Tim Ferriss's Jar of Awesome

Something Tim Ferriss suggested that I have been doing for years is a Jar of Awesome. I've gotten a lot of value out of it and it's still not too late to do one for this year. Here's Tim Ferriss describing it.

"This was not my idea. This was actually thanks to an ex-girlfriend who was a real sweetheart, is I'm sure still a sweetheart. She created something for me called the jar of awesome. This is because I'm very good at achievement and not always very good at appreciation.

This was a mason jar with “jar of awesome” in glitter on the side. Any time something really cool happened that I got excited about, to avoid my forgetting it next to immediately, because I tend to celebrate very briefly if at all, I should write it down on a slip of paper and put it in the top of this mason jar. And it really had a tremendous impact.

I kept it where I could see it, and it was a real mood elevator and emphasized the importance of appreciation if you want to have any real success, and I hate to use that word but it’s appropriate here. Because if you only have achievement and you never appreciate the small wins, or the big things for that matter, and they have no duration, then it’s a hollow victory if you could call it a victory at all. So if you don’t want to have a jar with “jar of awesome” written on it, you could just take a huge exclamation point. Put an exclamation point on the side of a mason jar or something like that and then drop these things in. It’s an easy practice and a fun practice and I think – I don't have kids but if I had kinds of, I would also have them put things into the jar of awesome."