Workaholics Shouldn’t Try to Achieve Work-Life Balance

For workaholics, the concept of work-life balance isn’t helpful. There is always more work to do, and they’re more than willing to do it. The problem is that this type of drive and dedication often leads to burnout because workaholics aren’t the best at protecting themselves. So instead of trying to achieve balance — an impossibility, really — workaholics should set boundaries. Examples include setting aside time for family and friends (temporal boundaries), getting out of the office at regular intervals (physical boundaries), and forcing oneself to focus on something other than work (cognitive boundaries).

SOURCE: Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

Two kinds of failure

Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done. In fact, it is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt. You will fail to question the element of luck, making you think that you have the golden touch. When you do inevitably fail, it will confuse and demoralize you past the point of learning. In any case, to apprentice as an entrepreneur you must act on your ideas as early as possible, exposing them to the public, a part of you even hoping that you’ll fail. You have everything to gain.

- Via Mastery

Every Job Matters

The rat race begins well before a lot kids graduate from college — extracurricular activities, internships, you name it — everyone has an eye toward securing the best career. But not everyone is lucky enough to beef up their résumés with eye-catching credentials; instead, many college students work in retail or in food service, among other jobs that they may not plan on doing for the long haul. Yet, these experiences can still be very valuable. Working with a diverse group of people, for example, can help pop your ego-centric bubble, among many other things. It’s something we all have to keep in mind: not every experience has to fit so nicely into a career narrative. Sure, it’s important to enhance a résumé, but it’s more important to grow as a person.

SOURCE: In Praise of Humble First Jobs by Simon C.Y. Wong

Management Tip of the Day: Make Good Decisions Faster

A simple approach can help replace your slow deliberations with fast decisions. Try this framework: 

• Know your ultimate objective. The biggest hurdle to fast decisions is criteria overload. Of the seven or eight possible objectives you would love to meet, which one or two will make the biggest impact? Consider which stakeholder you least want to disappoint—which goal would they care about most?
• Get a second opinion. Asking one other person can broaden your frame of reference and help eliminate judgment errors. Plus, the act of explaining your situation anew often gives you fresh insights.
• Do something. Select one option while letting go of all the other "good" ones. No amount of deliberation can guarantee that you have identified the "right" option, but remember: The purpose of a decision is not choose perfectly, but to get you to the next decision.

Adapted from “Make Good Decisions Faster,” by Nick Tasler.

Using Money to Buy Happiness

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=using-money-to-buy-happiness

We live in America with two bits of contradictory received wisdom — that you’d be a lot better off if you made more money, and that money can’t buy you happiness. Now two scholars suggest another way of thinking about the relationship between cash and joy: To a large degree, how you spend is just as important as how much you spend.Michael Norton, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and coauthor – with Elizabeth Dunn – of Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending, answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.

Gareth Cook: What is the biggest misconception people have about the relationship between money and happiness?

Michael Norton: One of the things that my coauthor Liz Dunn and I hear again and again when we ask people about money and happiness is a simple phrase: more is better. In general, we all believe that having more money is going to make us happier. And, while it’s true that having more money doesn’t usually make us less happy, it’s also true that simply having more money doesn’t guarantee happiness. After all, most of us have a friend, family member, or coworker who is relatively wealthy who certainly doesn’t strike us as particularly happy.

We suggest that people should stop thinking exclusively about how to get more money, and instead focus more on whether they are getting the most happiness out of the money they already have.

Cook: You write that people should “buy experiences.” Why do you say that?

Norton: When we ask people to list all of their expenses in a given month, and then categorize them, it is always striking how much of their budget goes toward buying what we call—using the scientific term—stuff. Gadgets, music, books, lattes, and so on. As it turns out, buying stuff is not badfor our happiness—buying coffees and cars and even houses don’t make us unhappy—but stuff also doesn’t make us any happier.

Buying experiences, in comparison, does seem to create more happiness for every dollar spent. Why? Consider the difference between buying a TV and buying a vacation. TV is great, sure, but the experience of watching TV pales in comparison to the experience of going to a special meal once a week with a partner or friend. A $4,000 high-end TV may seem like a great purchase, but taking that chunk of cash and devoting it to buying experiences (say, 40 wonderful meals that cost $100 each) creates much more happiness. And what’s more, we watch TV alone, but we eat dinner with others. The increase in social interaction—a key predictor of people’s happiness—means that experiences generally offer greater happiness bang for the buck than material goods.

