I’m not sure what took me so long to finally read this book. It’s been hovering around my periphery for years—I’ve heard all about it and I’ve heard Priya speak multiple times on different podcasts, but for some reason it took until now for me to actually get a copy, read, and sit with it.

I think, like some of my other manifested moments lately, that it’s because I’m finally ready to hear to the message that’s inside of this book. A year ago I started hosting regular open studio nights in my backyard art studio. I’ve wanted to gather women together to make art for years, but never had the space or the energy to do so. Now that I have a year of these art nights under my belt, I’m feeling the itch to add more thought and meaning to these gatherings. Enter the Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.

As I read this book over the past couple weeks, I could feel it sinking into my subconscious and informing decisions that I’m making both personally and at work. It validates many of the intuitive ways that I structure work meetings and workshops in a way that I didn’t realize could be formalized. It also added nuance and additional ways to think about these gatherings that I’ve already applied and spoken about with anyone who would listen for more than five minutes.

Now that I finished reading the entire book, I can’t wait to sit down and plan out the intentions and impact that it’ll have on my open studio nights moving forward. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has any intention of bringing people together, including for something as informal as a dinner to planning conferences and multi-day events.