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    Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey
    Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey
    Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey
    Ebook154 pages2 hours

    Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey

    By A.J. Jacobs

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The idea was deceptively simple: New York Times bestselling author A.J. Jacobs decided to thank every single person involved in producing his morning cup of coffee. The resulting journey takes him across the globe, transforms his life, and reveals secrets about how gratitude can make us all happier, more generous, and more connected.

    Author A.J. Jacobs discovers that his coffee—and every other item in our lives—would not be possible without hundreds of people we usually take for granted: farmers, chemists, artists, presidents, truckers, mechanics, biologists, miners, smugglers, and goatherds.

    By thanking these people face to face, Jacobs finds some much-needed brightness in his life. Gratitude does not come naturally to Jacobs—his disposition is more Larry David than Tom Hanks—but he sets off on the journey on a dare from his son. And by the end, it’s clear to him that scientific research on gratitude is true. Gratitude’s benefits are legion: It improves compassion, heals your body, and helps battle depression.

    Jacobs gleans wisdom from vivid characters all over the globe, including the Minnesota miners who extract the iron that makes the steel used in coffee roasters, to the Madison Avenue marketers who captured his wandering attention for a moment, to the farmers in Colombia.

    Along the way, Jacobs provides wonderful insights and useful tips, from how to focus on the hundreds of things that go right every day instead of the few that go wrong. And how our culture overemphasizes the individual over the team. And how to practice the art of “savoring meditation” and fall asleep at night. Thanks a Thousand is a reminder of the amazing interconnectedness of our world. It shows us how much we take for granted. It teaches us how gratitude can make our lives happier, kinder, and more impactful. And it will inspire us to follow our own “Gratitude Trails.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster/ TED
    Release dateNov 13, 2018
    ISBN9781501119934
    Author

    A.J. Jacobs

    A.J. Jacobs is the editor of What It Feels Like and the author of The Two Kings: Jesus and Elvis and America Off-Line. He is the senior editor of Esquire and has written for The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, New York magazine, New York Observer, and other publications.

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    Reviews for Thanks A Thousand

    3.5/5

    44 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Books by A.J. Jacobs are fun to read and this book was no exception. In this book, Jacobs thanks a thousand people who are responsible for his morning cup of coffee. I'm glad he chose coffee because that was a subject to which I can well relate as I am a "coffee snob". I never stopped to realize the number of people who are responsible for the coffee I drink at least every morning, but in addition the topic of gratitude is on my mind a lot as I worry about the political situation in my country and worry about people who seem to completely lack any sense of gratitude. Hence this little book was very welcome in my reading list this month. At the end of this book is a list of the people whom the author thanks. I felt the most debt of gratitude to the farmers who actually raise the coffee beans, harvest them and send them to market. I also feel a great debt of gratitude to people within organizations who work for Fair trade practices and sustainable environmental practices. I think it's good to not take what we have for granted and this book is but a small example of a way to do just that.
    • 4/5
      Perhaps A.J. Jacobs misread "gratitude journal" (a common thing nowadays) as "gratitude journey". Thus the idea for this book was born - and a pretty good book at that.
    • 4/5
      3.5 An expanded version of a TED talk given by this author. Was attracted to it for two reasons. I have decided I the coming year to try to focus more on things on the outside instead of always looking inward. This is sometimes hard to do when one has various medical issues and chronic pain. I want to try focusing on what I do have as opposed to what I don't. We will see how that goes, but I'm hopeful. The second reason is simply that I'm a coffee addict and I was curious how far the author would take this.I enjoyed the way this was written for the most part. Loved the self deprecating humor, his flashes of intuition, and many of his examples. I had no idea how many people it took down the line for me to get a cup of coffee. He listed them, and showed their illustrated faces. Amazing! Don't think I'll look at an item I use daily without realizing all the effort it took for it to come into my hands. At least short term, lol! He did mention one thing that I realized myself. How thank you has just become something to say to be polite, rote. Saying your grateful is more expressive and thought provoking. Though some people might look at you funny if you tell the bigger at your grocery that you are deeply grateful. So all in all, though it did drag in a few places, this was an interesting book.
    • 4/5
      A great end of year read to start the new year remembering to be grateful for the large and small. Jacobs spent a year thanking everyone involved in getting his morning coffee to him, from the grower to the transporter to the barrista and everyone in between. Very enjoyable, quick read.
    • 4/5
      A.J. Jacobs describes himself as "more Larry David than Tom Hanks" and he wanted to find a way to be less annoyed and more grateful, leading to the idea of this participatory memoir. It's an expanded version of his TED talk which readers might have seen. I too find I am annoyed a lot of the time and once I am annoyed, it's harder and harder to stop being annoyed by even the smallest of things, to just be happy with life. So I thought that following Jacobs on his "Gratitude Journey" to thank all the people who make his morning coffee, a necessity for so many people, possible would make Thanks a Thousand the perfect book to ring in my new year of reading.It is easy to be annoyed or angry over something. It is much harder to be grateful. And it might be hardest of all to be grateful for things we take for granted. It is this that drives Jacobs' interest in his quest. He wants to thank everyone for their contributions, from the big and obvious to the small and seemingly insignificant as he traces the origin of his coffee and all the things that allow it to journey from the coffee bean farmers to his own mouth. Jacobs manages to connect a whole host of people who we might not otherwise consider here, highlighting the absolute interconnectedness of all the businesses and people on the planet. In fact, he went so far down the rabbit hole looking into all the industries involved in a simple cup of coffee (he makes no mention of adding milk or sugar but that would just expand the scope exponentially I imagine) that he has to consciously restrict himself to thanking only 1000 people (more or less). His investigation into each aspect is by necessity not terribly in depth but it is enough for the layperson to understand the gist and to continue to be fascinated by all the places that Jacobs is taking them. The information made me appreciate all of the moving parts that absolutely anything takes (especially the usually overlooked bits) but the push to recognize people's contributions and the gratitude those contributions inspired were definitely thought provoking. Even as a non-coffee drinker, I found this to be a quick and fascinating read, and one with which I am happy to have started my year.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this because it's such a great idea but I feel like something was missing. Maybe it was the lack of any sort of stakes for the author. To me it read like an expanded to-do list, ticking off people to thank.

