A.J. Jacobs

Well, we love Ben Franklin around here.

Always with Ben Franklin and the self-help universe.

But, I mean, with something like that, I mean, part of when you're writing about your experiences, I mean, nonfiction, it needs to sort of have these epiphanies, like these realizations of something that happened.

And yet when you're going into something, you can't really –

know for sure where the epiphany is going to happen.

I'm curious how you think about structuring your activities through a project like that in order to get realizations that will make compelling anecdotes.

I love that.

That is a great question.

And it is hard because you have to...

I feel that it's a balance between having a structure and being able to improvise within that structure.

And I think that's in many endeavors.

But yeah, I have a structure where I know it's going to start and end at the year.

I know that...

For instance, with the gratitude book, I hoped at the end that I would become more grateful.

It would be a little disappointing if I didn't.

And then I came up with, here are 10...

what they call in movies, set pieces.

I want to go down to South America and visit the coffee farmer.

I want to meet with the guy who tastes the coffee and says, oh, there's a hint of licorice and a little bit of chocolate.

And I'm always like, you know, it tastes like coffee to me, but I love that you can taste all that other stuff.