From the "Marie Kondo of Digital" comes a thoughtful book about realigning our energies, increasing intentionality, and prioritizing our well-being in the digital age.

It's time we choose joy over fear. Empowerment over anxiety. JOMO over FOMO. How do we get there? By taking up good burdens.

The things we're most proud of in life - the child we're raising; the marathon we completed; the major project we hit out of the park - these required all of us: all of our attention, all of our loves, all of our effort. Could we control the outcome? No. Were we all in? Hell, yes. These effortful pursuits are what digital well being pioneer Christina Crook calls "good burdens".
In thoughtful prose, Christina Crook's insightful follow up to the acclaimed The Joy of Missing Out makes the case for increasing intentionality in our day to day lives, unlocking the building blocks of joy, and offering concrete solutions for flourishing in the digital age. Using historical data, real life stories from leading mindful tech leaders and rich personal narrative, Good Burdens advocates for a realignment of our energies, online and off, towards effortful pursuits - cultivating relationships, community, and creative projects that bring lasting joy.
In Good Burdens, Crook will instruct us on:
- Mastering the Algebra of Joy — how to fill our lives with the warm relationships and right works that bring us more joy
- How to live more fulfilling lives in a world dominated by screen time
- Be our full selves on and offline
- Make the time off our screens as meaningful as possible
- Feel good about the time we spend with ourselves and loved ones
- Counteract online fatigue by prioritizing focal practices like walking, gardening, or other hobbies
- How to build life-giving habits that support our ongoing well-being and success
Good Burdens will provide practical, research-based solutions to help readers begin to reclaim joy, unplugging from toxic influences, and retake decision-making power over their time and emotional energy. It is intended to be a poetic and affirming guide to taking real steps towards joy.

Christina Crook is a wordsmith and communications professional whose poetry, essays and interviews on art, culture and technology have appeared in UPPERCASE, CBC.ca, Vancouver Magazine, Today's Parent, MUSE, Geez, Faith Today and the Literary Review of Canada. In 2012 she disabled the data on her smartphone, turned off her email and said goodbye to the Internet for 31 days. This experience, chronicled as the project, Letters from a Luddite, garnered international media attention and fueled Christinaâ??s passion for exploring the intersection of technology, relationships and joy.

Christina Crook's profile page

"I smiled throughout this profound little book. Good Burdens is a powerful reckoning for an unchecked technological zeitgeist palliating us with frictionless convenience and comfortable distractions that divert our attention from life-giving experiences and our ultimate goals. Crook's call for a reclamation of effortful living, on and offline, stands to steer our lives toward destinations brimming with joy — those of purpose, caring, creativity, and community. Gratefully, the notion of 'good burdens' is already transforming how I show up in my world."
— Kelly Riback-Small, Executive Creative Director and bestselling author of The Conscious Creative: Practical Ethics for Purposeful Work

"Fully understanding our relationship to technology is a vital question for all of us as humans. Christina is ready to have that conversation."
— Tiffany Shlain, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, author of 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week

"In a culture barraged by the trends of hustle, tech, and self-improvement crazes, Christina Crook not only reminds us what it's like to be human — but gives us a much-needed roadmap to feeling like a whole one."
— Jess Davis, founder of Folk Rebellion