NEW YORK – New York City feels like the world's biggest small town when you’re trailing Timm Chiusano.
Just minutes after the 49-year-old content creator set up shop at a Manhattan subway station, half a dozen people had already stopped to say hello. Some take selfies, others shout congratulations for his recent New York City marathon (he ran it carrying 26 copies
of his debut book), and others just wave.He comes to this station to offer pep talks, an extension of his feel-good TikTok videos that first went viral in the early 2020s. For two hours, as a nonstop line forms. Chiusano offers free career and life advice, resume reviews, parenting tips and help with “general conundrums.” Some stumble in on their commutes, but most are followers from
social media.
Chiusano is among a growing class of ordinary people whose lives and careers have changed after going viral on TikTok. When Chiusano started posting videos in 2019, he was an advertising VP with a regimented daily routine that involved waking up at 4 a.m. and working on his subway commute. He gained a reputation as the "Mister Rogers of Corporate America." By 2024, his platform was so big he quit his 9-to-5 to pursue self-help and corporate coaching on a larger scale.
The videos themselves are nothing groundbreaking, but that, it seems, has always been the point. Over a soothing piano soundtrack, he narrates his day and finds little nuggets of appreciation along the way: Fish tacos with his wife Kelly and 14-year-old daughter Evelyn, his nightly snack hour, the stray cats who visit ritualistically.
The throughline is Chiusano’s “addiction” to the small moments. He makes the case in a new book, “How to Get Addicted to Appreciation: The Transformative Power of Noticing and Valuing the Good in Your World” (out Nov. 10 from Flatiron Books). I followed Chiusano around for a day to see if a bit of that addiction would rub off on me.
How Timm Chiusano got ‘addicted to appreciation’
It started with a manhole cover.
Chiusano was having a day from hell in corporate America. His boss was disappointed in his presentation. He burnt the last frozen waffle for his daughter’s breakfast. A million little work-related fires needed putting out. The train home was delayed.
Then he noticed a manhole cover on his sidewalk and paused to consider it: “I know it sounds crazy,” he writes, “but my thoughts shifted from all that work stress and I can’t believe I’m going to be late for dinner again to You know, it is super cool that someone figured out that manhole covers should be round and not square so that they can’t fall into the hole as they’re being lifted.”
That moment changed everything and gifted him a new outlook, the reason why over a million people follow his day-to-day unfold on TikTok.
Wellness culture loves practicing gratitude. Companies sell T-shirts, mugs and journals to remind us to be thankful, but Chiusano thinks we should prioritize the larger umbrella of appreciation. Building off of Rutgers psychologist Nancy Fagley’s research, Chiusano argues gratitude is transactional. It involves you receiving something. But appreciation requires you to find wonder in even the simplest of things. It's about curiosity.
“It really is something that I can’t turn off and I don’t want to turn off,” Chiusano says. “Grateful for the couch is a stretch, but I can appreciate its design, the material, the zipper placements, the fact that it’s got Velcro on the back that helps the cushion stay in place. And then my brain immediately goes to, who was it that made it? Where was it actually made?”
My day of appreciation with Timm Chiusano
I would consider myself a generally optimistic person. But I get bogged down as we all do. Life in New York City is expensive. The subway line next to my apartment is shut down until early next year. I recently lost my grandfather. I’m exhausted and doomscroll to give my brain a break, but then become frustrated by how much time I lose in the digital ether. I could use a bit of perspective, a bit of appreciation.
I meet Chiusano at 9:30 a.m. before heading to the subway, where the F train is about 15 minutes delayed. If we were running on my schedule, I’d be pacing and checking alternate transit routes. But Chiusano remains unphased. I think to myself, "Stop and appreciate." I appreciate that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority serves over 4 million weekday riders. I appreciate the Tetris-level coordination to organize the underground lines. I appreciate the above-ground platform for its stunning skyline view.
While we wait, he tells me about the book’s long journey to the finish line. It took him three years to write. After editing disagreements with his first publisher, he bought back the rights. He eventually sold it to Macmillan, but the initial cancellation was a low point. In this moment, he found appreciation hard.
But after allowing himself “to feel like crap,” he attempted to reframe: he didn’t appreciate what was happening, but he could appreciate the chance at a book deal, the editor who "cared enough to be brutally honest" and the opportunity for a teaching moment.
Down in the subway, Kayleigh Oakley, 37, and Tim Reynolds, 38, are among the pep talk seekers in line. The couple is visiting from Newfoundland, Canada and have followed Chiusano for a while. Reynolds incorporated Chiusano’s TED Talk into his sales team’s Q1 session. Oakley is hoping for advice on expanding her cleaning company and maintaining work-life balance when they become parents in a few months.
“It’s like waiting in line for Santa Claus,” Oakley says.
Offering advice on the fly to strangers can be challenging, and on the way home, Chiusano ponders his response to one participant. He wants to be encouraging and genuinely helpful without placating. Did he accomplish that today?
Chiusano is careful, sometimes defensively so, about the perception of “toxic positivity.” He’s gotten comments about it before, and he and his first editor consciously worked to scrub the first draft of it.
Chiusano is wealthy and lives in a beautiful brownstone with his beautiful family. He has a shiny Lincoln SUV from a brand deal that he drives to pick his daughter up from private school. On a bike ride to pick up takeout for dinner, Chiusano tells me he wants for nothing else in the world as long as he can financially support his daughter’s education and his expensive appetite for sushi.
As Chiusano and I head to his barbershop, he's messaging a friend in Gaza who is trying to evacuate to go to college. We remark that we're both lucky to appreciate a delayed train, not hunger. So even when his day gets scrambled, there are so many small moments to love.
“This is the one chance that we have for all of this,” Chiusano says. “Today is the only Nov. 4, 2026 I’m ever going to get in my life.”
In the days after, I try to keep up that feeling.
I’m not sure I’m completely addicted to appreciation yet. There are some days that just suck, and I'm guilty of the occasional morning commiseration with coworkers. I’ll never be able to hug my grandfather again. I got stuck in a packed subway car where no one seemed to have heard of basic passenger etiquette. Come the snowy winter months, I’m not sure I’ll appreciate my extra-long, detoured commute into the office.
But I come back to a line in the book, where Chiusano quotes his mother: “You have two choices in life: You can have a good time, or you can have a bad time. It’s up to you.”
So I’ll try and romanticize the morning walk and say hello to my neighbors. I’ll thank the sneaker company that designed the durable soles that get me from place to place. Because in a world increasingly hell-bent on efficiency and ease, how wonderful is the friction of trying? How glorious to have the chance to change your outlook?
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, covering buzzy releases, chatting with authors and diving into the culture of reading. Find heron Instagram, subscribe to our weeklyBooks newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Feeling stuck? This dad's viral 'addicted to appreciation' creed could change your life
