bathrooms, and run the garbage disposal. There’s nothing worse than walking into a house that’s been sealed up for a week and getting hit with the smell of sauerkraut that’s been sitting in the kitchen sink. Run the dishwasher and empty it, so you come home to clean dishes and an empty dishwasher.

If your budget allows for it, plan to have a housekeeper clean your house while you’re away. There’s nothing better than coming home to a completely clean house and climbing into a bed with fresh sheets.

Have a plan for dinner. Buy some frozen pizzas that you can pop into the oven. It beats having to stop somewhere for food after leaving the airport instead of being able to go right home.

Come Back From Your Vacation on Saturday

The most popular days to return from vacation are Saturday and Sunday, and there is debate over which is better: the Saturday crowd likes having a buffer day before returning to work on Monday; the Sunday advocates say you might as well get another non-PTO-requiring vacation day, and you can just bite the bullet and go back to work the day after you get home.

I’m with the Saturday crowd, as it offers two distinct advantages.

The first is that Saturday is a less popular day for traveling, so the airport will be a little less congested and plane tickets are often a little cheaper, too.

The second is that when you come home on Saturday, having a buffer day to rest and get your life back in order before returning to work on Monday (more on this in a second) really does pay off.

Yes, you could have had Saturday as an additional day at your vacation destination, but having a buffer day offers more ROI. Research has shown that when it comes to people’s perception of an experience, its duration hardly registers, while how it ends matters a lot. Returning from a trip on Sunday and immediately pivoting, tired and out of sorts, into a cold open at work the next day is more likely to sour the memory of your trip. Giving yourself a soft, relaxed landing on Saturday is more likely to preserve a positive overall feeling about your trip — and about traveling in general.

Use Your Buffer Day to Get Your House in Order

Even if your travel plans don’t allow you to come home on Saturday, consider creating a buffer day another way: Take the day after you return off from work, even if it requires using another day of PTO.

Traveling can be exhausting, so you and your family probably need some extra rest and some time to get your regular life running again. A buffer day allows for that.

Use it to catch up on sleep, unpack, do the built-up laundry, hit the grocery store, take care of chores, and plan out the rest of the week. Basically, do the kind of things you’d do on a Reset Day. It’s not a fun day. It’s a boring, get-your-house-in-order day that allows you to re-find traction and hit the ground running when you wake up the next morning.

Tackle Your Inbox Strategically

One of the biggest challenges of coming back from vacation is managing the pile-up of email that’s come your way while you were gone. The temptation is to start from the oldest emails and slog your way through every last one of them until you’re done. Instead, give yourself 25 minutes to get through as many emails as you can. The hard stop makes the backlog more manageable.

To make the process efficient, first skim through your email subject lines and immediately delete the ones that don’t need your attention; a good number can probably go right into the trash. Then prioritize the most important emails and knock those out first. The rest you can get to later.

Make the Good Vacation Vibes Last

We go on vacations to relax and rejuvenate. But if you’re like me, you’ve probably experienced a little post-vacation blues.

To counter the post-vacation letdown and keep the good vibes going, do some things to keep the memory of your trip alive. Scroll through the photos you took while on vacation. Talk about your trip with your family around the dinner table. Put that souvenir you bought while in the Rocky Mountains on your desk.

Also, before the post-vacation glow wears off, get another fun thing on the calendar. It could be another trip, even a small one, but it doesn’t have to be. It could just be a campout with your kids or a get-together with friends. Research suggests that a big part of the happiness we get from trips and events comes from simply looking forward to them. Partake in the art of anticipation, and ensure that as one good time comes to an end, there’s another on the horizon.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Years ago, I found myself at Kate’s ten-year high school reunion. As I surveyed the room of her former classmates, I noticed a dichotomy in the trajectories that the males and females had taken. By and large, the women had kept themselves up; they still seemed vibrant, engaged, and in shape, even if they had had a few kids by that time. The years had not been as kind to the majority of dudes, however. Many were already overweight, out-of-shape, and looking pretty schlubby and dead behind the eyes. 

