She was an elegant lady in her mid-70s. Blonde, voluminous hair, impeccably dressed, with a slim figure. I was sitting in the hotel lobby, writing while waiting for my train. I had seen this woman the night before: At dinner, where she had walked around, smiled at everyone, and taken a few bites from the salad buffet.

“That’s the CEO!” I had told my partner, recognizing her from one of the explainer posters in the check-in area. Her name was Elisabeth Gürtler. As part of a long and complex history, the Gürtler family had taken over the famous “Hotel Sacher,” named after perhaps the world’s most well-known chocolate cake, in the 1930s. After multiple generational handovers and two premature deaths, Elisabeth found herself running the place alone with two teenage children in the 1990s—which she ended up doing for 25 years.

And now, ten years after her retirement, here she was. In the lobby of one of their now three luxurious hotels, kneeling on one of the couches, rearranging the flowers in a big vase. “Do you need help, madam?” one of the bellhops asked her. “No no, I get along fine, but look, this table over there. That needs to be rearranged and cleaned up. And tell the laundry section we still have plenty of what they need in that cupboard over there. No need to buy any additional ones.”

Elisabeth Gürtler has been through a lot, and she no doubt stands at the pinnacle of Austrian society for it. Still, instead of resting on her laurels or cashing in on her good name, she walks the premises. Fixes things. Puts love into the details that make a great hotel more than a place to stay—and quietly smiles at her guests all throughout.

Humility is choosing to do what’s right even when no one might see it, and I can’t think of a better way to stay young at heart. That’s what I learned from the CEO who arranged the flowers.

“Which electric tooth brush are you using?” she asked me. “The one with the round head? Oh, that’s no good. You should switch to one with a rectangular one. Better for the gums.”

Every time I go to the dentist, I get more homework. “Use this special floss once a week.” “Scrape your tongue.” “Apply fluoride every now and then.” It’s as if I had nothing to do all day except clean my teeth. Beyond the obvious upsells, however, their advice is often conflicting. Not just between one dentist and another but even in the same practice. “Oh, that was six months ago. Now, there’s a new study!”

Different people will feel healthy under different conditions, and different people need different conditions to actually be healthy. That makes for infinite combinations—and health a very subjective issue. If even doctors constantly argue about what’s best and change their minds every few months, finding universal rules is nearly impossible. Then, there’s the issue of perception.

One person will consider themselves healthy with a broken arm and a wheatgrass allergy, others will feel sick at the slightest sniffle. In reality, our health always lives on a spectrum. But sick/not sick is easier to process, and so how healthy you feel depends largely on your outlook. Optimistic people might end up actually healthier simply because they feel healthier more of the time.

Compared to five years ago, my dental routine has improved by a factor of ten or so. I now use an electric toothbrush that does the correct motions automatically, floss every night, and do some fluoride treatment once a week. I even got a mouth guard to combat grinding my teeth at night. But somewhere, there needs to be a line.

How much of your life’s time are you willing to dedicate to cleaning your teeth? Repeat this question for food, exercising, sleeping, and a bunch of other areas, and you’ll have a system, or at least a place to start. Your answers will change anyway. Oh, and they’re entirely subjective, too. Just like health.

In Netflix’ adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials Mystery, protagonist Lady Eileen Brent, nicknamed “Bundle,” chases lead after lead in the murder of her almost-husband-to-be. Bundle is bubbly, outgoing, and curious by nature. She also won’t take no for an answer.

Her character makes Bundle very effective at sussing out the details of a crime that leaves ever more bodies in its wake. It also makes her very obvious. But Bundle does not care about targets on her back, and so she continues haunting Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Battle, who’s the one officially charged with the investigation.

Battle is a man of observation more so than words. For the most part, he doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything. Unsurprisingly, Bundle confronts him more than once. At one point, while figuring out the circumstances of a mystery attacker’s nightly escape from the manor at which all suspects are staying, Bundle yet again walks right into Battle’s crime scene.

“What do you think about Sir Oswald?” she asks him straight up. It is here that, perhaps for the first time, someone other than her mother reminds Bundle it can pay to wait: “Now, I think a great many things, Lady Eileen,” Battle says, “but until thinking becomes knowing, then I prefer not to say them out loud.”

She only blinks for a second, but Bundle is, indeed, startled. Quickly, she collects herself and returns to her usual wit: “Ah! A very novel approach. Mmm. I do hope it catches on.” Still, you can see it on her face: Bundle is thinking—and whatever her gut is telling her about Battle’s suggested approach, she is not ready to make up her mind out loud.

