Hot Trends, Bad Ideas

That's the wisdom of Naval Ravikant for becoming wealthy. Really. I take that to mean that you'd go to work, and instead of spending your free time cooking, cleaning, doing home repairs, sitting through a stressful commute, etc., you'd pay someone else to that all that for you. How would that work out in real life? I'll include meals, housekeeping, lawn mowing, and repairs & maintenance on the house. I won't include taking a cab or Uber to work because in all honesty, I usually enjoy my commute, even though it's long. Eating out three times every day: $25/day => $9,125/year Housekeeping: $50/week => $2,600/year Lawn mowing: $20/week (35 weeks per year) => $700/year Repairs & maintenance: $500/year Grand total: $12,925 per year. Ouch! After taxes and a substantial 401(k) contribution, that's almost half my take-home pay. How do you get wealthy by the modern equivalent of supporting a houseful of servants? (That's what I

Little Greta Thunberg has caused quite a stir, sparking rallies, co-writing a book, sailing across the Atlantic, and even speaking at the UN. Quite the set of accomplishments for a 16-year-old girl with Asperger's, high-functioning autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Having been a 16-year-old girl once (without any of Greta's problems), and having some idea of the planning and effort involved in the things she's credited with doing, I can see that her parents have orchestrated everything. Regardless of what you think about Greta's message about the climate, just imagine your 16-year-old self skipping school every week as Greta did. That alone would be a non-starter with most parents. Imagine writing a scientific book, with mental disabilities and less than a high school education. Even with an engineering degree, I had no idea what the scientific method was or how to read a study when I graduated from college. It wasn't covered. Greta's parents probab

I used to like Reason magazine. It was a watchdog for government overreach like eminent domain abuse (think forcing out homeowners to build a shopping center) and government silliness (like cities disallowing cucumber plants in the front yard). Even the comments were clever. Then they started harping on pot, hookers and Bitcoin a few years ago. OK, you can make a case against the drug war, but hookers and Bitcoin are (I hope) rather fringe issues that aren't going to ensnare ordinary Americans going about their lawful business in a web of fines and legal proceedings. Lately, though, they've followed other media lemmings into the Sea of Perpetual Outrage. Progressive outlets see Nazis everywhere; conservative outlets see murdered babies everywhere; Reason wants anarchy for all. Maybe this makes sense when you constantly report about police officers who shoot family dogs. (Of course, Reason didn't cover this one  or this one .) Living in Indianapolis, where quite a

Years ago, I had a coworker who was new to office work. The work was technical and had to be just right, so I gave her a checklist of items she had to complete for every assignment. I'd review her work and see that she'd missed steps and I'd tell her to fix it. Finally she got upset and showed me the  checklist with items checked off, as if checking off boxes was the job. If it was a school assignment, where getting 70% is passing, she'd have been fine. School assignments tend to be box-checking, academic exercises that you don't have to master and often don't relate to the real world. School itself bears little resemblance to real life. Sadly, some people carry school approaches into their adult lives. Here are some mental habits that schools instill, and that you need to shed. No Fair! Wanting fairness doesn't make you immature, but refusing to help yourself because something wasn't your fault, does. Neighbors online complain sometimes that the ci

The answer to this should be obvious...and yet people constantly make their lives harder than they need to be. Maybe it's America's Protestant origins, maybe there was some natural selection for industriousness during the neolithic era, but whatever the cause, the lives of other people (not mine) could be a lot easier. The best things in my life didn't require long hours grinding away at dull, hard work. In fact, the dull, hard work offered few rewards. I spent four and a half miserable years in engineering school only to graduate and find the market was flooded with mechanical engineers. My school advised...more school. Which I went in for--and amazingly, it didn't create a job opening. I finally switched to admin work--which didn't even require a college degree--and finally enjoyed a steady paycheck. I traded my arduous diet and exercise regime for a low-carb diet and lost 20 pounds and a gaggle of health problems. I sold my ridiculously overpriced house in Den

Never give up! How I hate that phrase. Now and then, I hear people say they wish their parents had made them keep taking piano lessons. Well, I was one of those kids who had to take piano lessons for years and years after I wanted to stop. Long story short: I'm not grateful for those goddamn lessons. Nor do I play the piano anymore despite having some aptitude for it. I don't have any desire to. My mother started taking me to piano lessons when I was six and I said I'd like to play. For four years, all was well. Then I reached the limit of my ability: I didn't have the dexterity to play really difficult pieces, despite lots and lots of practice. And many of the practice pieces didn't interest me. I asked to quit. But my mother, wishing she'd had piano lessons, frog-marched me to more piano lessons for the next four years. It was nothing but an exercise in frustration and probably learned helplessness. Practicing didn't help me improve. My teacher tri