      But I *love* the idea and I'm glad it's done - I just feel like something got lost in the translation because I just couldn't get invested in it. I suspect he had some trouble at times as well - especially toward the end where he didn't even know how many people he had thanked. 957? 1015? Oh I don't know, I'll call it 1000. Good enough. That feels like a metaphor for what I saw as the biggest shortcoming of the book.
    • 4/5
      I picked this up because I really like A.J. Jacobs' books. I love his sense of humour and the flashes of insights his examinations provide, both for him and for me! A look at the supply chain for a cup of coffee would be interesting on its own. This book provides that (at least a partial look), and also provides an examination of gratitude. How "thank you" has become largely perfunctory; how people react to being thanked and some of the moral or ethical issues around gratitude. As always, Mr. Jacobs' books make me think. And smile.

    Book preview

    Thanks A Thousand - A.J. Jacobs

    Cover: Thanks A Thousand, by A. J. Jacobs

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    Thanks A Thousand, by A. J. Jacobs, TED Conferences LLC

    CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    CHAPTER 1 The Barista and the Taster

    Thanks for Serving Me My Coffee

    CHAPTER 2 The Cup Makers

    Thanks for Stopping the Coffee from Spilling on My Lap

    CHAPTER 3 The Roasters

    Thanks for Taking the Heat

    CHAPTER 4 The Water

    Thanks for Filling My Cup

    CHAPTER 5 The Safety Patrol

    Thanks for Keeping Me from Dying

    CHAPTER 6 The Movers

    Thanks for Lugging My Coffee Around the World

    CHAPTER 7 The Extractors

    Thanks for Getting All the Raw Materials

    CHAPTER 8 The Farmers

    Thanks for Growing My Coffee

    CONCLUSION

    A THOUSAND THANKS

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    WATCH A.J. JACOBS’S TED TALK

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    To my family. And everyone else.

    INTRODUCTION

    It’s a Tuesday morning, and I’m in the presence of one of the most mind-boggling accomplishments in human history. This thing is so astounding in its complexity and scope, it makes the Panama Canal look like a third grader’s craft project.

    This marvel I see before me is the result of thousands of human beings collaborating across dozens of countries.

    It took the combined labor of artists, chemists, politicians, mechanics, biologists, miners, packagers, smugglers, and goatherds.

    It required airplanes, boats, trucks, motorcycles, vans, pallets, and shoulders.

    It needed hundreds of materials—steel, wood, nitrogen, rubber, silicon, ultraviolet light, explosives, and bat guano.

    It has caused great joy but also great poverty and oppression.

    It relied upon ancient wisdom and space-age technology, freezing temperatures and scorching heat, high mountains and deep water.

    It is my morning cup of coffee.

    And I’m grateful for it. Really, really grateful.

    It wasn’t always so. I tend to take things for granted. For most of my life, I rarely thought about my coffee unless it spilled on my jacket or scalded the roof of my mouth. But the last few months have forced me to change that. Earlier this year, in an attempt to battle my default mental state (generalized annoyance and impatience), I undertook a deceptively simple quest. I pledged to thank every single person who made my cup of coffee possible. I resolved to thank the barista, the farmer who grew the beans, and all those in between.

    That turned out to be a hell of a lot of thank-yous. My gratitude quest has taken me across time zones, and up and down the social ladder. It’s made me rethink everything from globalism to beavers, from hugs to fonts, from light bulbs to ancient Rome. It’s affected my politics, my worldview, and my palate. It’s made me feel delight, wonder, guilt, depression, and, of course, a whole bunch of caffeine jitters.

    •  •  •

    How did this quest get started? Well, I’ve been an admirer of gratitude for several years. It’s not an emotion that comes naturally to me. My innate disposition is moderately grumpy, more Larry David than Tom Hanks. But I’ve read enough about gratitude to know that it’s one of the keys to a life well lived. Perhaps even, as Cicero says, it is the chief of virtues.

