Mutual Improvement

How do you store time in your memories?

Taking a break from talking about money for a minute, I've been reading various articles about how our brains store information.  In particular, how do you store memories in a timeline?  When you think about something, how do you understand whether or not it is a memory from the distant past or recent past, or a constructed vision of an event in the near future or the distant future? 

Depending on how you store memories from the past and future related to the present, you might be someone who dwells on the past, or someone who is always set on some big future pay-off.  Or, you might be someone that is content in the present and has trouble sticking to deadlines in the future because they aren't as tangible for you as they are for other people.  A few clues into your brain's way of handling time might give insight into your own personality.

Take a minute and try this exercise.  To begin, try to think of these five things:

1. A time when you were brushing your teeth 10 years ago.
2. A time when you were brushing your teeth last week.
3. When you brushed your teeth this morning.
4. A time when you will be brushing your teeth a week from now.
5. A time when you will be brushing your teeth 10 years from now.

Flip through these images a couple times and try to notice any differences between them... are some brighter than others?  Closer?  Do they move around at all in your mental space?  How can you tell real memories from constructed memories?  Are the memories triggered by any feelings in other parts of your body?

Everyone stores this information in different ways, but some people have found that certain patterns emerge that relate how you store the information with how you feel about the information.  For example, if your memories nearest in time are closer, brighter, and bigger than those that are further away in time, then you might value the present more than someone who has the brightest and biggest images in the past compared to the future.  Or, if you locate the past to your left and the future to your right, you might percieve the passage of time differently than someone who stored the future in front of them and the past behind them.

It's all a bit fuzzy and difficult to pin down very well, especially if you haven't explored these kinds of ideas before.  Give it a try and see if you find out anything interesting about how you think, and how that relates to your outward perception of the past, the present, and the future.

links for 2006-09-12

• Statistical Abstract: Income, Expenditures, & Wealth
  Understanding what normal is
  (tags: money statistics)
• Federal Reserve: Consumer Credit, Release Dates
  current debt statistics
  (tags: money, debt)
• People are much more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking, than think their way into a new way of acting.
  As much as we want to change our behaviors to match our thoughts, it's much more common that we change our thinking to match our behaviors.
  (tags: behavior thought psychology)
• Lifehacker gives the Dalai Lama Center poll to its readers
  And finds much the same results.
  (tags: lifehacker happiness poll linklove)
• Doing it for free
  "In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems that pioneers are almost never in it for the money. I think the reason is pretty obvious: when you try to make a profit from your innovation, you stop innovating too soon. You take the short payout be
  (tags: sethgodin money innovation)
• Location, race and income affect life spans in U.S.
  Not surprising, when you think about it.
  (tags: location, longevity, income, race)

Self-Sabotage Finance

It seems like almost everyone has money problems of some sort.  How rarely do you come across someone who, if asked, "Do you have any money problems?" would say, "Absolutely not."  If you are one of these people, I applaud you.  You'll probably live to the age of 130 simply for not having to bear the weight of all that constant money stress.  The scale of the problem (for the rest of us) varies quite a bit, from having $20,000 of credit card debt and living outside your means to simply not being able to save as much this month as you wanted to.

The thing with money problems is that you can become attached to them.  They tend to become a part of you and your personality/self-identity.  There's a certain appeal to being broke, or to constantly trying to save more and more.  It's a problem we can all relate to, so it bonds us to other people with similar problems.  In addition, there are certain behaviors and beliefs that we adopt which contradict our desire to resolve money problems.  For example:

• You don't like to look at your credit card statement because you don't want to know how much you spent.  This is a primitive defense mechanism that avoids the problem while making it worse (and we all know this but sometimes can't stop it).
• You don't want to pay off your debt because you know you'll just buy something else right away once you can.  I know plenty of smart people (especially common among early adopters and technology lovers).  However, if you can't trust yourself, you'll never allow yourself to be responsible enough to solve the money problems that you have.
• You dislike people who don't have money problems.  You'll never attempt to resolve your own problems if you think having problems makes you a better person somehow.  It's possible to solve problems without creating new ones.

There are many more of these kinds of behaviors and beliefs hiding within each of us. They are harmful because they are contradictory to other behaviors and beliefs that you might have.  Real stress occurs when you both feel bad about having money problems, and don't want to solve them... this creates a constant pressure of stress and tension that is unresolvable.  One side or the other of this pressure needs to go, and in that way you can either learn to love poverty (there are some advantages), or begin to take active steps in resolving whatever money issues are currently bothering you.

A challenge: This week, all of us at the Robot Co-op have decided to track everything we spend money on for a week, and are going to try doing it a number of ways.  The goal at this point isn't really to solve our money problems just yet, but simply to become more mindful of the money that comes and goes, as it comes and goes.

This post was inspired by this slightly more bitter post of things you can do to sabotage your life: Tutorial: How to Sabotage Yourself - Associated Content [via Lifehacker]

links for 2006-09-10

• Pit-stop for doctors
  One of the ten faces of innovators is the cross-pollinator: someone who takes ideas from one field of study and mixes them with the practices of another.
  (tags: innovation tedblog crosspollination)

links for 2006-09-09

• Satisficing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Jason Fried's new favorite term
  (tags: 37signals satisficing)
• Recent findings on subjective well-being
  Cameron Marlow sent this to me, and is related to some of the other links we've been linking to.
  (tags: happiness study paper)
• Why Smart People Do Dumb Things (Like Not Backup Their Hard Disk)
  A list of traits that turn successful heroes into tragic heroes. Also, a list of great qualities to counterbalance your unconscious desire to fail.
  (tags: kawasaki hubris arrogance failure)
• Pulseware Personality Survey
  An interesting personality test, it did a good job of describing the personality I was trying to be.
  (tags: personalitytest survey myspace)
• A transaction makes a customer
  Relationships are built on favors.
  (tags: 37signals relationships customers)

Contrast Effect (Cognitive Bias #2)

What is it?  The contrast effect is one of the most obvious biases we have.  It's the tendency to judge things based on the things that are near them (either in time or in space).  Things seem bigger when they're near smaller things, and vice versa.

