3 Quirky Habits That May Change Your Life!

plus 12 fun things, including the tennis playing fashion influencer I want to be when I grow up, novels set at weddings, and "quietly brilliant" time management strategies

Aug 13, 2025

I am passionate about habits. Not because I'm virtuous, but because I've discovered that structuring each day around routines that bring pleasure and positive results is a guaranteed route to a satisfying life.

For example, I look forward to getting into bed at 9:00 pm because that's when I read a book, one of my favorite pastimes. I love waking early because I spend the first hour on practices that help me feel calm, alert, and focused: 10 minutes meditating, then three pages of longhand journaling while sipping an enormous mug of hot, milky black tea, sweetened with sugar!

I have a million goals on multiple fronts, from work and parenting to taking care of my body, and I'm always looking for creative ways to break them into small, daily routines that allow me to make regular, measurable progress.

While many of my habits are standard, the most fun are the "quirky" ones that elicit laughter and good-natured teasing from family and friends.

Here are three of my current favorites. I'd love to know: what are your most trusty habits—and do you have any quirky ones?!

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Breakfast salad. I love eggs for breakfast, but am gluten-free, and it’s sad to eat eggs without toast: something must soak up jammy, runny yolks! My solution: a bed of fresh arugula, liberally sprinkled with ground black pepper and crunchy Maldon salt, doused in olive oil and white wine vinegar, topped with two eggs fried sunny side up in a cast iron skillet. Bonus: I’m getting protein plus fiber, the nutrient we’re all actually deficient in!
Shower squats! Squats are essential, but they’re a chore. I knew the easiest way to establish a daily habit of doing a set of squats would be by stacking them onto an existing routine. What do I do every day without fail? Shower! Hence, my new daily practice of 20-30 squats while showering…
Musical magic. To rekindle creativity (and positive energy) when I’m feeling blah, lacking confidence, and out of ideas, I turn on a playlist featuring the music of my childhood. Listening—and singing along—to old favorites brings out my playful, fun, “I can try something new!” side. I love peppy, earwormy late 70s/80s pop like ABBA, Bucks Fizz, Bee Gees, and Racey, plus the Aussie football anthem, Up There Cazaly, which culminates in the inspiring line, “the crowd’s on your side!”

this week's winning dress; watercolor set

Kendra S is the lucky winner of this week’s giveaway: the sleeveless embroidered linen mini dress that readers voted on last week!

Next week’s giveaway will be an adorable Emily Lex watercolor set—these are the guides that got me started with this fun, easy hobby! The winner will choose from 5 options: animals, birds, bouquets, baking, or flowers.

I highly recommend A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, which I raced through—and can’t stop thinking about. The plot: a couple is stranded on a life raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for months. What it’s really about: two very unique people and their enduring love.
More book ideas: 12 novels set during weddings. I’ve read three on the list, and would also add The Most Fun We Ever Had, which begins at a wedding.
I’m watching the new season of Platonic, my current favorite show. The depiction of marriage and midlife friendship is spot-on, and Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen have hilarious friend energy (frenergy?!). Have you watched it? What do you think?!
Who I want to be when I grow up: Dorothy Wiggins, the nonagenarian, tennis-playing, no-nonsense fashion influencer!
David Sedaris turns his partner’s hip surgery recovery into a fascinating dissection of a loving, long relationship, and, of course, a hilarious opportunity to kvetch…
LOVED this piece about how special it is to vacation with your kids in the places you spent your childhood holidays. “Bringing my family there made it feel like my loved ones who are gone could see them, and it brought me back to the purity and simplicity of being a kid in the summer, in that house filled with so much intergenerational love.”
This is a must-read about the science and true value of exercise—and how to build an effective routine using “movement nutrients.”
Liza Minelli’s incredible life in pictures!
LOL: A day in my life as a fruit-farming tradwife influencer: “Our duck just actually laid a piece of cake…”
Quietly brilliant time management strategies.
What a lovely way for an avid reader to be remembered: a man’s children published the list of books he read between 1962 and 2023; there were 3,599!
Inside the rise of mahjong. I’ve been learning how to play this summer and am obsessed! Anyone else playing?!