BOX LUNCH LIFESTYLE

Johnson urges readers to hack their lunch breaks to achieve unrealized dreams in this self-help book.

The author opens by describing her dissatisfaction with a previous job, which involved researching and creating psychology tests, and how she began noting the gray sameness of employees’ workspaces. She soon articulated a wish that everyday people could “feel proud of themselves…for making something quietly remarkable happen nearly every day.” In this book, she focuses on trying to help others make better use of their lunch breaks by adopting her titular “Box Lunch Lifestyle.” Specifically, she encourages people to spend that 30-minute break eating nourishing, homemade food and then doing a meaningful personal activity—a purposeful, restorative action that enables growth. Johnson doesn’t provide recipes or food restrictions, but she does share simple tips and tricks for preparation (“If you’re cooking meat or soup, get it started first so you can chop vegetables at the same time”) and urges readers to eat slowly. For the activity portion, Johnson urges readers to work on what she calls a “Second-Place Dream”: “quiet aspirations” that “you probably don’t tell other people about, but they are an essential part of what makes you the whole, meant-to-be You.” She references author Gretchen Rubin’s observation that people need to build, create, learn, and help to be happy and offers prompts to help readers think about their Second-Place Dream. There’s a kind warning against “sneaky quitting” (“quitting before you even start”) and making excuses not to try because of other commitments. Johnson refers to the works of many other popular self-help authors, including Michael Pollan, Cal Newport, and James Clear. However, one wishes that there were strong, evidence-based data for her specific strategy. Throughout, the author relates her new, improved lunch strategies to boxing, a pastime that she came to later in life; at times, the link to the sport feels tenuous, but at other moments, it helps in demonstrating specific lessons. The book’s introduction feels overlong, but there are some good ideas and encouraging words throughout.

A rather simple but kindly delivered strategy for pursuing one’s dreams.