A Five-Minute Course in Finding Contentment

I was curious which of my 1,250 blog posts has been read most often. Three stood out:

How I Could Live Decently on $20,000 a Year

Top 10 Ways to Gain Willpower

The Peter Pan Syndrome: Why Smart People Fail

So today, I went back and tuned each of those up. 

It would take you just five minutes total to read all three and it just might be of real value to you.

Marty Nemko on the Adam Carolla Show

I've never been on a show in which profanity is allowed...until yesterday. I was on the Adam Carolla Show.

We talked about who should and shouldn't go to college. HERE is the link to the show. My segment begins at 18:10 and lasts about 15 minutes.

The End of Jobs...Hurray?

Here's an advance look at my next column in the Mensa publication, The Intelligencer.

The End of Jobs…Hurray? 

by Marty Nemko

By now, everyone knows the unemployment rate severely masks the true employment situation. Not only does it not count people who have given up on looking for work, it doesn’t count the underemployed: for example, college-degree holders with jobs that don’t require a degree, or people working part-time/temp when they’d prefer a full-time, secure position.

Ever more jobs are automated. Bank teller jobs have been replaced by ATMs, supermarket cashier jobs by self-checkout, tolltakers by FastTrak. In the face of increased minimum wage and living wage ordinances, robotic fast-food preparers and servers have been developed: custom burger and burrito makers in California, sushi makers in Japan, cookie makers in Poland. The automated barista may replace that failsafe job—Starbucks barista. There’s a robot bookstore clerk and IBM is developing a robot retail clothing clerk.  Many but not all customers will prefer that to the $10 an hour pushy but often incompetent sales clerk. And retail employers will prefer not having to worry about employees taking sick days when not sick, being bad with customers, and/or quitting soon after being trained—turnover in retail is over 100 percent. Bartending jobs are at-risk. I just went to a dance at a venue where the bartender was a machine: stick your credit card in, pick your drink from the screen, and out it comes, just like from a soda vending machine. Leading companies such as Google, FedEx, and Amazon are investing big in driverless vehicles—bye-bye jobs as taxi drivers, truck drivers, bus drivers, even train engineers. Even home-building is at risk. 3D-printers are projected to be able to print homes out of concrete in under a day—bye-bye thousands of construction jobs.
 

And of course, there’s offshoring. While politicians keep urging more Americans to major in a tough science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) field, ever more of those tech jobs are being offshored, notably to India and China, which have a long tradition of valuing science, math, and technology, and populations many times the size of the U.S.’s. Already, there's an oversupply of STEM graduates. Evidence:THIS  and THIS and THIS and THIS.That can only accelerate as ever more work product can be sent over the internet. Ever more companies are figuring, “Why should I pay American wages plus Workers Comp, Disability, Social Security, ObamaCare, paid family leave, Americans with Disabilities Act compliance costs, plus that of ever increasing employee lawsuits, when I can get someone in Asia for a small fraction of the cost? Are American workers really so superior?”

In a TED talk, Dr. Thomas Frey, Google’s top-rated futurist speaker, projects that, by 2030, half of all jobs worldwide, two billion, will be lost. An Oxford University study projects that half of U.S. jobs will be lost just to automation. One could quibble with the percentage but our job security certainly will be at ever greater risk.

Then what will happen?

It’s easy to project a dystopian scenario: mass unemployment leading to mass destitution, armed robberies, and drug abuse to anesthetize the pain. 

But I thought it would be more interesting here to do a thought experiment in which the end of jobs would actually be a net positive for society.

With fewer people earning good incomes, only companies that provide basic products and services will thrive. That will be good for the environment. For example, car manufacturing will shrink and sell only affordable, economical cars. And people will repair and repair their old vehicles rather than buy new. Even if government takes over the airlines, the cost of planes, fuel, maintenance, and personnel will discourage people from flying. Again, good for the environment.

