Q&A: Leena Norms answers questions from Celia and Catrin Rees on HALF ARSE HUMAN

"This is the only self-help book that will tell you to give up. Except ... you don't need to give up, do you? Because you didn't start.

Me either."

Leena Norms is a poet, vlogger. podcaster and presenter. She has amassed over 25 million views on her YouTube channel and has 199K followers. She was named by London Book Fair in 2020 as Book Vlogger of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Bookshop.org 2022 Indie Champions Award and for the Best BookTuber prize at the 2022 Blogosphere Awards. Leena received the London Book Fair Trailblazer Award in 2019 and the Bookseller Rising Star Award in 2016 for her online book campaigns and was a Winner in the Indie Champions Award, Bookshop.org, 2024.

In 2022 Leena published her debut poetry collection Bargain Bin Rom-Com (Burning Eye Books) and in 2024 Half Arse Human, a self-help book with a difference. Leena has worked with Icon Books, Pan Macmillan, Telegraph Books and Penguin Random House. She uses her YouTube Channel to talk with engaging verve and and real passion about everything: poetry, politics, coping in your twenties, books and reading, practical fashion and protecting the planet.

Website: https://leenanorms.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@leenanorms
Podcast: https://leenanorms.com/no-books-on-a-dead-planet
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leenanorms
X : @leenanorms

Celia: A self-help book with a difference. A book for those who are, well, half arsed about self-help in the first place. If you can identify with that, if you are, or ever have been, half arsed about making choices about your life, whether that be style (what clothes to wear), going vegan (what to eat/not eat), your career (or lack of it), your home (clutter, décor, bins etc. etc.), your body, your future, if you’re deafened by all the conflicting advice coming at you from all directions and if your heart sinks at the very thought of dealing with any of it, then this book is for YOU.

Despite the jokey title, this book is serious in its intent. It’s for all of us who serially fail to: keep New Year’s Resolutions, stick to diets/exercise regimes/morning rituals, work schedules and never get round to de-cluttering. Leena knows all the cut outs and excuses. There’s nowhere to hide. Leena’s book will take you from full time hoverer (read the book and you’ll understand) to whole arser and it's all backed up with science. The girl has done her research. I absolutely loved it. One of the best self-help book that I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a fair few. Throughout the book, Leena’s honesty shines through and resonates. She backs up each chapter with her own fears and failures and all the ways she’s found to overcome them. The penultimate chapter is entitled ‘Hope’ and this is what the book gives you. If Leena can do it, I can do it and that makes it possible to whole arse whatever you want to do.

First of all, have to say, I’m no stranger to self-help books, they have been my ‘go to’ in times of stress and have been for more decades than I care to count. Yours is one of the best. My daughter, Catrin, agrees. She’s a lawyer, and no stranger to self-help books and courses, either, but she loved it. She’s ‘all in’, too. While my take away was Hope – Change Is Possible, hers was Action – how do I effect change? A generational difference? I don’t know. Anyway, we came up with these questions together, so here goes:

Celia (CR): Can you share the when, where and why of the idea for Half Arse Human?

Leena (LN): I’ve always been a bit of a natural half-arser but ashamed of it - I tried to squash my instincts for shortcuts and become someone who was thorough in all aspects of their life. As I improved, the catch became clear: perfection wasn’t possible, and trying to hone all aspects of my life was resulting in serious burnout!

It occurred to me that if I fess-up to half-arsing (and explore what I suspect to be true: in most areas of our life, half-arsing is all we have the resources for) and start intentionally doing it, I might be able to pick a few things that matter to me and focus on them, without feeling ashamed to have not mastered it all. Intentionally meant looking at each aspect of my life and thinking ‘if I only put in half the effort society expects me to, which parts of the task would I prioritise?’

CR: Does Half Arse Human have a message beyond purely personal self-improvement?

LN: As I started honing my half-arse muscles, I also started becoming more aware of all the things we need to urgently change about society in order to adjust for the new coming climate emergency - and noticed how frequently the focus is on individual change rather than collective change. I thought ‘hang on a minute, if preserving the PLANET isn’t a group project, what is?!’

I began ‘half-arse Veganuary’ - a challenge encouraging people to join cutting down on dairy, eggs and meat in January, even if they weren’t able to be strict about it. It’s collectively that we need to reduce, so if many hands make light work, surely many mouths make… easier chewing?! It caught on and I love seeing people do half-arse veganism where they might not have participated before at all. That approach started spinning out of control, and I realised it made sense in lots of contexts, from clothes to careers to conservation – so I started writing about half-arsing in those contexts too.

CR: Half arse vegan really made sense to me! You back up all you're saying and, for me, one of the real strengths of Half Arse Human is the depth of your research. What were your go-to sources?

LN: The library of course! There’s also some really well researched podcast series out there that are always very well sourced. In particular I love Maintenance Phase, Science Vs and The Financial Diet.

CR: What was/is your intention behind Half Arse Human? What would you like the reader to take from the book?

LN: I’d love for them to feel invited back into their lives, not as a failing groundskeeper, but as a realistic landscaper - that it’s not shameful to admit that we’re only running on half a tank and to strategise accordingly. In fact, being a bit more slapdash can move you closer to your goals than sitting on the sideline - and you’re bound to have a lot more fun along the way!

