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Involve’s Distraction Picks: Podcasts, Books & Online Learning

By April 13, 2020 No Comments

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting us all in different ways. No matter what your situation is during this time, for your own peace of mind it is best to take a step back, and get out of your own head – even if it is only for a few minutes. 

The Involve team has put together a list of our picks to help you press pause and take a much needed break. Here are our first two recommendations in each category…

Podcasts

  • Crime JunkieCrime Junkie is a weekly podcast dedicated to giving you a true crime fix. Every Monday, Ashley Flowers will tell you about whatever crime she’s been obsessing over that week in a way that sounds like you’re sitting around talking about crime with your best friends. The storytelling is straightforward and free of rabbit holes so the cases stay suspenseful and are easy to follow. If you can never get enough true crime…
  • The Escape Your Limits PodcastThis podcast is based on stories from entrepreneurs and fitness industry influencers revealing the mental, physical and emotional ingredients involved in standing out above everybody else.

Online Education

  • Skillshare.comSkillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more. On Skillshare, millions of members come together to find inspiration and take the next step in their creative journey.
  • CourseraEvery course on Coursera is taught by top instructors from world-class universities and companies, so you can learn something new anytime, anywhere. Hundreds of free courses give you access to on-demand video lectures, homework exercises, and community discussion forums. Paid courses provide additional quizzes and projects as well as a shareable Course Certificate upon completion.
      • 100% online
      • Learn something new in 4-6 weeks
      • Priced starting at about $39
      • Earn a Course Certificate

Books 

  • 168 Hours by Laura VanderkamThere are 168 hours in a week—this is a new approach to getting the most out of them.  It’s an unquestioned truth of modern life: we are all starved for time. With the rise of two-income families, extreme jobs, and the ability to log on to the world 24/7, life is so frenzied we can barely breathe. But what if we actually have plenty of time? What if we could sleep eight hours a night, exercise five days a week, and learn how to play the piano without sacrificing work, family time, or any other activity that is important to us? We can. If we re-examine our weekly allotment of 168 hours, we’ll find that, with a little reorganization and prioritizing, we can dedicate more time to the things we want to do without having to make sacrifices.
  • Help Me! By Marianne Power For years Journalist Marianne Power lined her bookshelves with dog-eared copies of definitive guides on how to live your best life, dipping in and out of self-help books when she needed them most. Then, one day, she woke up to find that the life she hoped for and the life she was living were worlds apart―and she set out to make some big changes. Marianne decided to finally find out if her elusive “perfect existence” really did lie in the pages of our best known and acclaimed self help books. She vowed to test a book a month for one year, following its advice to the letter, taking what she hoped would be the surest path to a flawless new her. But as the months passed and Marianne’s reality was turned upside down, she found herself confronted with a different question: Self-help can change your life, but is it for the better?

Have any recommendations you want to share with our team? Send an email over to Kaitlin at kaitlin@54.160.92.43!

Stay healthy, friends!