Also, today’s materialistic society tempts people to cut ethical corners to make more money so they can buy more stuff: new car, nicer clothes and jewelry, fancier vacations, live in 3,000 fancy square feet rather than 1,000 serviceable ones. In an economy in which fewer people are working let alone earning big bucks, materialism would be less core to societal values, reducing those pressures to be unethical.

Plus, with people having more time, more people will replace gratification from “stuff” with gratification from learning, creative arts, and in relationships from mentorship to family to involvement in pro-social organizations: from Rotary to SmileTrain to Mensa.

In the meantime
Even if you have a good job, might this column’s look at the future justify reconsidering your priorities? Yes, perhaps do more to secure your employment: upgrade your skills, work a little harder, build relationships with people who can abet your career, consider starting a business. But might replacing a materialistic lifestyle with a more meaningful one be good preparation not only for a scarce-jobs future but for your current life?

Passing the Baton: The Practical and Psychological How-Tos of Succession Planning

 In today's post on AOL, I talk about how to pass the baton. The fancy term is succession planning.

When you leave a job: because you're fired, laid off, off to another job, or retiring, you want to leave a legacy. That's also true when you're selling a business. In this article, I discuss  how to do that: practical advice plus the often difficult psychological issues. 

Bah, Foodie Food: The Best-Tasting Foods I've Ever Eaten

I know that many people like trendy food like free-range, sustainably grown, organic grass-fed arugula in a citrus balsamic vinagrette topped with pan-seared sun-dried tomatoes on a bed of whole-wheat bulgar.

Sure, that's healthy but, to my unsophisticated taste buds, most foodie food tastes like doody. 

All right, that's a bit hyperbolic. Let's just say I think it tastes worse than normal food. 

Not to mention, it's expensive and the portions microscopic--It usually works out to about $200 a pound. Lest you think I exaggerate, have you ever been to a restaurant where they serve an appetizer on a vast plate that's empty except for, in the middle, one shrimp? $12.95 for a one-ounce shrimp. That comes to $207 a pound.

To provide a mote of counterbalance to foodie phantasmagoria, here are the best-tasting things I've ever eaten. 

While most are loaded with fat, the consensus is that dietary cholesterol has only modest impact on blood cholesterol, which itself may only modestly increase heart attack risk.  

Calories, however, do count. And most of these yummies have plenty:

1. A client just turned me onto cotswold cheddar---It's creamy crack: a soft extra sharp cheddar with onions and chives. 10.99 a pound at Trader Joe's, half of what it costs at Whole Foods.

An equally mouthwatering but traditional cheddar: Would you believe Kraft Cracker Barrel Aged Reserve Cheddar won the gold medal at the World Cheese Competition? I'd give it platinum. At 3.99 for 8 ounces at any supermarket, it's a bargain and I just bought it BOGO on sale at Safeway--At that price, it's grand theft.

2. Garlic cheese bread. I can't even conceive of anything tastier. Try THIS diet buster.

Simpler variation: a plain 'ol grilled cheese sandwich with tomato or tomato soup. Try making the sandwich with one of the aforementioned cheddars.

3. Costco apple pie: $9.99 for a pie that feels as heavy as a bowling ball. Ridiculous bargain.

Of course, it wouldn't be complete without vanilla ice cream. Any will do but I usually go for Breyer's Natural Vanilla. Compared with say, Haagen Daz, it's less sweet, less calorific, is all-natural, and the vanilla bean flecks delude me into thinking it's healthier. See what a health nut I am? Oh and Breyers is less than half the price of those super-"premium," super-priced, super-fattening pints, which are just small enough to tempt me to knock off an entire container in one sitting or standing. (Silly to risk putting that bit back in the freezer, where it would grow ice crystals.)

4. Thai yellow chicken curry at a good hole-in-the-wall restaurant. (You can usually find one on Yelp.) They often use too much fish sauce, a salty brew that drowns out the yummy curry, so ask them to go easy on the sauce, fish sauce, that is.

Now they're saying coconut milk is good for you. If so, does that make this dish, swimming in the stuff, health food?