Cook: What advice do you have for people planning a summer vacation? What can they do to get the most happiness out of it for the money?

Norton: There’s a funny thing about vacations: we often experience one of the biggest increases in happiness in the weeks before the vacation begins. This seems odd—after all, the purpose of a vacation is to go away and be happy—but it speaks to the power of anticipation. Yes, it can be hard to wait for things (think of children in the days leading up to Christmas) but research shows that anticipation is a huge and often untapped source of happiness. Vacations are great, but looking forward to that sunny beach while trapped in an office cubicle can be nearly as exciting and interesting as the beach itself.

Given this, how do we maximize the happiness we get from our vacations? While we’re often tempted to put the trip on a credit card and pay it off months after the trip, we suggest a new strategy: pay now, and consume later. Imagine a vacation where you had to pay for every single bite of food you took, with a man standing next to you and making you fork over a dollar each bite. Not. Much. Fun. But when we pay for things up front, by the time they come around they actually feel free—because thepain of paying is so far in the past, we can truly enjoy the moment. And of course, paying up front also increases the likelihood that we will spend the time before the vacation daydreaming about it. Our employers might not be pleased, but that anticipation increases our happiness.

Cook: There are many people who earn a lot of money, but then have no time to enjoy it. How do you think about the trade-off between time and money, and what advice do you have for people as they plan the broad contours of their life?

Norton: One of the biggest mistakes we all make with our money is that we fail to use it in ways that maximize the amount of time we spend engaged in activities that make us happy. Instead, we often accidentally use money in ways that seem like they will make us happy, but instead doom us to unhappy time.

Take buying a nice house in the suburbs. It seems like a great idea. In fact most Americans see owning a house as a key part of living the American dream. And when you buy a house in the ‘burbs, you’re thinking of all the family barbecues you’ll have on the lawn. But what you’re not thinking enough about is the fact that you’ve just doomed yourself to a two-hour commute—in heavy traffic—every day for the rest of your life. Would having a large house be enough to make you happy at the end of a long day when you’d spent two hours in standstill traffic? Our guess is, not so much. And so in general, thinking about how every purchase you make is going to affect your time allows us to spend money in ways that buy us happier time.

Cook: OK, talk to me about Sarah Silverman.

Norton: Sarah Silverman is a personal hero of ours, not just because she’s talented and hilarious, but because her philosophy of comedy contains nuggets of wisdom that we all can apply to our own happiness.

Silverman loves, loves, loves one kind of joke over all others: fart jokes. As a result, rather than get sick and tired of the thing she loves, she demands that her writers use fart jokes sparingly. This way, when one comes up, it feels like a treat instead of like a routine.

Aside from fart jokes, a large body of research suggests the value of what we call “Make it a Treat.” By limiting our access to certain products, we enhance our consumption greatly once we encounter those products again. In one experiment of ours, some people were assigned to eat chocolate every day for a week; others were asked to abstain from chocolate. When they came back a week later, we gave them more chocolate to eat. Nobody hated the chocolate—it was chocolate, after all—but those who had given it up for the week enjoyed the chocolate much more than those who’d been allowed to eat chocolate the whole time.

Cook: What can you tell us about giving gifts to others? 

Norton: We often think about giving gifts to others as increasing the happiness of the recipient. Again, think of kids opening their gifts on Christmas morning… Our research, however, shows that gift giving offers benefits to an unexpected group: the givers themselves. In experiments we’ve conducted in countries ranging from the United States to South Africa, from Canada to Uganda, we consistently find that spending money on other people—whether buying gifts for friends or donating to charity—provides people with much more happiness than spending that money on themselves.

The next time you’re in line at Starbucks, think about buying someone else a coffee instead of snagging one for yourself. Or, if you can’t bear to go coffee-less, at least consider buying a gift coffee for a friend in addition to the one you’ll gulp down.

Cook: Are there any lessons you've applied from this research to your own life? 

