Vox interviews Mr. Money Mustache

Some highlights include:

"The first trick is to remind yourself that buying something — pretty much anything — is very unlikely to improve your long-term happiness. Science figured this out for us long ago, but not many people got the memo. Go to your junk electronics drawer and look at your old flip phones or your dusty iPad 1. Look at the clothes you've recently pruned from your closet that are now headed to the Goodwill. You traded a lot of good dollars for those, not very long ago at all. Are they still making you happy today?"

and...

"Investing is scary until you understand how simple it is. The key for me was to recognize that stocks are not gambling instruments - they are slices of ownership in real, productive companies that will work with you for life. You eliminate all the risk by holding thousands of stocks simultaneously through a low-cost index fund."

and...

"For me, early retirement has never been about ceasing work or productive activity. Just breaking free of working to somebody else's agenda and schedule, or having the threat of running out of money influencing my decisions of what to work on. The good life is all about plenty of hard work doing stuff you love to do."

The interview is interesting throughout, and can be read here.

Material lifestyle not improving well-being

Apparently material prosperity doesn't necessarily lead to human thriving.

 "In affluent countries such as the UK, well-being is not on average increasing even though GDP has grown substantially. Part of the problem is that any positive increase in well-being due to economic prosperity is being quickly eroded by the substantial knock-on costs of mental ill-health, dementias, obesity, physical inactivity, diabetes, loneliness and cardiovascular disease (including strokes) which affect many people."

and this...

The research team has undertaken an analysis of the negative side-effects of our existing consumer patterns on six critical factors which can help improve our health and well-being.
         These factors are:

• Eating healthy food;
• Being physically active;
• Having a healthy mind;
• Linking in with community and family;
• Contact with nature and green/blue space;
• Attachment to meaningful possessions.

The full article can be read here.

I think the conclusion of this study forms the basis of the Early-Retirement/Financial-Independence (FIRE) movement, as articulated today by bloggers like Jacob and MMM. As I understand it, the approach they both describe doesn't involve the mindless accumulation of wealth for wealth's sake--or early "retirement" for retirement's sake--but rather serves as the foundation upon which a thriving life is built. It invites the reader to consider more carefully what actually contributes to their well-being, and encourages them to focus on these factors when making decisions about their life.

It seems to me that, while material prosperity provides the necessary resources for allowing humans to thrive, it does not guarantee it.

Much like the study cited above, the emphasis is on developing a healthy mind and body that is in touch with its family, community, nature, and possessions. Elevating these factors above one's career, convenience, and desire to own expensive things, is what--in my humble opinion--makes the FIRE movement about more than money and frugality and retiring early from mandatory work.

It is at the root, I think, about making space so that we  might attend mindfully to the health of ourselves and others, our relationships, our homes, and the environment in which we all live, and upon which we all depend.

Something to consider, maybe.

Interesting post

It's by Jacob of Early Retirement Extreme, and discusses his own "4-hour work-week." 

My suggested strategy is to kill your stupid TV and instead spend your time learning a handful of skills that are worth $35/hour on the open-market as well as being personally useful to you(*) and (actively) wait for one of them to be requested. I think such a diversified strategy beats concentrating on one and then trying frantically to find it. All it requires—but maybe that IS asking for a lot —is the drive to learn new stuff and a proactive response whenever an opportunity presents itself.

It can be read in full here.

Life rhythms and wandering minds

Life's rhythms and mental illness: 

Our daily sleep-wake cycle is governed by an internal 24-hour timer, the circadian clock. However, there is evidence that daily activity is also influenced by rhythms much shorter than 24 hours, which are known as ultradian rhythms and follow a four-hour cycle. Most prominently observed in infants before they are able to sleep through the night, ultradian rhythms may explain why, on average, we eat three meals a day that are relatively evenly spaced across our daily wake period.

The article can be read here.

Also of interest:

In an unanticipated finding, the present study demonstrated how the increased mind wandering behavior produced by external stimulation not only does not harm subjects' ability to succeed at an appointed task, it actually helps. Bar believes that this surprising result might stem from the convergence, within a single brain region, of both the "thought controlling" mechanisms of executive function and the "thought freeing" activity of spontaneous, self-directed daydreams.

The article discussing this study can be read here.

Mo Farah breaks world-indoor 2-mile record

His time was 8:03.40, closing the final 400m in 57.6s. The previous indoor record was held by Kenenisa Bekele, 8:04.35.

