Now Available · 2026
Discovering what brings you genuine joy and intentionally designing your life around it — before the years run out.
Discovering What Brings You Joy and Intentionally Building Your Life Around It
About the Book
A young girl in Scotland tucked a handwritten list inside an old book. She called it My Eleven Loveliest Things, People Not Counted. Decades later, a man in Idaho read that list, looked at his dog, and started to cry. That moment changed everything.
The Joy List is a memoir-driven guide to identifying the experiences that bring you genuine joy and designing your life around them — not by accident, but by intention.
"Joy doesn't announce itself. It arrives quietly, in ordinary moments, to people who are paying attention."
— Matt Smith, The Joy List
"Joy is available to you every single day. Not by accident. By intention."
— Matt Smith, The Joy List
Inside the Book
The difference between happiness and joy — and why it changes everything.
Why sorrow is not the enemy of joy.
Building your personal joy list.
How the stories we tell ourselves shape our joy.
Gratitude as a physical skill you can build.
The practice of being stopped by the world around you.
Protecting what matters the same way you protect your obligations.
From passive endurance to active design.
The relationships that make joy possible.
Creating joy in the people around you.