It was then that a moniker for the condition that seemed to be besetting these men came to my mind: Soft Suburban Dad Syndrome.

In the years since, I’ve noticed SSDS manifest itself in plenty of my peers, and from time to time, unfortunately, in myself as well. Soft Suburban Dad Syndrome develops in the decades after a man graduates from college, gets married, has kids, establishes his career, and, whether or not he literally settles down in the suburbs, moves further and further into the outskirts of a dynamic and adventurous life. With the passage of time, and the eroding of youth, the masses of men fairly give up on life and lose their edge. 

Marriage, family, white collar work, suburbia, and adulthood in general don’t invariably lead to a degradation in virility, vitality, and manliness. But unless an intentional, active effort is made to cultivate a countervailing force, such responsibilities and routines tend to lead to a busyness, inertia, stagnation, and malaise that can enervate one’s interests, mollify one’s penchant for challenge and growth, and extinguish the fire in the belly.

The components of that countervailing force have been thoroughly explained in AoM’s most classic and epic article: Semper Virilis: A Roadmap to Manhood in the 21st Century. But a helpful first step to following that roadmap is diagnosing whether you’re suffering from Soft Suburban Dad Syndrome yourself, and which symptoms you most need to address. So below we offer 50 questions for self-examination, organized into the different areas of life where SSDS can crop up. Read; reflect; figure out where you want to push back on the domesticating defaults many guys sink into as they transition from young buck to mature man; and decide how you might change in order to maintain your strength — physical, mental, and social — into old age.

Physical

Literal softness constitutes the very tangible epicenter of Soft Suburban Dad Syndrome. As the post-college years go by, men often become more and more sedentary. Testosterone, muscle, and energy go down, while body fat goes up. This can turn into a negative cycle, where the more obese you become, the less you want to move, and the less you move, the more weight you gain.

Maintaining your physical prowess is more than a matter of health; strength and toughness (two qualities which are both vital, and not identical) affects every other aspect of your life as well, from your confidence and how you show up at work and in relationships, to what activities and interests you’re capable of pursuing, to the maintenance of your psychological well-being. As such, getting and staying in good physical condition represents the very foundation of fighting SSDS and leading a vital, fulfilling life.

1. Do you do at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day?

2. Have you gotten your testosterone tested — and is it at a healthy level?

3. Is your waist bigger than 40 inches?

4. Can you hold a squat for 30 seconds?

5. Can you hang from a bar for 30 seconds?

6. Can you do at least five pull-ups?

7. Can you pick up your body weight and carry it for distance?

8. Can you standing long jump your own height?

9. Can you bench press your bodyweight?

10. Can you deadlift 150% of your bodyweight?

11. Can you get off the ground without using your hands?

12. What is the ratio between the time you spend watching other men play sports and the time you spend playing sports yourself?

13. When was the last time you pushed yourself so hard you couldn’t help but put your hands on your knees?

14. When was the last time you did a flat-out sprint?

15. When was the last time you crawled on the ground?

16. When was the last time you jumped up to something? Down from something?

17. When was the last time you climbed something other than a ladder?

18. When was the last time you did an explosive movement — kettlebell swing, plyometrics, etc? 

19. When was the last time you felt you couldn’t do one more repetition of a weightlifting exercise, but dug deep and ground out another rep anyway?

20. Do you spend at least an hour of time outside each day, or do you spend more time inside than the average prison inmate?

21. When was the last time you did a workout outside a climate-controlled building?

22. When was the last time you swam in a natural body of water?

23. How many miles did you walk over non-man-made surfaces last week?

24. How many miles do you think you could walk in a day — could you make it fifty?

25. When was the last time you did something that truly made you physically uncomfortable?

Mental

The ironic thing about Soft Suburban Dad Syndrome, is that things soften up . . . because they harden up. With age, a sort of slow, progressive process of petrification takes place; not only do our physical movements become constricted and calcified, but so does our thinking. 

