The junk drawer experiment

My house has a junk drawer, somewhere for keys and phone chargers and pens and post-its…and whatever other random things seem like they should be around but don’t have an obvious home.
For the last two years, it’s been almost impossible to close the drawer.
For a while I’d grudgingly clean it every few months, painstakingly sorting [...]

First to 100

I’ve been trying to teach my 5 ½ year old son to play tennis.  Our typical session has been short – usually less than 10 minutes – so progress has come in fits and starts.  Last week, I could tell he was starting to lose interest in our standard drill: me standing 5 feet away [...]

What’s in it for me?

There are a lot of ‘what’s in it for me’ strategies out there, and they are usually run by ‘what’s in it for me’ people.  Right now AIG feels a lot like this, as do seven- and eight-figure bonuses at firms that received government bailout money.
Unfortunately, ‘what’s in it for me’ strategies do work to [...]

Create your own reality

A few weeks ago my wife and I took a cab at night in New York city.  As we were leaving we noticed a black bag on the floor in the back seat.  It contained a Lonely Planet Guide to the USA, two pairs of ticket stubs (a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden and [...]

Why I’m making a donation to Dave Farmar

I’ve never met Dave Farmar, and he’s never met me.  He’s a yoga teacher in Denver who has a free podcast which, if you’ve got a strong yoga practice, I recommend highly.
Dave puts these podcasts out into the world, and I’m practical enough to understand that he does this both to be generous and as [...]

Welcome to 2009, my namesake

From the BBC, and hat tip to Chris Blattman’s blog:
A Ugandan woman has given birth to a baby girl on board an international flight from Amsterdam to Boston after going into labour mid-flight.
The six-pound (2.7kg) baby named Sasha was delivered on New Year’s Eve with the help of two doctors on the eight-hour-long Northwest Airlines [...]

Smile in the face of Madoff

It’s really struck me in a new way this week how serious this financial crisis is. Maybe it’s just the other shoe dropping on this new reality; or maybe it’s because, on top of everything , the former chairman of the NASDAQ, Bernard Madoff,  is accused of $50B out-and-out fraud in a Ponzi scheme of [...]

Is Generosity a Luxury Good?

A “luxury” good is something you consume more of as you have more money (economists call them “superior” goods, a subset of “normal” goods).  For example, as people get wealthier, they spend proportionally more on Tiffany rings, Hermes scarves and nights at the Ritz Carlton, and less on Kay Jewelers, Wal-Mart, and Best Western.
I’ve been [...]

On Aparigraha (or, Why do I still have instructions for my old Technics 5-CD changer?)

It’s absurd, really.  One (exciting) night over the Thanksgiving weekend, my wife and I spent a few hours battling with the junk that’s piled up in our oh-so-small basement.  We produced 6 full bags of trash and managed to remove an entire 7-foot tall bookshelf.  Mission accomplished (at least for the next 6 months).
This isn’t [...]

What do you do when you have nothing to gain by helping?

You can hold on tight to things.  Be stingy.  Look out for yourself and your own best interest, and think about how little time you have to help.
Or you can be generous.  You can help someone else because it is the right thing to do, because it is who you are and it is the [...]