I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

I love to read and over the years, many passages and quotations have lodged in my head.

Often I'll encounter a situation and I'll refer to it in my own mind by a shorthand reference

to something I've read.

Many situations remind me of my favorite TV show, The Office, for instance, and I'm often

reminded of many other works of art.

For example, I sometimes encounter a situation which I think of as a Vasty Deep situation.

Maybe you've experienced this kind of situation.

A Vasty Deep situation is when people make bold claims about the popularity of their products

or arguments about how persuasive they are.

A great example is when someone says to me, on my podcast, I plan to interview leaders

like Bill Gates, Tim Cook, and Oprah.

The key word there is plan.

Those people haven't agreed to do the interviews.

This person is just planning to ask them.

Or another example might be someone who says, I gave a talk that streamed out to 100,000

people.

Okay.

But how many people actually watched?

I gave this phenomenon this name from a short exchange in Shakespeare's play Henry

IV, which I've always gotten a kick out of.

So in the play, the character Glendower is bragging about himself and how extraordinary

...