Brazen Careerist

Via Proactive Living (which I caught up on this morning -- Doug's been blogging up an excellent storm over there) comes a link to Brazen Careerist. I hadn't ever seen this one before, but at first skim, it's fantastic -- great tone and interesting career advice. I'll be following it from now on.

Work and Chores

CBC says that Gender gaps remain over work time, chore time, bouncing off a new report from a new StatsCan report on work:

"Dual-earner couples who worked long days doing their job plus housework and who had dependent children at home were less satisfied with their work-life balance. They also felt more time-stressed, particularly women.

However, despite these stage-of-life pressures, the majority of dual-earner husbands and wives felt satisfied with their life as a whole, the study found.

Women generally tend to feel more time-stressed than men, regardless of length of workday or presence of children. For example, among couples with the longest workday and children at home, two-thirds of the women felt time-stressed compared with one-half of men."

Dandelife

Dandelife is a neat tool for creating personal histories, complete with a really nice timeline view and connections to other people's stories. Check out a profile for a taste.

Purpose Gift Passion

How to Save the World had a great post about choosing your entrepreneurial path earlier in the month -- the graphic alone is worth the trip over to check it out.

Positive Futurist

The Roaring Zeros must have seemed bizarrely optimistic when it was published in 1999, at the height of the Y2K scare. Optimistic futurism seems almost out of style, but super-lifestylist Kevin Kelly's predictions of a hyper-prosperous North America for decades makes for a great read:

"Fast-forward to 2020. After two decades of ultraprosperity, the average American household's income is $150,000, but milk still costs only about $2.50 a gallon. Web-enabled TVs are free if you commit to watching them, but camping permits for Yellowstone cost $1,000. Almost everyone working has signed up for a job that does not exist (at the moment); most workers have more than one business card, more than one source of income. Hard-hat workers are paid as much as Web designers, and plumbers charge more for house calls than doctors. For the educated, the income gap narrows. Indeed, labor is in such short supply that corporations 'hire' high school grads, and then pay for their four-year college educations before they begin work."

The Paradox of Choice

I linked to some stuff about the Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz last year, but didn't really follow it up. Now I'm studying it for my thesis and finding all kinds of fascinating ideas around the concept. The New Yorker review and an interview with the author are a good place to start, and his earlier paper introduces many of the main ideas in the book -- Self-Determination: The Tyranny of Freedom (pdf). One of the main studies supporting his ideas is outlined here -- When Choice is Demotivating, by Sheena S. Iyengar, who has done amazing research in this area.

Why does this matter? At the root of this lifestylism project is my belief that we don't tend to make lifestyle decisions that reflect our core values. Anything that helps us understand that process is a step toward developing better ways to make those choices.

Commuters spending more time in transit

Canadians spend an average of 63 minutes a day commuting, and that number has increased since 1992. Increased, during a time of rising gas prices, improving environmental awareness and continued urbanization. Ugh.

Market Segmentation Research

The smart folks at Claritas let me know that they've updated their lifestyle segments (clusters) site. It's just way too much fun to see which segment you might fit into and see how it connects you to similar people elsewhere. If you live in the U.S., you can punch in your zip code to see how your neighborhood is classified.

Does Fatherhood Make You Happy?

Although this article by Daniel Gilbert coincided with Father's Day, the insights can certainly be applied to moms as well. It's short and oh-so-smart. Are parents lying when they say their kids are their greatest source of happiness?

"Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television. Indeed, an act of parenting makes most people about as happy as an act of housework. Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact."

He offers some fascinating reasons why we love our kids so much despite the lack of evidence that they make us happy -- read it to find out what they are.

I liked this article so much that I went into a web of stuff by the author. I was most interested in his talk on Affective Forecasting, which is basically studying how people predict they will react to future events (both negative and positive). A flavour:

"What's interesting to me is that while money is weakly and complexly correlated with happiness, and social relationships are strongly and simply correlated with happiness, most of us spend most of our time trying to be happy by pursuing wealth. Why?"

Kunstler Blogs

I didn't know that James Howard Kunstler had a blog. It's got his usual cantankerous tone (and a language warning), covering all kinds of big issues. His books about urban planning rocked my world -- it's a huge area of concern when you're thinking about aligning your lifestyle with your values and finding that the housing options available (and semi-affordable) tend to be mostly so undesireable:

"A substantial amount of total house sales are made up of new suburban McHouses built in places at the furthest extreme distance from employment centers -- because that's where the remaining cheap land is after sixty-odd years of suburban development. How many prospective house-buyers will close on those things with gasoline over $3 a gallon? Probably fewer than are required to sell them all."

Thanks to Tom Hoffman for the pointer.

Thank Goodness

Those of you who have enjoyed the links on happiness here will happy to know that today is the happiest day of 2006.

Self-Actualizers

Comments summarizing Maslow's take on self-actualization, from a book on Self-Direction in Learning:

"Maslow has also identified a number of characteristics shared by self-actualizing people. According to Maslow, self-actualizers tend to, among other things: possess a more efficient view of reality and a corresponding tolerance of ambiguity; be accepting of themselves and others; demonstrate spontaneous behavior that is in tune with their own values and not necessarily tied to the common beliefs and practices of the culture; focus on problems that lie outside of themselves, thus demonstrating a highly ethical concern; maintain a few extremely close interpersonal relationships rather than seek out a large number of less intense friendships; and possess high levels of creativity."

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Life 2.0 comments on another commencement speech by Steve Jobs and provides the video through YouTube. Inpiring, thoughtful stuff.

There is No Try

Doug invokes a classic Yoda quote and offers some simple advice in Choose Your DO:

"This quote has come to mind lately whenever I hear individuals say what they were 'going to do' or 'wishing they could do'. These people always have lots of reasons why they don't live the life they say they would prefer. In the end, they're just talking (the easier thing to do).

It's not my position to be somebody else's personal Yoda. But in my mind, when I hear these people yearning for their theoretical lives, I'm thinking, 'Do or do not. There is no try.'

Either you're pursuing the life you wish for, or you are not. Either you have a project or two that means something to you or you don't. Our world would be a whole lot more fulfilled if we each agreed to let our actions do our talking for us."

Happiness Formula

The BBC has a fantastic section on their site called The Happiness Formula. It has articles, videos, and happiness tests, all covering the pursuit of happiness and what it means to be happy.

On a related note from the UK, Pat Kane talks about how happiness and well-being are sneaking into politics: Well beings or ethical beings? Lots of lifestylism in there, particularly in reintroducing the question of whether happy people are necessarily great citizens.