Consumer Life

I'm not a big fan of the title of CBC's Consumer Life section, but it's proven to be a great source of news about the choices people are making. The focus is particularly in how we spend our money, but covers safety, work issues, personal finance, housing market, and topics in those areas -- definitely worth following, and they even have an RSS feed to keep readers up to date.

Balancing Work and Aging Parents

Baby Boomers are having challenges balancing work with caring for their aging parents -- I'm seeing this coming up more lately as an issue for people I know in their 50s. The ones who have their own businesses seem to be in a much better position to make the adjustments they want/need to make.

Welcome Beckett-to-Be

Christian from think:lab is a prolific blogger, inspirational thinker, school designer, lifestylist and new dad. Congratulations to Christian and his family as they create a new life together.

More Income and Happiness Research

From Princeton this time: Link between income and happiness is mainly an illusion. I thought this quote really captured the compromises we make without really thinking about how it will affect our well-being:

"In some cases, this focusing illusion may lead to a misallocation of time, from accepting lengthy commutes (which are among the worst moments of the day) to sacrificing time spent socializing (which are among the best moments of the day)."

Via Mutual Improvement, which looks to be warming up nicely.

silverorange

Last year, I linked to some stuff about a cool design shop in PEI. This week, Robert Paterson interviewed the guys from silverorange about their unique approach to business. Self-actualization appears to be woven into their DNA, with recognition of how work might be better integrated into life. It's worth reading the whole thing, but here's a taste:

"Rob: So what then is your organizational goal?

I think that it is to foster an organization that supports our 'Whole Lives'. To create and maintain a platform that enables each of us to do the things that we want to be able to do. To set in motion an organization that would be self-sustaining and that we can rely on to support all of us for a long long time."

Who wouldn't want to work there?

Nests Not Empty

There's lots of talk about Twixters, Yeppies, Boomerang Kids, Grups, and other labels that are supposed to describe people who are extending their adolescence for various reasons, but you rarely hear from the parents of these grown-up kids. In this column from CBC, the author takes a quick look and her findings might surprise you:

"When surveyed, parents with adult children living at home expressed no frustration over their living arrangements. In fact, they were more likely to be very satisfied with the time they spent with their children than parents whose children were out on their own."

Update: CBC followed this up a couple of weeks later with For Generation Xers, there's no place like parents' home, referencing a recent StatsCan study.

C'mon, Get Happy

This excellent article from In These Times looks at the common strands and differences in several of the more popular recent books on happiness. In reviewing Daniel Gilbert's work, the author summarizes with this gem:

"The vision we have of what will make us happy in the future is a mere reflection of our present. But our imagination is as unreliable as our memory; we can’t correctly foresee what will make us happy in the future."

Via Mutual Improvement.

Mutual Improvement Blog

Mutual Improvement is a new blog from the creators of 43 Things, which I'll be studying for my thesis (and I've written about it here before). The blog is ambitious, covering "ideas about personal development, happiness, statistics, emotions, neurobiology, cognitive science and all the things that make life worth living." Sound familiar? Definitely worth keeping an eye on.