When you were young, you probably had deep discussions with your friends, journaled your reflections, read, studied, pondered — and changed and refined your ideas as a result. Unfortunately, most people feel that once they get their college diploma, their life’s education is done. They stop learning; they start passively accepting ready-made answers from the media; they outsource their thinking to others. Because they reject new mental inputs, their ideas become stagnant and eventually set like cement.

Learning shouldn’t be a one-and-done thing that ends with your formal schooling, but a lifelong pursuit. Keeping your mind sharp means committing to being an ever-curious autodidact, no matter your age.

26. How often do you feel bored?

27. When was the last time you changed your opinion about something?

28. When was the last time you read an entire book?

29. When was the last time you read a work of philosophy?

30. When was the last time you read, and finished, a book you truly found challenging?

31. When was the last time you spent more than five minutes, without distraction, simply thinking about an idea?

32. When was the last time you wrote something, just because you wanted to — a poem, an essay, a journal entry?

33. When was the last time you learned a new skill?

34. Do you have a hobby?

35. Do you engage in any pursuits you can sincerely call “creative”?

Social

In high school and college, it’s easy to have a robust social circle; you’re surrounded by peers all the time, and don’t need to put in much effort to maintain friendships. In many ways, this experience “spoils” men; having never learned to be intentional with relationships while growing up, they struggle in adulthood to make and keep friends. 

When work, spouse, and kids fill your life, it takes truly deliberate effort to maintain relationships outside the family unit. Absent this effort, men tend to let friendships fall by the wayside, relying exclusively on their wives for social interaction and emotional support. Such a dynamic is fragile, unsatisfying, and contrary to the male make-up, which evolved to spend ample time in a “gang” of other men. 

36. You still count your buddies from high school and college as your best friends — but have you actually kept in regular contact with them?

37. When was the last time you called or texted an old friend just to catch up?

38. Do you have a few close, local friends who you can do things with on a day-to-day basis?

39. If you had a problem, do you have a friend you could call up to talk about it?

40. Are you a part of, or have tried to start, a slightly more formal group of men organized around some activity or interest?

Miscellaneous

Not all the areas in which a man can fall victim to Soft Suburban Dad Syndrome and in which he’ll want to maintain his edge fall neatly into the above categories. But these questions are equally worth reflection:

41. When was the last time you took a genuine risk, whether social, financial, professional, physical, or otherwise?

42. When was the last time you did something that truly made you nervous?

43. When was the last time you undertook an outing/trip you could legitimately describe as an adventure?

44. Do you have future plans for undertaking something that could legitimately be described as an adventure?

45. How many hours a day are you on some kind of screen?

46. If you made a list of all the tactical, survival, and DIY skills you’re adept at, how long would that list be?

47. Do you seek to live simply and minimally, or have you accumulated a lot of stuff that weighs you down?

48. When was the last time you entered a competition — athletic or otherwise? 

49. Do you currently have any goals you’re working towards?

50. Do you have a strong sense of your life’s purpose?

Fighting Soft Suburban Dad Syndrome doesn’t mean trying to approach every stage of life exactly as you did as a young man. A man’s life cycle has distinct seasons, and it’s unwise to ignore the changes in mood, desires, number/extent of responsibilities, and simple physiological realities that each season brings. As you age, you’ll find certain activities more or less rewarding than you once did; you’ll have less to gain and more to lose in taking risks; you’ll understand more about what you actually like to do, want to do, and can do. Nonetheless, achieving real fulfillment across every season is premised on finding new horizons befitting the stage you’re in, not letting change lead to stagnation, and staying physically and mentally sharp, socially connected, and ever engaged in the grand game of life.

With our archives now 4,000+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in August 2021.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.