Yoyo's Top Five: Volume 2

A Weekly Guide to Becoming Legendary

Welcome back, Legends.

Every week I curate five things that are moving me, inspiring me, and keeping me sharp because becoming legendary isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. It’s the book you finish, the room you walk into, the song that wrecks you in the best way, the tool that buys back your time, and yes, the arm exercises you do between emails. It all counts. Every single bit of it.

This week we’re talking about a thriller that will steal your sleep, a table worth sitting at, the AI tool quietly changing my life, a song that took me straight back to my son’s childhood, and a backless dress that is depending on us to show up.

Let’s get into it.

#1 — Alice Feeney, My Husband’s Wife

“Your biggest enemy is always the person you see in the mirror.”

I became a devoted Alice Feeney fan in the span of a single Netflix series and one very dangerous Audible recommendation. It started with His & Hers — I binged the whole thing, completely convinced I could crack the case before the credits rolled. (I could not.) So when Audible slid My Husband’s Wife into my queue, I didn’t stand a chance. I finished it in a week.

What drew me in immediately was how much Feeney’s writing felt like that Netflix series: same eerie tension, same creeping dread, same “wait, what just happened?” energy. Sure enough, a quick Google search confirmed what I already suspected: I’d found my new favorite author.

The novel centers on Eden Fox, an artist who returns home from a morning run to find her key no longer works. A woman who looks disturbingly like her answers the door and Eden’s own husband insists this stranger is his wife. Enter Olivia Bird aka Birdy, a sharp, tenacious detective drawn into the case, trying to make sense of a mystery where identity itself can’t be trusted.

Early on, I’ll admit, I was half-convinced there was a supernatural twist lurking somewhere. There wasn’t. What Feeney delivers is somehow more unsettling. And the ending classic, I never saw that coming!

Should you read it? Absolutely! Especially if you love suspense, unreliable narrators, and plot twists that genuinely blindside you, this book is for you. I finished the last page a little sad it was over, which, honestly, is the best problem a book can give you. Luckily, there’s a whole Feeney backlist waiting for me.

Stay tuned next month. I’ll tell you what I’m reading next.

#2 — Get in the Room

There’s a quote I keep coming back to: “your network is your net worth”. And lately, I’ve been living it.

Recently I had the chance to step outside my usual circle and attend a meeting with the National Association of Women in Construction. I walked in curious. I walked out inspired.

Talk about a real seat at the table.

The women in that room are leading in fields that have historically belonged to men and they’re doing it with confidence, skill, and an unmistakable commitment to bringing others up with them. What struck me most wasn’t just their accomplishments. It was their generosity. These women aren’t only building projects and breaking ground. They’re building pathways, intentional, deliberate ones for the next generation of women who are coming up behind them.

That’s what real community looks like.

So here’s my nudge to you: say yes to the meeting you’ve been putting off. Introduce yourself to the woman across the room. Join the association, attend the luncheon, show up to the panel even if you don’t know a single person there. You don’t have to be the most experienced person in the room to belong in it. You just have to be willing to walk through the door.

When women support each other, the table doesn’t just feel more welcoming, it gets bigger. And there is always, always room for one more.

#3 — My AI Bestie

Let me tell you about my newest, most efficient relationship: the one I have with AI.

I’ve been quietly weaving it into my daily life, and the results have been nothing short of a revelation. Not for anything dramatic or complicated, just the small, unglamorous tasks that quietly eat away at your time and sanity. The ones you keep putting off because life is full and your to-do list has a to-do list.

Take manuals. Who actually reads them? You buy something exciting, you want to use it, not wade through seventeen pages of fine print in four languages. Now I just ask AI to break it down for me in plain, simple terms and get straight to the good part: enjoying the thing I bought.

And then there’s my desktop. If you’ve ever stared at a screen cluttered with folders you haven’t opened since 2021, you know the specific low-grade anxiety that comes with digital chaos. I had 38, thirty-eight, random folders living rent-free on my desktop. The tool that changed everything? Claude Cowork.

Cowork is built into the Claude desktop app and moves Claude from conversation into execution mode. You simply describe what you need done, point it to a folder, and step away. You can describe an outcome, walk away, and come back to finished work, organized files, formatted documents, synthesized research, and more. That’s exactly what I did. Now I have four clean, intentional folders and a desktop so tidy it practically sparks joy.

AI didn’t just save me time. It gave me back a little peace of mind.

So if you’ve been curious but hesitant, consider this your sign. You don’t need to be a tech person. You just need a task you’d rather not do alone and trust me, your desktop will thank you.

#4 — What’s Playing in My Ears: Small Wonders — Rob Thomas

I was scrolling through social media recently when a video stopped me mid-thumb. Small Wonders by Rob Thomas. And just like that, I was gone, carried somewhere warm and familiar, back to the days when my son would watch Meet the Robinsons on what felt like an endless loop. This song was part of the soundtrack, and I am not exaggerating when I tell you it lived on repeat in our home. Daily. Cheerfully. Relentlessly.

Some songs don’t just play — they transport you.

At the time, I probably didn’t think much of it beyond here we go again. But hearing it now, with him all grown up, hit differently.

There’s something quietly devastating in the most beautiful way about remembering the innocence of your child’s youth while standing on the other side of it. The way he believed in everything. The way the world felt limitless and full of possibility, because to him, it simply was.

And that’s really what Meet the Robinsons was always about, wasn’t it? A young mind with a dream so stubborn it refused to die. A reminder that the future belongs to those who keep showing up, consistent, disciplined, unshakeable in their belief that what they’re building matters.

My son is grown now. And I look at him and I still see that. The dream didn’t die. It just got bigger.

Let it go, let it roll right off your shoulders

Don’t you know the hardest part is over?

Let it in, let your clarity define you

In the end, we will only just remember how it feels…

If you haven’t revisited this song in a while, let this be your sign. Put it on, close your eyes, and remember what it felt like to believe that you could do anything. Because you still can.

#5 — The Backless Dress Is Calling

We are less than three months away from Sunkist summer and that means sundresses, open-toe sandals, and thongs that have absolutely no business being that small. Summer is not canceling on us, so we cannot cancel on ourselves.

Consider this your official notice.

I’ll be honest with you. In between drafting articles, writing, and editing, I have quietly, consistently been putting in the work. We’re talking arm bands and four reps of arm exercises tucked right into my day, no gym required, no elaborate routine, just the commitment to show up for myself in the small pockets of time I actually have.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: you don’t need a perfect schedule. You need a decision.

So if you are reading this right now, yes, you, put the phone down. Not forever. Just long enough to do a set of windmill arm exercises. Both arms, full circles, feel slightly ridiculous, keep going. Your future self, the one gliding into summer in that backless dress, arms out, unbothered, will absolutely thank you. Check on the ones I purchased on Amazon by Manguogo. The dress is waiting. Let’s meet it halfway.

Legends are not built in grand gestures they’re built in the small, consistent, intentional choices we make every single day.

Keep going. Keep showing up. Keep becoming.

Until next week…

Yoyo 🖤