Catrin Rees (CJR): How do you half arse an excess of small choices when they are stopping you from doing anything at all?

LN: See if there’s a theme running through all the micro-decisions that are on your plate - is it about who/what is prioritised? Time? Energy? It’s good to set a Manifesto, whether that’s for your day, your week or your life (What is it about? What is it trying to achieve?) and then see which tasks on your to-do list serve your mission and which are just extras that snuck on there by default.

CJR: Do you have one or any quick practical fixes to snap out of spells of procrastination?

LN: Halving the task you’re supposed to be doing and doubling the time you’ve allocated to it - even if just for now. Lowering the bar and lifting the restrictions can make it easier. Also the promise of a Curly Wurly at the end, that always helps ;)

CJR: Have you any half arsed tips to get writing a first book in a busy half arsed life?

LN: Tell everyone! Blurt out how excited you are about it, how much you’re enjoying it, bring people in on your mission - they’ll be much more understanding when you bow out of things to go and write, and can often pitch in to give you the time you need. Just like with children, writing a book takes a village - so go ask your villagers!

Half Arse Human is published by John Murray

Guest review by Ignaty Dyakov: THE ART OF POSSIBILITY by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

"There are many books on self-development ... What is different here is the angle, the point of view and the calibre of stories, parables and personal experiences which fill this book."

Ignaty Dyakov wears several hats (apart from a deer-stalker and a faux-fur Russian hat). A Chartered Linguist, he has authored a series of unconventional Russian and ELT textbooks, which help students learn grammar and vocabulary through fun-to-read detective stories. They are now used at universities and schools all over the world, US, UK and France being the biggest markets. Ignaty is currently on the Management Committee of the Society of Authors, where he also chairs the Educational Writers Group.

In recent years, after he qualified as a life coach and Ayurvedic consultant, he has set up a health and wellbeing coaching practice in the Midlands. He works on a one-to-one basis, delivers talks and workshops and writes articles on a holistic approach to health, complementary therapies and coaching methods. More information can be found on www.lifesensei.uk or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lifesenseiuk/

In his spare time, he loves writing and reading short stories, walking, vegan cooking and a bit of DIY.

There are many books on self-development written by motivational speakers, business performance coaches, and inspirational gurus. Some will be considered classics, some will have merit, many will be vanity projects. Among them one finds a book co-authored by a conductor. A conductor, I hear you ask, a conductor? What can an orchestra conductor teach us about life, mindset, positive thinking? Admittedly, the usual ideas, mostly, what a well-read person with at least some analytical inclinations would know anyway. What is different here is the angle, the point of view and the calibre of stories, parables and personal experiences which fill this book to its cover.

Two authors: an introvert and an extrovert; a wife and a husband; a psychotherapist and a conductor; a quiet, more theorising voice with the narrative of case studies and personal childhood stories and a full-bodied brass ensemble of… to appreciate Benjamin’s impetus, one might want to watch a talk or two of his on YouTube. Authors of each story in the book are clearly identified, but we would probably feel who has penned it – Ben or Roz.

The Zanders’ mindset is pretty much summarised in the first line of The Art of Possibility: “Waiter,” I said in an exuberant mood, “I have a perfect life, but I don’t have a knife” (that is, of course, Ben talking). It is all here: harmony, mischief, directness, positivity. What follows is the explanation of twelve practices, which can either work altogether, or be picked up individually – whatever each of us, readers, might find useful. There are chapters on passion and igniting a spark, on creating frameworks for possibility or being a contribution; my favourite ones are ‘it’s all invented’, ‘rule number 6’, and ‘giving an A’.

It is indeed all invented. We don’t see the world, but a map of the world, one of many. The world seems to us sorted and packaged, with the help of the culture we live in, the education we get, the personal journey we make. The famous experiment, in which Me’en people in Ethiopia were presented with photographs for the first time and were unable to ‘read’ them, proves that without the conventions of modern life we wouldn’t see anything but a shiny piece of material. The frames our minds create define (or rather confine) what we think to be possible, what solutions we find. If we remember that we are the inventors, we can create new frames.

This leads us nicely to the practice called ‘Rule Number 6’, which reads, “Don’t take yourself so goddamn serious”. It is based on a widely publicised story of two prime ministers, in which one PM observes remarkable and instant transformation in staff behaviour every time his counterparty announces ‘Remember Rule Number Six’. There aren’t any other rules, by the way. If we follow said rule and lighten up over our demands, caprices and entitlements, the Zanders point out, we will be transported into a new universe, co-operative in nature.

Grades rarely say much about the work done, they are just matching one student’s work against another’s. We then take the same approach to life and assign different grades to people, events, or places. This doesn’t offer any reflection on them, but creates a strain of competition and, often, a blow to morale. The practice of assigning an A to anyone and anything at any time gets you to a place of respect, which, in turn, provides said people, events, or places room to realise themselves. The Zanders say, “This A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into”.

A book on developing a positive mindset could easily be indigestible: king-size in many hundreds of thousands words, ideally simmered in small font, boiled with a pinch of patronising, over-spiced with guru-style ‘revelations’ and professional jargon. The Zanders created quite a different type – simple, concise, yet versatile and full of real-life examples. How fascinating!

The Art of Possibility is published by Harvard Business School Press.