Sep 01
Every now and then people email me and ask me for advice. Many of them are physicians who relate to my story and have thoughts of early retirement or some alternative plan other than “work until 65 and either die or golf every day”. I don’t really have time to give a complete and …
Jul 21
He Blinded Me With “Fience” Last spring I found myself at Camp Mustache, a multi-day retreat centered on the ideas of the financial independence blogger Mr. Money Mustache, who writes about financial freedom and other related topics. I wrote about my experience there in this post. While I was drinking my coffee early one …
Jul 08
Eating I’ve discussed eating before in a previous blog post. It was about changing my diet and experimenting with what made my body feel good. There are other important aspects of eating though. Food is not just physical nourishment, but psychologic nourishment as well. Eating a meal has a social, communal and deeply spiritual …
Jun 17
That Time I didn’t Buy the Shoes I try to limit the amount of new things that come into my life. Blame it on minimalism, laziness, environmentalism, dementia or maybe a combination. This is a deep seated philosophy that has slowly developed over time, and as usual, it is based on happiness. It …
May 07
Measure once, cut twice. I’ve written quite a bit about clutter recently. Clutter is on my mind. My brain has been cluttered with thoughts of clutter, and yes, I do appreciate the irony. Clutter limits our freedom and happiness by stealing our time, money, energy and maybe more importantly, our attention. Recently I’ve been …
Apr 29
Single player game Life is a single player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You’re gone in three generations and no one cares. Before you showed up nobody cared. It’s all single player. Naval Ravikant I stumbled upon this …
Apr 16
Clutter Clutter is everywhere in our lives, and getting rid of it increases our happiness. This is the third post in a loose collection of articles on decluttering. First I discussed my experiences with and benefits of what we all think of when we hear the word clutter: getting rid of actual physical possessions. Next …
Apr 10
[Editor’s note: Today’s article is a guest post written by my brother, who is not only younger and better looking than me, but a pretty good writer as well. He has some great stories and an insightful philosophy on life. I’m delighted to share this one with you. Enjoy.-HP] When you fall, I’ll be …
Mar 28
This blog is about happiness and freedom, and most days I am the happiest person in the room. This was not always the case. For most of us happiness is just a random state that we sometimes find ourselves experiencing, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Happiness is a skill and has …
Mar 09
Utility, happiness and cost Today I want to introduce the concept of utility, and explore how it relates to the central theme of this blog: happiness. In my previous blog post on the marginal utility of money I proposed a money-happiness curve like this one. Generally as we spend additional money to become happier, there …
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