Norton: Behavioral scientists have studied how people fail to consider what are called “opportunity costs.” Simply put, anything we buy means we are giving up something else. But we don’t often think of our spending this way. When we are deciding between a stereo that costs $1,000 and one that costs $1,100, we focus almost exclusively on which stereo we like better. We don’t naturally frame the decision as a choice between the $1,100 stereo or the $1,000 stereo plus $100 worth of new music. Put this way, the $1,000 stereo seems amazingly attractive.

It’s a bit the same with money and happiness. We get stuck in thinking that we need to have a house, a car, a flat-screen television to be happy, and so we spend nearly all of our money on these possessions. I try to ask myself before I make any purchase: What else could I be doing with this money? Am I really using this in the best way to maximize my happiness? If not, and this happens with alarming frequency, I put my wallet away.

How Money Actually Buys Happiness

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/06/how_money_actually_buys_happiness.html

Warren Buffett's advice about money has been scrutinized — and implemented — by savvy investors all over the world. But while most people know they can benefit from expert help to make money, they think they already know how to spend money to reap the most happiness. As a result, they follow their intuitions, using their money to buy things they think will make them happy, from televisions to cars to houses to second houses and beyond.

The problem with this approach is that a decade of research — conducted by us and our colleagues — demonstrates that our intuitions about how to turn money into happiness are misguided at best and dead-wrong at worst. Those televisions, cars, and houses? They have almost no impact on our happiness. The good news is that we now know what kind of spending does enhance our happiness — insight that's valuable to consumers and companies alike.

Buffet recently penned an op-ed titled "My Philanthropic Pledge" — but rather than offer financial advice about giving, he suggested we give as a way to enhance our emotional wellbeing. Of his decision to donate 99% of his wealth to charity, Buffett said that he "couldn't be happier."

But do we need to give away billions like Buffet in order to experience that warm glow? Luckily for us ordinary folks, even more modest forms of generosity can make us happy. In a series of experiments, we've found that asking people to spend money on others — from giving to charity to buying gifts for friends and family — reliably makes them happier than spending that same money on themselves.

And our research shows that even in very poor countries like India and Uganda — where many people are struggling to meet their basic needs — individuals who reflected on giving to others were happier than those who reflected on spending on themselves. What's more, spending even a few dollars on someone else can trigger a boost in happiness. In one study, we found that asking people to spend as little as $5 on someone else over the course of a day made them happier at the end of that day than people who spent the $5 on themselves.

Smart managers are using the power of investing in others to increase the happiness of their employees. Google, for example, offers a compelling "bonus" plan for employees. The company maintains a fund whereby any employee can nominate another employee to receive a $150 bonus. Given the average salaries at Google, a $150 bonus is small change. But the nature of the bonus — one employee giving a bonus to another rather than demanding that bonus for himself — can have a large emotional payoff.

Investing in others can also influence customers. Managers at an amusement park were unable to convince patrons to buy pictures of themselves on one of the park's many rides. Less than one percent purchased the photo at the usual $12.95 price. But researchers tried a clever variation. Other customers were allowed to pay whatever they wanted (including $0) for a photo, but were told that half of what they paid would be sent to charity. Now, buying the picture allows the customer not only to take home a souvenir, but also invest in others. Given this option, nearly 4.5% of customers purchased the photo, and paid an average of more than $5. As a result, the firm's profit-per-rider increased fourfold.

Warren Buffett, happiness guru. Just as we have taken his advice on making money, research suggests we should now take his advice on making happiness. By rethinking how we spend our money — even as little as $5 — we can reap more happiness for every dollar we spend. And Buffett's happiness advice comes with a financial payoff as well. By maximizing the happiness that employees and customers get from every dollar they receive in bonuses or spend on products, companies can increase employee and customer satisfaction — and benefit the bottom line.

7 Reasons I Dumped Facebook

http://news.yahoo.com/7-reasons-dumped-facebook-123200359.html

It’s official.  I’m off the Facebook grid.  Nobody offended me.  I didn’t have a bad experience.  While I’m not thrilled about the idea of Big Brother watching my every move, I’m not particularly paranoid about social media sharing.   Therefore, I’m sharing why I’m dumping Facebook and committing to Twitter and Instagram.