Why is it useful?  It's extremely useful to compare things to each other.  You can then easily find and eat the plumpest peach, pick the cutest kitten, buy the cheapest DVD player, and watch the best movie.

How can it be harmful?  It tempts you to compare yourself to the Jones's, to feel like your iPod isn't as good anymore now that a new version came out, it makes you feel okay in your crappy job when you get a raise, and sometimes it feels as if nothing is as great as the first time you did it, heard it, saw it, or experienced it.

Links:

• Contrast Effect [Wikipedia]
• Contrast Principle [Wikipedia]

links for 2006-09-08

• How are you with money?
  Are you an accountant, someone who is stress-free about money, or somewhere in the crazy middle?
  (tags: money financial)
• Get Rich Slowly » YMOYL 2006 Review
  Real life review of someone tracking with "Your Money or Your Life"
  (tags: money, ymoyl)
• FIRECalc: A different kind of retirement calculator
  Figure out if you have enough
  (tags: money retirement)
• After 9/11, Wall Street chief calls happiness key
  Type A guy learns to seek happiness post 9/11
  (tags: happiness, work, terrorism)
• Emotion & Money
  As reported in Discover magazine, the team found that fear and investing don't mix. They found that stroke victims and others with damage to the emotional centers of their brains make better investment decisions than those with a full range of emotions.
  (tags: money, emotions)
• Pew Research Center: Are We Happy Yet?
  more polling on happiness, with some results that contradict research I've seen
  (tags: happiness)

Your Money or Your Life

I read a book called Your Money or Your Life when I was in college, and I have to admit, it was life changing in terms of my relationship to money. The book helped kick off the voluntary simplicity movement and while it definitely has a New Age feel to it, which makes the punk rocker in me want to puke, the concepts in the book are widely applicable to anyone interested in changing their relationship with money.

The book outlines a nine-step approach to "financial independence" that takes you through looking at all the money you've earned in your life and making peace with the past, converting your income into a calculation of your "life energy" that makes you look at how much you spend just so you can earn more (you know the phenomenon of the car you need for the commute, the clothes you need for work, etc), and ultimately to charting your income and expenses so that you can find your "break even" point, where your passive income from savings (they somewhat controversially advocate investing only in bonds) is greater than your living expenses.

What I got most out of the book was a few key lessons. One, if you want to save money, write down everything you spend it on. That task is so excruciatingly painful, you'll quit spending money just to avoid having to write anything down. Another is that you can, and probably should, work both sides of the equation of income and expenses simultaneously. It's drudgery to save only by giving up luxuries or by taking on extra jobs, but somehow if you do both at once, you feel superhuman rather than subhuman, and the ducats can really pile up. Lastly, just the vision of charting a path toward a point where passive income pays for life expenses, especially when I was only 19, made a life changing impact.

Despite some reservations about the book, I find I recommend it to people over and over. Money is a store of value. We ought to reflect a bit more about what we trade away for it. Ultimately, you are going to spend a huge part of your life trading time for money -- and Your Money or Your Life is a great guide for making sure you get what you want out of the bargain. I just wish there was a more punk version of the same book!

links for 2006-09-07

• Creativity determines sexual success, research suggests
  (tags: creativity, sex)
• Science Confirms: You Really Can't Buy Happiness
  "One of the mistakes people make is they focus on the salary and not the non-salary aspects of work," Krueger said. "People do not put enough weight on the quality of work. That is why work looks like, for most people, the worst moments of the day."
  (tags: money, happiness)
• Tips on how to be happy—from the year 1625.
  Straight from Francis Bacon's clowny mouth.
  (tags: happiness tips wisdom)
• Study: Link between money, happiness a complex equation
  More on the Kahneman study from Science - I liked these tips: "If more money won't make us much happier, what will? Here are four pointers. • Keep your commute short. While we often adjust amazingly well to life's hardships, commuting is an exception
  (tags: money, happiness)
• Psychology Today: When It Comes to Money, Emotions Run High
  why we'd rather punish than profit if the stakes are unfair
  (tags: "game theory", money)
• Request your Social Security Statement
  Find out how much you've earned
  (tags: money)
• Debt-snowball method
  .Pay minimums on all debts. Pay off your lowest debt balance first, then apply the minimum balance from that to the next debt, and continue rolling until you're out of debt!
  (tags: debt money financial wikipedia)
• The Value Of Common Interests, Trust And Social Networks
  Nice 43 Things mention.
  (tags: 43things socialnetworks media)
• Seth's Blog: Good thoughts, good words, good deeds
  Advice on building a religion from a web marketing guru
  (tags: religion marketing)
• Becoming Fearless
  Interesting new book and blog on the idea of being fearless in relationships, work, health, parenting, food, and sex.
  (tags: fearlessness huffingtonpost fear emotion)

Poll: What are your beliefs about money? (pt. 1)

What are your innate beliefs about money?  Depending on how you think money and wealth are acquired, you will go about trying to get it in different ways.  If you think it's largely a game of luck, you might consider hopping from startup to startup with a lightning rod waiting for one to be struck.  If you think it's a matter of hard work and perserverance, perhaps a healthy corporate ladder is calling your name.

Pick the strategy that seems to be most in line with your beliefs about the source of wealth in our society.