Many congratulations to Mr. Farah and his coach.  

A nice write-up can be read here, and the race can be watched here.

Young Adults: 1980 and Today

The new Census data provide a striking look at how today’s young adults are different on many important demographic characteristics compared to their counterparts in 1980. We can also see from the Census study how the geographic center of gravity in the US for the highest-paying jobs for young Americans has dramatically shifted over the last several generations, from cities in the Midwest and Rust Belt states to the West Coast (Silicon Valley and Seattle) and East Coast (Boston, Washington, New York, Baltimore). That shift reflects the never-ending gales of Schumpeterian creative destruction that characterize a market economy and result in some industries and geographical regions emerging as economic centers of entrepreneurship, innovation, growth, investment, employment opportunities for young people, and rising income levels, only to eventually have those forces of economic change shift and move away to other industries and other geographical regions, leaving reduced opportunities and lower levels of incomes in the once-prosperous cities.

That comes from a post by Mark J. Perry, and is interesting throughout.

It can be read here.

Lives on default

I was rereading a post today by David Cain of Raptitude, and thought it was worth sharing:

Friends, location and career tend to define the other one: what you do with your time. Your habits and your hobbies. Your routines, your typical saturday night activities, your wardrobe, your pursuits and personal projects are all suggested by (and constrained by) what your defaults are in the other categories. If you happened to grow up in Nebraska, you probably don’t surf. But surfing might just be the thing that really would turn your crank like nothing else, if you were lucky enough to discover that. 

So much of our lives consists of conditions we’ve fallen into. We gravitate unwittingly to what works in the short term, in terms of what to do for work and what crowd to run with. There’s nothing wrong with living from defaults, necessarily, but think about it: what are the odds that the defaults delivered to you by happenstance are anywhere close to what’s really optimal for you?

The post is thoughtful and interesting throughout, and can be read here.

Mindfulness training reduces stress

Creswell and Lindsay highlight a body of work that depicts the biological mechanisms of mindfulness training's stress reduction effects. When an individual experiences stress, activity in the prefrontal cortex -- responsible for conscious thinking and planning -- decreases, while activity in the amygdala, hypothalamus and anterior cingulate cortex -- regions that quickly activate the body's stress response -- increases. Studies have suggested that mindfulness reverses these patterns during stress; it increases prefrontal activity, which can regulate and turn down the biological stress response.

These findings complement my personal experience, having found "mindfulness" techniques helpful under a variety of circumstances. I think different people get different mileage from the various techniques that are out there, but those that have proven most useful for me include sitting mediation and stream-of-consciousness typing.

The remainder of the article can be read here.

Pigeons are even better at learning than we thought

In a new study from the University of Iowa, researchers found that pigeons can categorize and name both natural and humanmade objects--and not just a few objects. These birds categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories, and they did so simultaneously. 

...the UI researchers used a computerized version of the "name game" in which three pigeons were shown 128 black-and-white photos of objects from 16 basic categories: baby, bottle, cake, car, cracker, dog, duck, fish, flower, hat, key, pen, phone, plan, shoe, tree. They then had to peck on one of two different symbols: the correct one for that photo and an incorrect one that was randomly chosen from one of the remaining 15 categories. The pigeons not only succeeded in learning the task, but they reliably transferred the learning to four new photos from each of the 16 categories.

Also, an interesting quote from the lead researcher:

"It is certainly no simple task to investigate animal cognition; But, as our methods have improved, so too have our understanding and appreciation of animal intelligence... Differences between humans and animals must indeed exist: many are already known. But, they may be outnumbered by similarities."

The full press-release can be read here.

Surprising Astrocytes

This was interesting:

Lead study author Hong Chen, a physician and scientist, transplanted immature human nervous system cells -- generated from adult stem cells -- into the spinal cords of mice. These cells matured into astrocytes. 

The researchers checked in from time to time, and within nine months, found the astrocytes had traveled long distances along the mouse spinal cord, hugging the mouse neurons, connecting to blood vessels and joining with one another, just as mouse astrocytes do. They replaced the mouse astrocytes in the process, but did not affect the ability of the mice to function normally... 

The researchers repeated the experiments with astrocytes matured from human patients with ALS. The astrocytes replaced the mouse astrocytes, behaving just like those from nonALS individuals, except they disrupted motor function in the mice, just like in ALS.

The full article can be read here.

The wikipedia entry on astrocytes can be found here.