By the time all is revealed, Bundle seems to have slightly altered her forensic methods. Still, the adjustment is not quite enough to blow this particular case wide open, and she misses the most important detail. Alas, Bundle is young, and more crime is afoot—a lady has a license to learn!

Time is rarely bad fuel for a mind trying to crack a tough nut. Let’s be deliberate about when we share our hypotheses with whom—for until thinking becomes knowing, some thoughts are best left unspoken.

When I feel down, exhausted, or sad, I go back to my comfort art. It could be watching Star Wars, Cowboy Bebop, or How I Met Your Mother for the tenth time. It could be browsing a familiar Youtuber’s channel. Or re-reading my highlights from one of my favorite books.

Learning or engaging with new art is also relaxing. But it’s a different kind. Your brain is still working. Absorbing. Processing. Sometimes, there’s nothing like the familiar to make us feel like we’re regaining a little bit of control. To know what’s next and still look forward to it arriving.

Repetition is also part of learning. So even when you repeat the entertainment, you’re still picking up new nuances. And if not? Then you’re still recovering.

You can’t waste anything. So don’t feel bad for revisiting your comfort art.

It was a surprising request. My fiancée isn’t usually eager for art supplies. But when she said she really wished we had a greater variety of colored felt tip pens, I ordered a set for her. A few weeks later, I found out why.

It was my birthday weekend, and we were headed to a yet-unknown-to-me destination. On the train platform, my partner handed me a yellow envelope. “The Amazing Race,” it read, just like the scavenger-hunt-around-the-world TV show we like watching together. “Ohhh boy!” I said. “Here we go!!”

On the show, the two-person teams consistently receive clues about where they are headed next, how to get there, and which challenges they must complete before arriving at the “pit stop” of that leg of the journey. Each of these clues came in a yellow envelope with bold black letters, a homemade version of which I was now holding in my hand.

I opened it, and out came a hand-drawn clue. Same colors, same style, same layout as on the show—except all drawn in felt-tip pens. It was beautiful. “Route Info,” it read. The clue was in a vertical layout with a blue box at the top. Symbols indicated the different modes of transportation, and then, beneath them, there was the description. “So this one will tell me where we’ll go, huh?” “Board the train towards Mittenwald. Decipher the word scramble to figure out your final stop.”

I later received another clue on the train, and, for a few hours, we truly felt as if we were on the show. The tables on the train even came with a map we could explore, which was like free hot chocolate on top.

The sweet gift reminded me of my childhood. When we were younger, my sister and I used to do this all the time. If we saw a show or game on TV we wanted to be a part of, we simply remade the ingredients. We drew our own cards, imitated as best as we could, and even added our own rules where we felt like it. Most of the time this was more than good enough. Probably, it was more fun than being on the actual show would have been. As it turns out, 25 years later, the same recipe still works.

Time has its ways of gnawing at us. Don’t let it dull your imagination. Reinvent your dreams on a small scale, and make time for more make-believe—especially if all it takes is a set of colored felt-tip pens.

The best nonfiction books are the ones where the author spent a decade or more becoming the book before writing it. That’s why sequels often fall short. How could you possibly come up with the same amount of insight a year later? Of course, publishers know whatever comes on the heels of a mega-hit will meet relative success regardless, and so they push their bestselling authors to do more.

Greg McKeown published Essentialism in 2014. It sold incredibly well. Still, he waited for seven years before releasing a follow-up. And while Effortless was decent, it didn’t come anywhere near Essentialism—neither in sales nor in quality.

Books are the obvious example, but the same idea applies on a smaller scale, too. Many people join social media networks only to teach others how to succeed in gaining reach on such platforms. But if all you’ve ever talked about is social media, how can we know you’re any good at using them to reach anyone else but a fellow marketer? The same applies to writing platforms and Youtube. Do you have more to talk about than the medium you’re using? Or is it all just a means to make money?

If you want to share ideas from interesting books, first, you’ll have to read some. Your waffle recipes will land a lot better if you’ve actually used them to make hundreds of waffles. You can document your journey, take pictures, and share which quirky events happened along the way! A generic “how to flip condos” tutorial isn’t cool. What’s cool is seeing how you flipped a condo. How you spent hundreds of hours searching for the right place in the right location, renovating it, and going through the listing and sale process.

