The Acta series provides a summary and preview of articles I have read and enjoyed during the previous week. I hope you enjoy the articles below and I’ll be back with another edition next week.
Three questions to ask yourself before retirement Click here to view original web page at drfire.co.uk
Recent discussions on boredom in retirement, early or otherwise, have prompted me to revisit an old post in the drafts folder and finish it up.
Over a year ago now, I was listening to an episode of the FT Money Show. They had a guest, Don Ezra, who talked about “retiring the word ‘retirement.’” He said that entering the post-work phase of your life is something to be celebrated rather than dreaded, and gave some advice on how one should go about preparing for “life-2.0.” There are obviously many different things to consider, but the gist of the podcast is that you can prepare for retirement by answering the following three questions:
How To Start And Grow Your Online Business Click here to view original web page at engineerseekingfire.com
Having an online business or side hustle is one of the key factors that can speed up your path to FIRE. It is very easy to do an online search and find lots of great ideas. However, there is a long distance between an interesting idea and a profitable execution. In this post, I will provide a step-by-step guide about how to start and grow your online business.
The most important part of this journey is to treat your online business as a business and not as a hobby. You should think of yourself as an entrepreneur, who is growing a business, and not as an amateur, who is trying things for fun.
Optimism Click here to view original web page at indeedably.com
Every now and then there are heartening events that make us smile and give rise to optimism.
Sarah had an eventful week that proved football is an overloaded word. Starting with her playing goalkeeper for the Vanderbilt Commodores women’s soccer team as they won their first championship in 26 years. Finishing with a late call up to play kicker in the men’s college gridiron team. An opportunity millions of kids can only dream of.
Opportunities go to those who show up. Romain had a fortunate escape. His racing car crashed through a barrier at 220km/h. Broke in half. Then exploded into flames. 30 seconds later he climbed from the wreckage largely unharmed. Five years ago, such a crash would have certainly claimed his life, but a tenacious race director and some smart engineers combined their efforts to make the sport safer.
5 Big Ideas From Positive Psychology Click here to view original web page at www.hustleescape.com
Positive psychology is teaching us more about the foundations of a happy, fulfilled life. Here are 5 must-read ideas from the field.
For a long time, there was a gaping deficit in the study of psychology.
In a quest to understand what made people sick, irrational, or miserable, psychologists all but ignored the quest to understand what made people happier and healthier. In the 1950s, this deficit started to shift. And in the 21st century, we might say that we’ve finally found some balance in our quest to understand the human mind.
Of course, this didn’t happen by accident. Researchers have actively sought to bridge the positivity deficit. Indeed, such has been the scale of this endeavour, it’s now considered a subfield of its own: positive psychology.
Life is not Linear: Follow the Breadcrumb Trail Click here to view original web page at mortgagefreebythesea.com
Life is not linear – this came as a surprise to me. As someone who held a very linear world view, I envisioned myself staying in my job, paying my mortgage off, amassing a small fortune and having a very comfortable future. I was well and truly on my safe, linear path.
Yet this way of thinking about the financial side of life was at odds with the other side of my personality. The part that did tarot readings, meditated, used affirmations and believed in signs from the universe. And for a while, most of my life actually, I’ve found myself treading the path between two very oppositional world views. When I started this blog, I envisioned myself posting hints and tips about financial freedom, as well as sharing my own story in an attempt to help other people who wanted to be financially free. Yet as I’ve been writing my recent posts, I’ve started to realise that it’s becoming so much more.
Bored of work? Why jobs have become tedious Click here to view original web page at lifeafterthedailygrind.com
You’re not the only one bored of work. One global survey of 10,000 employees, unsurprisingly found boredom an issue, with 40% of UK respondents admitting they’re bored in the workplace. A YouGov survey found 37% of British workers think their jobs are meaningless. This means about four in ten people struggle with the daily grind. The thing is, after a while, you start to believe you’ve become bored of work but this isn’t true. The workplace has become boring through no fault of your own.
Corporations first came about in Europe around the 17th century and have become bigger and omnipresent ever since. Big business has sucked the life out of vibrant marketplaces and replaced them with dull offices, mind-numbing work and battery-cage-customer-support-centres. Big business doesn’t care about you and you don’t care about them (so long as you’re getting paid). You’re bored of work because your work is boring but also because you have no emotional attachment to who you work for. You’re just a cog in the wheel of the big business machine.
Why Leisure Doesn’t Exist in 2019 (but still can) Click here to view original web page at medium.com
For centuries, every culture has shared an important characteristic: leisure. Buddhists in Southeast Asia have meditated since prehistoric times, while the Romans began reading books in 23 B.C. While stress dominates the majority of life in many modern cultures, leisure is a time when interests are paramount. Whether that means watching Netflix, going on a run, or petting the local neighborhood dog, leisure is enjoyable. Or at least it should be. Leisure, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is the “use of free time for enjoyment.” As of late, our free time is primarily occupied with the use of technology through cell phones and social media, and while such activities are satisfying in the short-term, they prevent the ability to break away from responsibilities when necessary.
Has Our Obsession With Numbers Gone Too Far? Click here to view original web page at xrayvsn.com
It is quite an interesting phenomenon, but as humans we often arbitrarily assign importance to some numbers over others. Most of the time we get away with this, but other times it can come back and bite us.
Lapping the sun. Does it really make the occasion more special that you circled the sun 50 times over, lets say, only circling it 49 times? We tend to celebrate those birthdays that are divisible by 5, and especially 10, as some momentous occasion that supersedes birthdays that don’t have a tidy number associated with it. I am guilty of this behavior myself.