Jennifer Derrick's Blog

It’s no secret that many of us are working with drastically shortened attention spans these days. The reasons are many: We’re too busy, too jacked up on social media, dealing with medical issues like long Covid, ADHD or simple exhaustion, or chronically multitasking. There are many more reasons for attention problems, and many of us are dealing with them in combination. Whatever the reason(s), many of us have an attention span shorter than that of a squirrel these days.

As attention spans fr...

I’ve always been a reader. When I was younger, I didn’t even have to think about it. I read anywhere, anytime. Over meals, during class, in the car, in the doctor’s office… you name it. I could read everywhere and it didn’t take me but seconds to sink into a book. If I only had ten minutes before an appointment, I could still manage to get deeply into the story. As I’ve aged, however, things have changed. Whether it’s due to natural aging, the distractions of adult life, or social media that has...

I learned a hard truth when my books were traditionally published, and here it is: Social media stifles creativity. It can absolutely suck the creativity right out of you, leaving you a husk of your former self. Worse, it can also suck the fun out of the very thing you used to love. You can come to hate your passion. At its absolute worst, social media can kill a career and leave you wondering WTF happened to your life.

People ask me all the time why I haven’t released a new book in a few yea...

One of the things that’s getting lost in our 24/7 hyper-connected, divided, news-as-cult-of-personality world is the ability to think for ourselves. To think our own thoughts, make our own plans, and form our own opinions. Worst of all, we’re losing the ability to think critically about the issues that matter, what solutions we want to see and, more importantly, how we can help improve things. We are becoming content to allow others to dictate what and how we think. This passivity is damaging no...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how people with healthy, satisfied, and productive lives tend to avoid social media. Or at least excessive use of social media. Today I want to extend those thoughts a bit and address the tendency many people have to post their hobbies, crafts, achievements, and goals online. While you can argue that there are a few positives to posting online, my advice on the whole is this. Keep the things you love offline if you want them to remain enjoyable. And if you wa...

Look, I’m a big believer in preparation. “Success happens when opportunity meets preparation,” and all that good stuff. Yep. But there comes a point where preparation gets in the way of actually, you know, doing stuff. And if you never do the stuff, all the preparation and opportunity in the world won’t help you. You have to spend time doing, not thinking about doing, or dreaming about doing, or “getting ready” to be doing.

So what am I talking about when I say, “Preparation?” I’m not necess...

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of social media. (Not that I ever was, but the past two years have shown me just how toxic it can be. Yikes. Who needs all that toxicity floating around in their brain?) There are many reasons why I don’t “do” social media beyond what I have to for work. And even then, I don’t do “enough” because I simply cannot stand it. But perhaps the biggest reason I don’t care for social media is because it’s not conducive to a peaceful, productive life, and those are thing...

It’s no secret that I’m not the biggest fan of TV. It falls into the same bucket as social media, as far as I’m concerned. Yes, there are some good things about it, but there’s also a lot of negative stuff. Too much of the wrong stuff can rot your brain. Given how easy it is to get sucked into the negative, destructive, time- and soul-sucking stuff, I tend to stay on the side of using these things in serious moderation (as in, keep a timer next to you and shut it all down when your minutes are u...

It was the leaves that did me in. Leaves. After years of the news (especially our local news) becoming more and more ridiculous, sensational, and downright bonkers in the never-ending quest for ratings, it was blowing leaves that finally got me to turn it off for good.

Leaves, you say? Why leaves? Backstory… I live in an area known for bad weather. Topical storms, tornadoes, thunderstorms, ice, snow… You name it, we get it. It has the potential to get ugly and the news always seizes on it. A...

One of the biggest reasons that people don’t read is because they don’t find it fun. For many it just feels like another chore on a very long to-do list. “Oh, I should read if I want to be an informed person.” “Gee, I guess I should read such-and-such book because everyone at work is reading it.” And kids get stuck with so much boring reading (and teaching) in school that they often don’t find free reading to be anything more than more homework. “I’d rather be playing video games,” or “I’ve done...