    According to the research, gratitude’s psychological benefits are legion: It can lift depression, help you sleep, improve your diet, and make you more likely to exercise. Heart patients recover more quickly when they keep a gratitude journal. A recent study showed gratitude causes people to be more generous and kinder to strangers.

    Another study summarized in Scientific American finds that gratitude is the single best predictor of well-being and good relationships, beating out twenty-four other impressive traits such as hope, love, and creativity. As the Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast says, Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.

    So intellectually, I’ve long known gratitude was invaluable. And for a while now I’ve made modest efforts to kick-start my gratitude whenever I could—and to instill the value in my kids.

    My three boys are required to write old-fashioned handwritten thank-you notes when they get birthday gifts, much to their disbelief.

    When I’m running errands with my sons, I nudge them to thank the bus driver.

    I even tell them they should thank our household robot Alexa when she informs us about the weather.

    Alexa doesn’t have feelings, my son Jasper will say.

    Yeah, but it’s good practice, I respond.

    And sometimes, before a meal, I’ll say a prayer of thanksgiving. Sort of. We’re not a particularly religious family. I’m agnostic, verging on atheist, so instead of thanking God, I’ll occasionally start a meal by thanking a handful of people who helped get our food to the plate. I’ll say, Thank you to the farmer who grew the carrots, to the truck driver who hauled them, to the cashier at Gristedes grocery store who rang me up.

    You know these people can’t hear you, right? my son Zane asked me one night.

    I told him I knew, but that it’s still good to remind ourselves of others’ contributions.

    Yet Zane’s comment stayed with me. He’s right. Those people can’t hear me. My pre-meal thanks are kind of perfunctory.

    As I pondered this over the next few days, I wondered if I should commit more fully. What would it be like to personally thank those who helped make my food? Each one of them?

    I knew the idea was absurd on one level. It’d be a major headache. It’d be time-consuming and travel-heavy.

    But it could also have huge benefits. It might be a nice thing for the people who make my meals possible.

    It would show my sons I’m serious about gratitude, and that they should be too.

    And it might make me more grateful, which would, in turn, make me less petty and annoyed. Because I needed to be less annoyed. Even though I know that I’m ridiculously lucky—I don’t lack for meals and I have a job that I mostly enjoy—I still let all the daily irritations hijack my brain. I’ll step on our dog’s dinosaur-shaped chew toy, or I’ll open an email that begins, Dearest A.J., I regret to inform you . . . , and I’ll forget the hundreds of things that go right every day and focus on the three or four that go wrong. I’d estimate that in my default mode, I’m mildly to severely aggravated more than 50 percent of my waking hours. That’s a ridiculous way to go through life. I don’t want to get to heaven (if such a thing exists) and spend my time complaining about the volume of the harp music.

    I’m not too far from the norm. If you believe evolutionary psychologists, all humans are genetically programmed to pay attention to what goes wrong. In Paleolithic times, it had survival value. Your one-thousandth great-grandparents needed to be damn sure they remembered which mushroom was poisonous.

    But the result of this negative bias is that we are awash in modern-day anxiety. We often see our lives as problem after problem, crisis after crisis. Many of us live in what some psychologists call the deficit mind-set, not the surplus mind-set. We spend far too much time fretting about what we’re missing instead of focusing on what we have.

    I needed a mental makeover, and a gratitude project could be my key to success. My goal for this project was to flip my ratio: By the end, I wanted to spend more than half of my average day experiencing gratitude and mild happiness. Or at least not outright irritation.

    My first task: I had to choose what food item to be thankful for. I considered apples, white wine, and Monterey Jack cheese. (My sons lobbied for s’mores, since they figured it would increase general s’more consumption around the house.)

    I thought about nonfood items as well: my pen, my socks, my toothpaste. Almost every object I encounter in my day requires thousands of humans and tons of effort—effort I take totally for granted.

    Finally I settled on something I can’t live without. My coffee. It seemed right for a couple of reasons. First, I do love my morning cup from my local café. I take it to go, no milk. I’m not a fanatic and my palate is unrefined, but I relish coffee’s bitter taste and the pleasant buzz it gives me—it’s my favorite narcotic, hands down.

    Second, coffee has a huge impact on our world. More than two billion cups of coffee are drunk every day around the globe. The coffee industry employs 125 million people internationally. Coffee is intertwined with politics, economics, and history. The Enlightenment was born in Europe’s coffeehouses. Over the centuries, coffee has helped create international trade and shape our modern economy.

    So I set out on the Great Coffee Gratitude Trail, intent on following all its twists and turns. What follows is the tale of my attempt. Oh, and lest I forget: Thank you for reading this intro.

    1

    The Barista and the Taster

    Thanks for Serving Me My Coffee

    I’ve decided to do this project in reverse, starting with my local café and working my way backward to the birth of the coffee. My coffee shop is a block’s walk from my apartment. It’s called Joe Coffee and has survived for twelve years, despite two Starbucks within a three-block radius.

    On a Thursday morning, I get in line, prepping myself to say the very first thank you of Project Gratitude. While waiting, I force myself

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