1)     Facebook sucks time from my life, and unlike money, time is a zero sum game (thanks to Laura Vanderkam for reminding us).  Without question, some of the time I spend on Facebook is edifying and life-giving.  For example, my good friend, Nick Selvi—a husband, father, teacher and musician—is stricken with stage four rectal cancer, and his Facebook page keeps me informed of the battle he and his family are waging.  I’ll miss that, but hopefully I’ll be a real friend and call and visit to support him.

2)     Most of my Facebook friends aren’t (actually friends).  They’re not enemies.  It’s not that I wish them ill, but for the majority of them, there’s a reason we don’t associate other than on Facebook.  For most, it’s not because of a geographic disparity or because they don’t have an email address or phone number—it’s because we’re simply not actual…friends.  (This makes me wonder if the reason I initially got on Facebook was actually a matter of pride.  “How many virtual friends can I assemble?”  I appreciated thereminder from Leo Babauta this week that comparing ourselves to others is an exercise in futility.)

3)     There are other (better) options for photo sharing.  Seeing my friends’ and family’s pictures, and sharing my own, is what I like most about Facebook.  A picture and a caption can generate a belly laugh or bring tears to my eyes.  I also know that it is the real-time exchange of family pics that likely inspired 90% of the grandparents who are on Facebook today—so I’m not going to leave them hanging.  Now instead of merely using Instagram to obscure my lack of photographic skill and then upload pictures on Facebook, I’ll simply use Instagram as my photo exchange medium, inviting only family and close friends to follow me there.

4)     Facebook brings out the worst in people.  How I didn’t quit Facebook during the last presidential campaign, I’ll never know.  The willingness of so many to spew half-baked punditry that almost assuredly alienates them from half of their friends—and convinces precisely no one of their opinion—boggles the mind!  Yes, these offenders are buoyed by the 10 Likes they get from the people who think similarly, but scores more harden their opinion in opposition and are likely offended in the process.  (If this point doesn’t resonate with you, you may be an offender.)

5)     I learn more on Twitter.  Twitter is to Facebook as a biography is to a novel.  I know there’s nothing wrong with reading fiction, but I confess that I (wrongly) feel a little guilty when I spend time reading something that didn’t (or won’t) actually happen.  I enjoy being on Twitter, much as I enjoy reading a good biography, but I’m allowed to feel like I’m better for having done so—that I’ve learned something beneficial.  Twitter is now my number one source for hard news and opinions I value, as well as a relational connecting point.  Twitter is more of a resource and less of a popularity contest.  And let’s face it, for all too many, Facebook is really closer to the intellectual or emotional equivalent of eating a tub of Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting.  (It’s not good for you.)

6)     The presence of ads on Facebook is getting ridiculous.  I care more about you than the fact that you like Cherry Coke.  I certainly care more about you than whatever Facebook wants me to buy, and it seems like there are increasingly more ads every day.  Am I the only one who notices that?

7)     Less is more.  I’m on a mission to simplify life, to slow it down to a pace at which it can actually be consumed, not just tasted.  I don’t want to hide behind the ubiquitous, “I’m really busy” as a badge of honor.  I want a lower cost of living (not just financially) and a higher quality of life.  I want to limit the number of [things] that compete for my attention so that I can apply more attention to those [things] I care the most about.  Less is the new more.

Goodbye, Facebook.  Follow me on Twitter: @TimMaurer.

How to buy happiness

from: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-norton-happiness-spending-20130519,0,3517116.story

The new science of spending points to a surprising conclusion: How we use our money may matter as much or more than how much of it we've got.

Money spent on experiences, rather than material goods, leads to more happiness. (Anthony Russo / For The Times / May 17, 2013)

By Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton

May 19, 2013

Imagine that you woke up tomorrow morning to discover $1 million under your mattress. Leaving aside the obvious lumpiness issue, take a moment to think: What would you do with that cash?

If you're like many people, contemplating your newfound wealth would probably make you think about one thing above all else: yourself. A growing body of research shows that the mere whiff of money draws out our selfish sides, focusing us on what that money can do for us, and us alone. Perhaps you imagined buying a raft of new possessions: a faster car, a high-end gas grill with rear rotisserie or even a new house, with a fancy rain shower in your commodious bathroom.