Even the tiniest tale is more magical when it draws on at least a morsel of experience. I can make hot chocolate come alive because I’ve prepared it many times. I spilled it in my microwave, so I can talk about that, too. Experience needn’t be big to be meaningful when you share it. But first, become the story.

Three years ago, I bought a nice bottle of chocolate liqueur at the Turin airport. It was modeled after the Mole Antonelliana, perhaps the town’s most famous monument. Sleek glass, beautiful Italian design—I thought it would make for a great display piece once it was empty.

The liqueur itself was okay. We used it mainly as chocolate sauce for vanilla ice cream on occasion. But those occasions were rare, and so, years later, the bottle still wasn’t empty. My mom recently encouraged me to not drink whatever was left, so I figured it was finally time.

I emptied the bottle and rinsed it. I filled it with some dish soap and hot water, then rinsed it again. Unfortunately, I realized, the chocolate liqueur had crusted up in various places. I couldn’t fully clean the bottle. It would always have some brown spots on the inside of the glass. But I already had an idea of how I wanted to use the bottle as a decoration piece, so I wasn’t gonna give up that easily.

For the next week, I followed a new routine. Every morning, I filled the bottle with dish soap and hot water. Then, I let it soak. Later, I turned it over and poured out the water while shaking it. This way, the water would splash around and tear off a few of the crusted bits inside. Still, some stains wouldn’t budge.

Halfway through the week, I changed my strategy: vinegar. I followed the same process, but now, I used a mix of vinegar and water. I kept varying the recipe. I also tried limescale remover, a vinegar-based cleaning liquid, and, ultimately, pure vinegar.

At the end of the week, I left for a short trip. Afterwards, life got busy, so, for the next seven days, the bottle stayed where it was. Who knew? Maybe soaking it longer would do the trick.

When week two was almost up, I pulled one more ace out of my sleeve: Coca-Cola. I remember hearing once that Coke is quite acidic and can dissolve almost anything. Why not put this theory to the test? I ordered some bottles.

Just as I was about to start the experiment, however, something happened: When I drained the week-long vinegar treatment from the bottle, one by one, the last four specks of hardened liqueur floated out. “Wow! Amazing!” I literally yelled out loud. “Ha! It worked!”

I rinsed the bottle a few more times and washed it one last time with soap. I removed the sticker around its neck, dried it, and set it up on the dining table. I have a lamp head you can attach to various items. As expected, it fit the bottle perfectly. Now, I have a pristine replica of one of Italy’s great buildings illuminating my meals. It’s a pretty unique piece of decoration, and I love it.

When I first stared at those stains in the bottle, I didn’t know how I’d get rid of them. But I knew this problem was solvable. I’m not sure why this particular challenge grabbed me. I’m not an interior designer by any means. But I felt dogged, and, to accelerate, I got a little obsessed. In the battle of man vs. bottle, I wasn’t going to back down.

Once you settle into a problem, solving it becomes almost inevitable. All you have to do is stay there. Never mind the time. You might make three attempts in one day or none for a week. As long as you keep engaging, eventually, the wall will turn into a door.

Even small battles can be worth winning. Know when to stay in the ring, and get comfortable resting against the ropes.

“How do you feel about turning 35?” my partner asked me. I told her I hadn’t really thought about it. Life had been too busy. The question made me realize I hadn’t captured any birthday reflections in several years. The last ones happened when I turned 30. I don’t believe in sharing ever more life lessons each year, but being halfway through yet another decade felt like an important milestone. So I reflected, wrote down some ideas, and shared them.

That article took three afternoons to write. About six hours, give or take. Did it bring me any closer to publishing my next book, clearing my massive article-import backlog for the blog, or making more bucks to pay for website operations? Nope. But it helped me solidify five principles I want to live by for the rest of my life. I call that a useful distraction.

Yesterday, I stumbled on a novel drafting contest for new fiction authors. Grand prize? $50,000. Even runner-ups will receive $5,000. The pitch is straightforward—5,000 words—and the deadline is clear. I kept the tab open. What if I throw one of my fiction ideas and three more afternoons at this? Will it get me to a submission-ready draft? I don’t know, but I’ll try and find out. If the effort-reward ratio gets tilted, I can always abandon ship.

I told my partner about the writing contest at night. I could already hear her words: “This is yet another distraction.” To my surprise, she didn’t say them. I brought up the matter and said: “I think it’s a useful distraction. I want to write more fiction sooner or later. So why not try it in a setting like this? Where it’s time-boxed and may come with some benefits.” She agreed with me. “That’s why I didn’t call it out.”

