PhilosophyPotts

You work during the week and live during the weekend - 5 days on, 2 days off. I touched on this in a previous article, the  Work-Life Ratio , but fortunately reality isn't quite like that. There are 2 methods that I use to offset this grim outlook (yes, I know things are much worse in other places but with modern manufacturing and farming techniques this still seems like more work than is needed). 1. This first method is rather straightforward and it is to see going to work as just an activity that you will do 5 times a week. What I mean by this is not looking at Monday to Friday and Saturday & Sunday as relaxation but rather on Monday to Friday you go to work for your 8 hours and that is just a single activity you do during that day. It's a bit like planning to go to the gym for 90 minutes three times a week or practising a new language for 20 minutes a day. If you can look at working as a single activity, albeit a rather long-one, that you do during that day then perhaps ...

The second corner of the triangle is wealth, which, as the other corners of the triangle, is further divisible into 3. 1 - Career Your career is your source of wealth and the main way in which you provide wealth to the world, and the primary consumer of your time, so it’s important. There are a couple of things that I think make a good career: firstly, it provides value to the world, even if it’s not immediately obvious who is the recipient of the value is. This is only positive if you feel that the recipients of your value are deserving of it (providing arms to the KKK provides value, but to the wrong people) ... and secondly, it has some intrinsic level of interest to you as an individual - which isn’t to say that you enjoy doing it every day. A good rule of thumb is to aim to find a job doing the things you did for fun as a child, when you were free of the prejudice that some tasks were productive and others were a waste of time. 2 - skills This category includes your education and ...

My life has changed a lot over the past few years, more than I could have imagined, which only being out of university a few years is perhaps quite normal but will things ever stop changing so much? My guess is that the rate of change isn't going to be slowing down for quite some time. I'm not talking about just the rapidly evolving technology that is changing the very fabric of our society, but, the rest of our lives too. Going into the details of the biggest semi-recent changes of my life would show you that we are all quite similar - meet girl, fall in love, move in together, get married, get a house, get a pet, get a baby (the last 4 can be changed into any order). These big milestones are clear changes that we prepare ourselves for whether we know it or not - so how about the rest of life? So much is changing constantly, be it our own doing or otherwise, and it can be difficult to ever feel truly settled and ready to start . Perhaps you want to start a diet or exercise pl...

Our allegiance or rivalry with or against a party changed based on what level we are viewing them at. Homer is rivals with Ned because they compete within the street Homer would be allies with Ned in a contest against Shelbyville Springfield would be allies with Shelbyville in a contest against China America would be allies with China in a contest against Kang and Kodos Ultimately, the wider the view you take on your alliances, the more you find yourself allied with others, as we are all in a contest with the forces of nature

There is rising concern on the importance of mental health in modern life and a big part of that is our so called work-life balance. There are, of course, many factors that affect our mental health but the time we spend at work vs the time we spend for ourselves (whether that's relaxing or doing chores that benefit us like shopping or washing our clothes) is very important. It is easy to look at paintings and hear stories from old times (like ancient Rome) and imagine that people spent the majority of their time doing what they wanted, like engaging in theatre, writing books or singing songs, and it seems that today very few of us have that luxury. Upon imaging such a life one can start to feel that they don't get enough time to themselves because of our modern society. It is easy to take for granted the fresh water in our taps, functioning sewer systems and relative peace, amongst other conviniences, but I'm not looking to talk about that today. Instead I want to look at w...

This is my way of categorising the most important aspects of life. I think that it is pretty comprehensive and anything that doesn't fit might be a meta-facet rather than a facet or sub-facet. I use this as a diagnostic tool for making sure that my life is somewhat in balance -- if something feels off or I'm feeling unfulfilled, I look at my Triangle and see if I'm taking care of it -- usually I'm neglecting one or more. A meta-facet would be something like fulfillment, because the point of the triangle is to generate fulfillment. Each facet can be further divided into 3 sub-facets, and in this article I'll go through the 3 sub-facets of ... Health Diet This is pretty self-explanitory: it includes what you eat and drink. Everyone's diet is necessarily different, but here's my rule of thumb: "eat 70% plant, 10% animal, 20% nothing". This includes two old adages: "eat mostly plants and not too much" & "eat until you're ...

The Sunk Cost Fallacy, also known as the Sunk Cost Trap, is the "tendency for people to irrationally follow through on an activity that is not meeting their expectations. This is because of the time and/or money they have already invested." according to investopedia. This is a rather well known phenomenon but today I would like to talk about the Sunk Lost Fallacy. So what is the Sunk Lost Fallacy? It is the tendency for people to irrationally give up on doing something because they have already failed to a tiny or irrelevant degree. One example is planning to wake up at 7am (not a terribly difficult feat but a challenge for some nonetheless) but then when the alarm rings you are slow to stir and only manage to close the alarm by 7:02. Now that it is 7:02 you have failed and so will just wake up at 7:30am (your usual time) and try again tomorrow. Another example could be attempting to follow a new diet but then just a few days in it's a colleague's birthday and they ...