It's hard to imagine anything nicer than shampooing in your private tropical rain forest. But studies by a generation of behavioral scientists show that material goods often fail to deliver lasting happiness. Fortunately, our ongoing research offers a host of ways to wring more happiness out of every dollar you spend. And what's more, you don't need to be a millionaire to reap the benefits of happy money. Changing how you spend as little as $5 can lead to measurable increases in your happiness.

But making these changes requires challenging some of our fundamental assumptions about spending. It's hard not to view buying a house — which most Americans continue to see as a central part of the American dream — as a sensible investment. But new research shows that purchasing a home buys very little happiness.

A study of women in the United States found that homeowners were no happier than renters, on average. And even if you're currently living in a cramped basement suite, you may find that moving to a nicer home has surprisingly little impact on your overall happiness. Researchers followed thousands of people in Germany who moved to a new home because there was something they didn't like about their old home. In the five years after relocating, the residents reported a significant increase in satisfaction with their housing, but their overall satisfaction with their lives didn't budge.

So, diligently saving up for a down payment might not be such a good idea if it means skipping after-work beers with friends or your annual Valentine's Day celebration at a favorite restaurant.

And dozens of studies show that people get more happiness from buying experiences than from buying material things. Experiential purchases — such as trips, concerts and special meals — are more deeply connected to our sense of self, making us who we are. And while it's anyone's guess where the American housing market is headed, the value of experiences tends to grow over time, becoming rosier in the rearview mirror of memory.

And experiences come with one more benefit: They tend to bring us closer to other people, whereas material things are more often enjoyed alone. (We tend to watch our new television alone on the couch, but we rarely head to a wonderful restaurant or jet off to Thailand solo.) Decades of research point to the importance of social contact for improving mental and physical health.

So, doing things with other people makes a difference for happiness, and our research suggests that doing things for other people can provide an additional boost. In experiments we've conducted around the world, including in Canada, the United States, Uganda and South Africa, we find that people are happier if they spend money on others. And we've found that spending even just a few dollars on someone else provides more happiness than using the cash to treat yourself.

If experiences increase happiness and giving increases happiness, can we combine them to create the perfect happiness intervention? We tried this in a recent experiment, in which we handed outStarbucks gift cards on a university campus.

We told some people to head to Starbucks and buy something for themselves. We told others to pass their gift card along to someone else. And we told a third group of people to use the gift card to buy something for someone else — with the additional requirement that they actually hang out with that person at Starbucks.

Who was happiest? Those who treated someone else and shared in that experience with them. So the cost of increasing your happiness may be as cheap as two cups of coffee.

Taken together, the new science of spending points to a surprising conclusion: How we use our money may matter as much or more than how much of it we've got. Which means that rather than waiting to see whether you find $1 million under your mattress tomorrow, you can make yourself happier today. Switching your spending to buying experiences — for both yourself and others — can lead to more happiness than even the most amazingly Amazonian rain shower.

Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton are the authors of "Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending."

10 Benefits of Reading: Why You Should Read Every Day

from: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-benefits-reading-why-you-should-read-everyday.html?utm_source=feedly

When was the last time you read a book, or a substantial magazine article? Do your daily reading habits center around tweets, Facebook updates, or the directions on your instant oatmeal packet? If you're one of countless people who don't make a habit of reading regularly, you might be missing out: reading has a significant number of benefits, and just a few benefits of reading are listed below.

1. Mental Stimulation

Studies have shown that staying mentally stimulated can slow the progress of (or possibly even prevent) Alzheimer's and Dementia, since keeping your brain active and engaged prevents it from losing power. Just like any other muscle in the body, the brain requires exercise to keep it strong and healthy, so the phrase "use it or lose it" is particularly apt when it comes to your mind. Doing puzzles and playing games such as chess have also been found to be helpful with cognitive stimulation.

2. Stress Reduction

No matter how much stress you have at work, in your personal relationships, or countless other issues faced in daily life, it all just slips away when you lose yourself in a great story. A well-written novel can transport you to other realms, while an engaging article will distract you and keep you in the present moment, letting tensions drain away and allowing you to relax.

3. Knowledge

Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information, and you never know when it might come in handy. The more knowledge you have, the better-equipped you are to tackle any challenge you'll ever face.

