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Cover from new book with blog post title "A New Year's Present: Mindfulness Fable Now on Kindle Pre-Order"

This is a short post this week, but it is a great one. The next step in the publication of my new book is here. The Kindle format of my first work of fiction, A New Year’s Present, is available for pre-order!

I’ll briefly explain what the book is about, why you may want to read it, and then I will explain how you can find it.

What Is the Book About?

This book is a fable about mindfulness. As I have written about before, a fable is a fictional story which illustrates a principle or teaches a skill.

In this case, A New Year’s Present is a fable about mindfulness. I wrote it about a lawyer to address the specific challenges that lawyers face. In truth, though, the themes and ideas are appropriate for anyone.

In the story, a lawyer finds herself in personal crisis. Her boyfriend leaves her. Her mom is sick. She’s alienated from her sister. And she’s rude to a new associate at work. She goes on a meditation retreat for questionable reasons.

As I wrote before, this fable is inspired by Charles Dickens’s classic tale, A Christmas Carol. Based on this, you can probably guess what happens on the retreat. Our lawyer heroine receives visits, not from ghosts, but from personal demons.

Why Read a Story about Mindfulness?

I’ll be the first to admit that a novel set during a meditation retreat is a challenge. That’s because most of know that meditation can be boring. It’s one of the inherent challenges of the practice.

Why on earth would you read a story about a meditation retreat? Well, one reason is that it gives you a chance to learn about mindfulness while reading a nice holiday story.

I’ll be upfront here. I’m new to fiction writing. Even so, I think the story has some heart. If you ever try meditation, you start to realize that our inner lives actually can be fascinating to watch.

In the case of this story, the main character goes through a big transformation. By reading the story, you get to see how mindfulness practice actually works. This may help you learn more about practice or work up the courage to plan and try a retreat.

The good thing about this book, though, is that just slightly longer than A Christmas Carol. That means you can learn these insights in just a few hours.

Where Can You Get the Book?

Eventually, A New Year’s Present will be available in various formats and on most online booksellers. For now, the book is only available for pre-order in the Kindle format on Amazon.

That means if you prefer hardback or paperback, you need to wait until November when the book is fully released. Likewise, if you prefer other booksellers, like Barnes and Noble or BookShop, that won’t be available until November either.

However, if you are fine with purchasing on Amazon and like to read on your Kindle, now is the time. The pre-order price on Amazon is likely to be the lowest price ever for the book. It is currently listed at $2.99 for the Kindle edition.

To learn more about the book or pre-order, check it out on Amazon here. (affiliate link).

Cover art for new mindfulness fable for lawyers, A New Year's Present, with information about how to pre-order the book on Amazon

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.

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Picture of clock, calendar, and checklist with blog post title "This Fable about Time Management Is Great for Busy Lawyers"

Founder’s Note: I wrote this book review years ago on a different blog, but I thought about it recently because I am in the process of finalizing my own fable on mindfulness. After reading this book, I reached out to Laura Vanderkam via email and her response and encouragement stayed with me for many years. I am sharing this post here because Laura’s work is essential for busy lawyers and we all sometimes need a good story to help us see the possibilities for change. I hope you enjoy it.

If I suggested that you read a “time management fable”, you’d probably think I was losing my mind. A phrase like “time management fable” calls to mind a litany of business-speak phrases or the holier-than-thou preaching of someone offering “hacks” offered to help you achieve more in a day than you have time to do.

Though it is indeed a fable intended to offer insights as to time management, Juliet’s School of Possiblities by Laura Vanderkam avoids those issues. Rather, it is just a story about a young professional who, like many of us, needs a mentor to help her figure out how to manage her time.

An Expert on Time Management

I’ve liked Laura Vanderkam since I read I Know How She Does It years ago, when I was an overwhelmed new working mom. Her approach, in this most recent fable and in the wider variety of content she offers, is practical and based on facts. She isn’t holier-than-thou. She doesn’t pretend time management is easy. But, she also refuses to fall into the trap of throwing up her hands in disgust at how daunting it can be to manage a professional and personal life in today’s world.

In all honesty, when I read Vanderkam I am reminded more of the ancient Greek philosophers I studied in college than the business self-help gurus available now. Just like Aristotle offered ideas about how to find “the good” in life, Vanderkam offers practical solutions that one can use to live a good life. Her suggestions tend to be good ones because, like many of the ancient Greek philosophers, she is a scientist as much as she is a theorist.

An image with a question "what is a business fable?" and an answer that says "A business fable is a fictional story told to teach a business, corporate, or leadership lesson. Business fables motivate and inspire by inviting the reader into a story, instead of persuading with facts, figures, and arguments."

Time Management Is Seeing All Possibilities for Life

Vanderkam does not merely think about time; rather she has studied the use of it for several years. As she’ll tell you in her books, articles and podcasts, she has tracked her own time in 30-minute increments and has studied the time logs for thousands of professionals, including busy lawyers. In other words, her philosophy on time management is rooted in a painstaking study of countless uses of it in a variety of contexts.

Knowing that Vanderkam has studied time in this way, it makes sense that she sees it as an array of possibilities, rather than the obstacle against which so many busy professionals rage.

How a Fable Can Teaches Time Management

That view comes through in Juliet’s School of Possibilities where the smart, ambitious, but overworked protagonist, Riley Jenkins, meets a mentor, Juliet, who shows her the divergent possibilities created by each decision she makes as to the use of her time.

It is by seeing this divergent path that Jenkins learns she needs to think more about expectations, setting good personal boundaries, and rethink priorities. She sees the divergent path on a beach (rather than a yellow wood), but still you’ll see it makes all the difference.

An image with a 5-star book review of Juliet's School of Possibilities by Laura Vanderkam as shared in the post as a great read on time management for lawyers.

Why This Fable Is Ideal for Lawyers

I’m sure there are lots of books out there competing for your time. This fable from Laura Vanderkam is a quick, charming read with a good message and more heart than you’d expect. In fact, the book at times is deeply spiritual since it forces the protagonist, and in turn the reader, to examine the merits in how we spend our waking moments.

This theme comes through when mentor Juliet offers readers the following prayer: “Expectations are infinite. Time is finite. You are always choosing. Choose well.” Though new book choices seem to be infinite and time certainly is finite, Juliet’s School of Possibilities is a good choice for lawyers or any busy person looking for practical and worthwhile insights about time management.