This Mom of 3 Has Helped More Than 400 Seniors Schedule Vaccine Appointments

 

When COVID-19 vaccines finally became available and an end to the pandemic seemed at long last to be in sight, many of us were elated—until it came time to actually find a vaccine appointment.

The vaccine rollout has been scattered and confusing across much of North America, making many people feel lost, confused and frustrated as they try to navigate the various portals, bookings and eligibility requirements of their local regions.

It’s been particularly frustrating for seniors, who are at higher risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms, and often less digitally savvy than some of their younger counterparts.

It’s into this gap between immediate need and digital prowess that Marla Zwinggi has inserted herself.

As Reader’s Digest reports, the 40-year-old mother of three has been spending up to ten hours a day online since February, helping people secure vaccine appointments that they couldn’t find themselves.

“Young man, that’s the nicest thing anybody has done for me since my husband died.”

 

“TL;DR: Got married, in a never ending good mood, helped an elderly lady who lost her husband, her gratitude has me thinking about the love they must have shared for years.”

 

From new adventures you never thought you’d take to late-night texts you never thought you’d send, love can make you do some crazy things.

Fortunately, it can also make you do some great things, as redditor u/dcisco51 recently discovered.

“I got married last Friday. Just at the court house, thanks Covid, so no honeymoon(yet),” he recently shared on r/feel good. “But ever since I’ve been in the best mood.”

And he was still in a heightened state of marital bliss a few days later, when he drove to the pharmacy in the pouring rain to run some errands.

“As my friend and I got out of the car I noticed an elderly lady unloading her cart into her car. She had it sitting under the awning of the store and was making trips while leaving the door open. Her car was getting soaked.”

Still beaming from their recent nuptials and feeling particularly warm toward their fellow human beings u/dcisco51 offered to carry the rest of the woman’s groceries for her.

 

 

Why You Don’t Need Social Media (And How to Stop Using It)

As pretty much everyone who’s ever tried to do a digital detox learns: weening yourself off social media is tough.

After all, social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok aren’t just backed by billions of marketing dollars that help make them ubiquitous.

They’re also designed by software engineers to maximize the number of dopamine hits you receive while using them, making refreshing your Facebook feed almost as addictive as pouring quarters into a casino’s slot machine (and about as productive).

Fortunately, while breaking your social media habit may not be easy, it’s certainly not impossible.

And there’s at least one person who’s managed to take his digital detox to a whole new level.

Cal Newport is a professor a computer science professor at Georgetown University and the author of multiple books, including Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Digital Minimalism and A World Without Email.

And as he explained on an episode of The School of Greatness podcast, the key to finally breaking social media’s spell lies in recognizing what you do – and crucially, don’t – need.

This Man Lost 150 Pounds in Lockdown & How He Did It is Inspiring

More than a year into the pandemic, many of us are languishing – we’re exhausted, lethargic, and feeling guilty for spending so much time doom scrolling through social media and streaming apps.

Kyle White, on the other hand, has never felt better.

As Canada’s CBC reported last week, White has lost 150 pounds since going into lockdown about a year ago, completely overhauling his habits, health and lifestyle in the process.

“A little over a year ago, I stepped on the scale and I was around 430 pounds,” White told the CBC. It was at that point that he vowed to make a change.

He started small by committing to walking his dog each day, extending the walks a little further each week, and eventually getting into hiking.

But the biggest change has been to his diet, which he says is now “about 98 per cent free of animal products.”

“It takes a lot of hard work, but the conditions that we had the past year kind of gave us the time, which was, maybe, a hidden benefit in the mess that was 2020,” he told the CBC.

Check out the video above to learn more about how White lost “a whole person” worth of wait.

7 Productivity Lessons From the Ancient Stoics That Will Help You Get More Done

 

Anyone who spends their days in front of a computer (which is to say at least one billion of us) knows how it feels to sit down at their desk in the morning and feel like they’re absolutely swamped, overwhelmingly busy and constantly being pulled in a million directions.

And yet, at the end of the day, it often feels like despite all that busy-ness, you didn’t actually get anything done.

In a modern world in which we’re constantly bombarded by emails, instant messages, Zoom meetings and other electronic distractions, it might seem hard to believe that some of the best lessons for being more productive come from a small handful of men who didn’t live long enough to see the invention of pants.

Stoicism is a philosophy founded by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno and later spread to the Roman empire, which focused on how to reach what the Greeks called eudaimonia, or happiness.

Though the philosophy is multifaceted, fundamentally it’s based on the idea that happiness lies in accepting our present reality as it is, and focusing on virtue rather than external things or material possessions.

In the video above, bestselling author Ryan Holliday, who explored stoicism in his books The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy, explains how, even though they lived thousands of years before the invention of the internet, the stoics actually had an approach to productivity that can be incredibly helpful today.

Human Happiness Isn’t What You Think It Is, According to Two Psychologists

Whether you subscribe to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s assertion that “Money often costs too much,” or prefer Notorious B.I.G.’s more succinct summation – “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” – most of us understand that, despite our urgings, material wealth isn’t the answer to our problems.

But… why??

After all, nearly all the things that really do make us happy and fulfilled – a loving family, a rewarding career, a higher purpose, etc. – are made easier with money.

So why is it that winning the lottery can often be the single worse thing that ever happens to a person, while coming down with a terrible disease can sometimes be considered “a gift”?

In an episode of her podcast The Happiness Lab, Yale psychology professor Dr Laurie Santos speaks with Harvard’s Dr. Dan Gilbert to find out why human happiness isn’t exactly what you’d expect.