Being Willing

• Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kyoto, and instead of moving into a corporate career, he opened a jazz club in Tokyo.
• A few years later, at a baseball stadium, it occurred to him that he could write a novel. That led to Hear the Wind Sing (1979), which won him a new writers' prize.
• He was more like a  black sheep in the Japanese literary world, partly because his books were too American-like.
• Regardless of his critics, his commercial success continued to grow, hitting a high point in 1987 with Norwegian Wood, which sold 3,5m copies within a year of publication.

Haruki Murakami began to perfect the daily writing routine for which he is now as famous as for any single novel. He rises at 4 am to write for five or six hours, producing ten pages a day before a run of about six miles, and maybe a swim.

He believes that he has to be strong physically in order to write strong things.

A relationship app does little things like sending you reminders to text your partner an expression of gratitude at a certain time of day. It can also guide you through how to start a conversation about, for instance,  infidelity.

A relationship app is like a third, neutral party: It shows where a couple's needs and priorities differ. One app combines audio tracks and articles about psychology and marriage health, then translates them into exercises.

People have started to approach their personal lives like a business. 

Applications can act as a manager for children's time, or organize to-do lists and goals.