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During our conversation at the Boston Book Festival, the wise and wonderful Amanda Palmer spoke about the harrowing experience of watching her best friend die and reflected: “Everyone in this room is going to be gone pretty quickly — and we will have either made something or not made something. The artists that inspire me are the ones that I look at and go, ‘Oh my god — you didn’t have to go there. It would’ve been safer not to — but, for whatever reason, you did.’ And every time death happens, I’m reminded that it’s stupid to be safe… Usually, whatever that is — wherever you don’t want to go, whatever that risk is, wherever the unsafe place is — that really is the gift that you have to give.”

As the words poured out of Amanda’s mouth, I saw a kindred hand reach across space and time to catch them. A century and a half earlier, Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853–July 29, 1890) had articulated the same sentiment in a beautiful letter to his brother Theo, found in Ever Yours: The Essential Letters (public library) — the same treasure trove that gave us the beloved artist on talking vs. doing and the story of how he found his purpose.

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‘Self-Portrait with Straw Hat’ by Vincent van Gogh.

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That shot was taken over the Clark Fork in Missoula, Montana, about halfway through my 12-mile marathon training run last week. I used to be steadfast in my commitment to never run a marathon: a half-marathon was fine, but marathons were for masochists. But my attitude began to switch last year. I was training for a Ragnar — a 200-mile relay, split between twelve people for three legs each and involves running through the night, driving around in large vans, sleeping on high school gym floors, etc.

I had one of the two most challenging runner assignments, including a significant amount of elevation gain, and I found myself more and more eager to push myself with new training goals — more elevation, more mileage — every week. Along the way, I ran a half-marathon as “training” and PR’ed, which felt amazing, but more amazing was the actual experience of the Ragnar, which provided the sort of exhaustion, pay-off, and catharsis that had largely drained away from the rest of my low-key burnt-out life. I had been researching and writing the book non-stop for six weeks by the time we showed up in Bellingham the night before the start, but then I spent the next 48 hours thinking about nothing other than the race: fueling my body, running, resting my body, repeat (plus being very present, and talking about nothing other than the race, with the other people on my team).

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It’s normal and expected to be irritable sometimes—when we’re overly tired, when our environment is too loud, when we sit in gridlock, or when someone steals our thunder at work. In some instances, like a traffic jam, there’s nothing we can do to change the circumstances—all we can do is consciously modulate our reactions. But there are a number of things we do every day that affect our mood that we can control, and some of them are habits that have become so ingrained we may not even be aware of them.

Here are some of the ways you may be unwittingly making yourself more irritable every day, and what to do about it.

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Since my tips to improve your writing in two minutes were so popular, I thought I’d share some similar tips to improve your next conversation.

Following are the simplest tips I can give you to ask better questions, which will make your conversations more valuable to you and the people you engage with.

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