Are you a fidgeter like I am? This is the book for you!

Fidget: 101 Ways to Boost Your Creativity and Decrease Your Stress by Heather Fishel

Paperback - $14.99 ($10.99 on Amazon)

Published by Simon and Schuster

128 Pages

I am definitely a Fidgeter.  Ever since I was a kid, I have been constantly chewing on my pencils and pens, playing with paper clips, and doodling in the margins of all my notebooks (mostly Star Wars space battles).  So when our editor told me we had been invited to check out review copy of a book on Fidgeting, I quickly snatched it up.

On a whole, I really enjoyed FIDGET  So many of the fidgets that Heather Fishel talks about are things that I do.  I also loved that she went into a variety of things that people don’t normally think of when it comes to fidgeting: including things that you can taste and listen to.  The book was a quick read, but each Fidget receives a lot of detail about how to do it, and many of them even include information about why they work.

I also liked that a lot of the Fidgets mentioned also provided some research information on why we did those behaviors.  In the Introduction they tell us “According to Purdue University, fidgeting is what we’re up to when we do two things simultaneously: one activity focuses part of the brain on the most important action, while the second utilizes an entirely different part of the brain and body to dispense with static, or built-up, frustrated energy." I had never thought of it that way before, and I thought that was a great introduction to the habits that she would talk about through the rest of the book.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of specific sources listed though.  Sometimes you would get something specific like “According to Western New England College psychology professor Kathleen M. Dillion…” but too often it was something vague like “Japanese researchers say...” or even just “studies show…”  I am a bit of a nerd, but some footnotes or a reference page to tell me where I can find out more would have been really appreciated.  In all fairness, this was a pretty no-frills book.  Each of the 101 entries only had a page.

I also did think that there was some repetition which made the book feel a little padded.  There are eight different entries on doodling and most of them seemed to amount to the same exact thing. I breezed through this book in about an hour, and since the book was $15 and around 128 pages, when I got to the end I wasn’t quite sure I got enough content. That said, the content that was here was very well written and informative.  And the book really made me want to get some of the indestructive bubble wrap they describe on page 114.  

If you are a born fidgeter like I am, I think you will find this book engaging and worth your time.  So get some cinnamon-spiked coffee and check out FIDGET!