Further
Health - Wealth - Wisdom
It’s time to move on to more positive topics. After contemplating professional decline and the often disconcerting emotional reboot we face at midlife in the last couple of weeks, I’m ready to talk about the opportunity for reinvention. Of course, the bad news keeps coming. Over at the Conversation, there’s an article about the real …
It’s a Freud’s fault, really. Even though the term midlife crisis was coined by Elliott Jaques in 1965, fellow disciples of Sigmund thought it sounded plausible, based on the fear of impending death combined with regrets about the past. Fortunately, academic research since the 1980s rejects the notion that midlife crisis is a phase most …
We talk a lot around here about the midlife doldrums, and how happiness begins to increase substantially around age 50. So naturally, a piece in The Atlantic that seemed to argue that your professional performance begins to decline around the same time caught my eye. So I read it — because that’s my job. All …
We’re obsessed with how much we weigh. Unfortunately, that has more to do with body image than health. If you’re thinking about whether you’ll live a long life, you might think the less you weigh, the better. But we know that’s not true — people with a body mass index (BMI) that’s slightly higher than …
Last week’s thoughts on simplifying our lives seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people. I was a bit surprised. Perhaps we’re at a point where we realize that we’ve been going about things the wrong way when it comes to leading happy, healthy lives. If only we could figure out what matters, …
Last August, we sold both cars before we headed out on our family trip around the world. For seven months I didn’t drive, and loved it. So when we got back to Colorado, I leased a car for my wife, but didn’t get one for myself. It’s the first time since I was 16 that …
Here are some Further fundamentals: Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation Valuing process over results Harmonious passion What do all of these have in common? They’re signs of a person with an inner scorecard, as defined by famed investor Warren Buffett: The big question about how people behave, is whether they’ve got an inner scorecard or an …
If you’ve seen articles circulating in the last week talking about the “10,000 steps a day” rule, you may be wondering what the latest health flip flop is all about. Here’s the deal in a nutshell. Basically, the “10,000 step” thing is just a made-up number. Fine … Further readers have known that since 2017. …
The last time I wrote about the Japanese concept of ikigai, my family and I had just landed in Australia after a week in Tokyo. The Japan connection was a coincidence, as purpose and meaning are always on my mind when it comes to Further. In Japanese, iki means “to live” and gai means “reason” …
At the intersection of “not enough time” and “too many interesting things” we have the occasional Further roundup issue. Check out the items below, and have a great week! Live Longer, Feel Younger Living longer doesn’t seem like such a great thing if we feel frail and old. Fortunately, people are working on that. This …
When I first started Further, it was all about refuting the idea that a life of leisure was the key to happiness. That instead, we experienced well-being by pushing ourselves to get better and learn new things. Later, I realized I was increasingly writing from the perspective of midlife. And that despite the doldrums of …
It figures, right? The first truly media-savvy generation became defined by two relatively obscure works of fiction — Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X, and Richard Linklater’s 1990 indie film Slacker. Both labels stuck like glue. We held on to Generation X as a point of pride, but the “slacker” thing became laughable. I’ve always …