You’ll always give in to distractions from time to time. Useful ones often only change the timing of an action you’d have taken sooner or later regardless. You can’t reflect on a birthday years after it happened. The snapshot of your mind would never be the same. And if you want to write fiction, there’s rarely a bad time to start.

Useful distractions have another benefit: They crowd out unproductive ones. Sure, I might have spent my afternoons on more book writing. But I ensure to do a little bit of that every morning anyway, so they could just as well have gone to watching TV or playing video games. Useful distractions are inspiring. They make you put in more hours.

Work hard. Stay focused. But leave time for the fun stuff—especially when it makes sense. Embrace your useful distractions.

The Amazing Race is one of America’s longest-running game shows. Each season pits a dozen teams of two against each other in a scavenger hunt around the world.

The legs of each race happen in different countries and force players to deal with long- and short-distance travel, time zones, and foreign languages. That’s before the challenges even begin. Memorizing local customs, learning a traditional dance, and navigating busy cities to deliver national delicacies are some examples. At the end of most legs, the last team to check in at the so-called “pit stop” is eliminated.

As the season progresses, a hierarchy tends to emerge. Since higher-placed teams get a head start based on their previous check-in time, it can be hard to catch up. Underdogs must ace route planning and make up time in their challenges to move to the front of the pack. Especially as the list of participants thins out, this can feel like a hopeless endeavor.

Having now followed the show for several seasons, I’ve noticed a phrase pop up again and again. Teams in the front, teams in the back, and teams who know they’re in last place use it. They use it early in the season, late in the season, and even in the grand finale, which leaves only three teams to duke it out for the million-dollar prize. “We are running our own race.”

Jas and Jag are in first place. “We’re just trying to run our own race, not get distracted, and knock out these challenges as fast as we can.” Han and Holden are battling for survival in leg two only to make it to the finale later on. “No matter what happens, we’ll run our own race. We’ll stay calm, do what we can, and move forward. Juan and Shane can’t shake their mid-tier ranking until halfway through the show, and it eats at them. Alas, “We are running our own race. We won’t let this get to us. We’ll persist and, sooner or later, we’ll get that first-place finish.”

The show uses many mechanisms to throw spanners in the works. Teams don’t control the weather, traffic, cab drivers, and countless other factors. But they can choose to be present. To take it all in. To savor every experience, irrespective of their position in the ranking. It’s a mirror for life, really.

Sometimes, people cry when they are eliminated. Rarely is anyone devastated. The best part was never the chance at winning a million dollars. It was the adventure they got to share with someone they love, be they a parent, sibling, age-old friend, or their better half.

We might not be the lucky few who get picked to be on a TV show millions enjoy, but we, too, experience adventures. Every day, adventures big and small, with the people we love joining us for various legs of the journey. The formula stays the same: Whether we feel ahead or behind, only presence will turn us into true winners in the end.

Always remember: You are running your own race—and it’s taking you exactly where you need to be in each moment.

It’s an extraordinary treat to spend a night at a five-star hotel. Floating in the outdoor whirlpool revealed just how much.

The air was cold but carried the freshness of the snow and the surrounding Austrian mountains. A tad of smoke from a nearby fire came with the scent of burning wood. I could feel the wetness of my hair, and, of course, I was mostly submerged in water. The pool was warm, and the bubbles kept massaging my skin. The visuals were nothing to scoff at either. A big mountain range covered in conifers, snowy peaks, and a quaint town in the valley below.

It was a lot to take in—but by no means sensory overload. It all came together in perfect harmony. “How many senses can you engage at which intensity at the same time?” I wondered. The fortunate situation I was in seemed to hint that more was possible than I had previously imagined.

More importantly, however, I learned that it’s good to fully engross the senses from time to time—and of course you don’t need to stay in a five-star hotel to do so. Sitting on the bare grass with a cool drink while the insects buzz around you and the flowers stand in full bloom. Feeling the wind on a carriage ride or open-air drive with music blasting from the speakers. Enjoying a massage with soft sounds and essential oils. Many such experiences are freely accessible, and if you get a little creative, you can design your own.

A few times a year, treat yourself to a sensory check-in. Go full throttle on all five faculties, and you’ll find yourself rejuvenated, inspired, and brimming with new life force for your next adventure.