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When Melissa Kirsch finds something to include in The Good List, a New York Times newsletter designed to add delight to readers’ days, she gets a certain ineffable feeling in her stomach.
It happens when “something really speaks to me,” said Ms. Kirsch, a writer at large for The Times who began writing the weekly newsletter in March. “I feel seen, and I think, something about my worldview or philosophy really aligns with this thing.”
She recently experienced this sensation while confiding in a friend about a worry. What if this happens, she asked her friend. What if that happens? The friend looked at her and asked, “What if it all works out?” That response short-circuited her spiraling, she said.
The moment ended up in the newsletter, titled “an antidote to worry.” In each edition of The Good List, Ms. Kirsch provides a list of ideas, rituals or general observations that might pique readers’ curiosity, as well as brief explanations for their inclusion.
“My fear when I describe The Good List is that it’s going to sound like a list of all the good things in the world, my favorite things, like raindrops on roses,” she said, but it’s less copper kettles and woolen mittens and more “an idiosyncratic list of ideas.” Past editions have examined the benefits of “two to four minutes of eye contact,” “travel cake” and “not saying too much.”
In a recent interview, Ms. Kirsch shared more about her goals for The Good List and her process for selecting ideas for the newsletter. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Before The Good List, you wrote At Home, a pandemic-era newsletter that helped people have full lives while much of the world was shut down. You also write the Saturday edition of the Morning newsletter, with a similar focus on finding meaning in the everyday. Why did you want to do this now?
I started at The Times in 2020. Originally, Sam Sifton was writing At Home, and then I took it over. The way that he described it to me was that the newsletter was an exercise in radical empathy.
Eventually, At Home went away. After the pandemic, we were back in the real world, but our needs and our humanness hadn’t vanished because the world opened up again. So I thought about how to have that conversation about what gives life meaning now that our options were more expansive.
We tried a few different things before landing on The Good List, but all throughout, we thought, how can we present this kind of curious, optimistic engagement with the culture every single day? It was trying to take that spirit and turn it into something new.
What other things did you try before landing on this format?
At one point, I was working on an audio show called “The Good List,” but I came back to a newsletter. I’ve been thinking of this metaphor: The internet, at large — if that’s your town, then your inbox is your front yard. It’s a very intimate way to communicate with an audience, and it’s very one-to-one.
I don’t know about your inbox, but I’m very protective of mine, the way I would be protective of my yard. If I’m going to invite you in, you’re going to have to really earn it. Otherwise, I’m unsubscribing, I’m blocking, I’m deleting, because I want to keep this space clean. I love being able to honor the privilege of being in somebody’s inbox with that kind of intimacy.
The lists are formatted as a table of contents and then a couple-hundred-word explanation of each of the six or so items. How do you think about what makes it onto the list each week?
I’m making a good list that’s not just personal. I’m trying to make it for a large audience. If something is good, what is good about it beyond it just being a positive thing? How do I explain what’s good about it?
For example, we can all agree, generally, that we like the aroma of fresh bread. But that wouldn’t make it onto The Good List because it’s too generic. There’s no human element in there for me to explain. The explanations are part of what makes The Good List work. If I can’t tell you why this thing should expand your life in some way, I can at least help you ask the questions that might do that.
Whether or not this particular item speaks to you, hopefully there’s a way of looking at the world that’s being presented that helps you interrogate your own world and the things that make it onto your good list. It might help you articulate what makes something good in your life. And that, I think, is the secret to happiness. Happiness isn’t a point that you reach, it’s a way of orienting yourself to the world.
Are you an optimist?
I think that total optimism would require losing one’s edge, and I like to think that my writing is funny and that it’s entertaining; I don’t want to be a fool.
I would say that I have come by this orientation of looking for the good through a lot of work and through a lot of asking questions of myself, like, What do I want? Who am I? What is my purpose? And what do I have to do to realize that? I try to constantly reorient myself toward the good. I’m not there all the time. I’m working against a tendency toward pessimism.
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