Additionally, here's a bit of food for thought: should you ever find yourself in dire circumstances, remember that although you might lose everything else—your job, your possessions, your money, even your health—knowledge can never be taken from you.

4.Vocabulary Expansion

This goes with the above topic: the more you read, the more words you gain exposure to, and they'll inevitably make their way into your everyday vocabulary. Being articulate and well-spoken is of great help in any profession, and knowing that you can speak to higher-ups with self-confidence can be an enormous boost to your self-esteem. It could even aid in your career, as those who are well-read, well-spoken, and knowledgeable on a variety of topics tend to get promotions more quickly (and more often) than those with smaller vocabularies and lack of awareness of literature, scientific breakthroughs, and global events.

Reading books is also vital for learning new languages, as non-native speakers gain exposure to words used in context, which will ameliorate their own speaking and writing fluency.

5. Memory Improvement

When you read a book, you have to remember an assortment of characters, their backgrounds, ambitions, history, and nuances, as well as the various arcs and sub-plots that weave their way through every story. That's a fair bit to remember, but brains are marvellous things and can remember these things with relative ease. Amazingly enough, every new memory you create forges new synapses (brain pathways) and strengthens existing ones, which assists in short-term memory recall as well as stabilizing moods. How cool is that?

6. Stronger Analytical Thinking Skills

Have you ever read an amazing mystery novel, and solved the mystery yourself before finishing the book? If so, you were able to put critical and analytical thinking to work by taking note of all the details provided and sorting them out to determine "whodunnit".

That same ability to analyze details also comes in handy when it comes to critiquing the plot; determining whether it was a well-written piece, if the characters were properly developed, if the storyline ran smoothly, etc. Should you ever have an opportunity to discuss the book with others, you'll be able to state your opinions clearly, as you've taken the time to really consider all the aspects involved.

7. Improved Focus and Concentration

In our internet-crazed world, attention is drawn in a million different directions at once as we multi-task through every day. In a single 5-minute span, the average person will divide their time between working on a task, checking email, chatting with a couple of people (via gchat, skype, etc.), keeping an eye on twitter, monitoring their smartphone, and interacting with co-workers. This type of ADD-like behaviour causes stress levels to rise, and lowers our productivity.

When you read a book, all of your attention is focused on the story—the rest of the world just falls away, and you can immerse yourself in every fine detail you're absorbing. Try reading for 15-20 minutes before work (i.e. on your morning commute, if you take public transit), and you'll be surprised at how much more focused you are once you get to the office.

8. Better Writing Skills

This goes hand-in-hand with the expansion of your vocabulary: exposure to published, well-written work has a noted effect on one's own writing, as observing the cadence, fluidity, and writing styles of other authors will invariably influence your own work. In the same way that musicians influence one another, and painters use techniques established by previous masters, so do writers learn how to craft prose by reading the works of others.

9. Tranquility

In addition to the relaxation that accompanies reading a good book, it's possible that the subject you read about can bring about immense inner peace and tranquility. Reading spiritual texts can lower blood pressure and bring about an immense sense of calm, while reading self-help books has been shown to help people suffering from certain mood disorders and mild mental illnesses.

10. Free Entertainment

Though many of us like to buy books so we can annotate them and dog-ear pages for future reference, they can be quite pricey. For low-budget entertainment, you can visit your local library and bask in the glory of the countless tomes available there for free. Libraries have books on every subject imaginable, and since they rotate their stock and constantly get new books, you'll never run out of reading materials.

If you happen to live in an area that doesn't have a local library, or if you're mobility-impaired and can't get to one easily, most libraries have their books available in PDF or ePub format so you can read them on your e-reader, iPad, or your computer screen. There are also many sources online where you can download free e-books, so go hunting for something new to read!

There's a reading genre for every literate person on the planet, and whether your tastes lie in classical literature, poetry, fashion magazines, biographies, religious texts, young adult books, self-help guides, street lit, or romance novels, there's something out there to capture your curiosity and imagination. Step away from your computer for a little while, crack open a book, and replenish your soul for a little while.

$$$ comes slowly

打工就像储蓄，虽然稳定，但赚不了太多