5. A good croissant. You'd think that a local bakery's would be best but unless you're close to a great patisserie, you won't find any better (or cheaper) than  Costco's: $5.99 a dozen. Or try THESE frozen babies from Trader Joe's. (Only $3.99 for eight minis.)

Or if you want to go sweet, try TJ's also-frozen Kouigns Amanns. They're to die for, hopefully not literally. (Just 3.99 for 4.)

Noting my relentless touting of Trader Joe's and Costco stuff, I feel the need to reassure you that neither TJ's  nor Costco is paying me a penny to swoon over their products. Actually no one has ever offered me a penny to swoon over anything.

6. A crisp fuji apple. Get around the healthiness by enjoying the apple with one of the aforementioned cheddars or your favorite blue cheese. Mine is--you guessed it--Trader Joe's Cave-Aged ($6.99 a pound.)

7. While I'm, for a moment, thinking healthy, I love good corn on the cob. Yeah, I know, it's high in carbs and sugar. Make it worse by bathing it in butter.

8. Last and weirdest, I love sliced bananas in nonfat plain yogurt, perhaps adding cinnamon. At least it's healthy--unless you're a vegan, who insists dairy is death.

Charitable Giving: Principles and Practices of Cost-Effective Philanthropy

As I get older, I think more and more about the wisest approach to philanthropy, to charitable giving.

I've settled on two basic criteria:

1. Maximal societal benefit for the dollars expended, including ripple effects.
2. Funding something wouldn't otherwise get funded. 

Here are initiatives meeting those criteria that I've funded or considered funding:

A prize
I have written previously about a prize I created. I like a prize rather than a grant because a prize  motivates a number of people to work toward the goal I set. In my case, I set up a prize for the best doctoral dissertation leading to understanding the biological basis of cognitive functioning. I like that topic because while having huge potential to benefit humankind, for sociopolitical reasons, it's difficult today to obtain funding for it.

A challenge prize
Since then, I've considered a perhaps more potent corollary approach: offering a prize to the individual or group that first meets a specific challenge.  So, taking the above example of trying to further our understanding of the biological basis of cognitive function, I've considered Dr. Richard Haier's suggestion: offering a prize for the first individual or team that is able to predict g (a measure of reasoning ability) based on a brain scan or the person's genome. 

Alas, I don't think I can afford to make the prize big enough to motivate a team to redirect its efforts to that issue. I may yet try it with an affordable amount. If no one meets the criterion for winning it, I've lost only the time and administrative cost of publicizing the prize's availability.

Giving to a political candidate or party
I also thought about donating money to a political party or candidate. We are in an era of growing government power, so donating to a party or candidate could significantly affect the  country's direction. Again, alas, I don't have enough money to move the needle even slightly.

Funding a meritocratic rather than egalitarian cause
My current favorite idea is to fund an after-school and summer program for high-ability (although not necessarily high-achieving) kids who live in a blue-collar or lower-middle-class area. Here's how that idea meets my criteria:

America has moved heavily from merit-based allocation of resources to an egalitarian "redistributive justice" approach. Hence, in the schools, especially the public elementary schools, considerable fiscal and human resources have been reallocated from programs for bright and gifted students to the lowest achievers. Today's priority is to close the achievement gap.

Yet I believe that, ultimately, the greatest societal good will accrue from prioritizing as they say, "the best and brightest." Kids with high cognitive ability (reasoning skills, fast learning ability) are more likely to cure our cancers, govern wisely, indeed develop more effective approaches to closing the achievement gap. Just as a triage medic in the battlefield is trained to allocate the most resources not to the sickest but to those with the greatest potential to survive, I feel that allocating significant resources to high-ability students is wise--We all know brilliant failures, people who fail to live up to their considerable potential.

It's probably not optimal for me to fund programs in a high socioeconomic area: The schools have a high-enough percentage of high-ability kids that even mainstream instruction may do an acceptable job of meeting their needs. And wealthy parents have the wherewithal to supplement.

Nor do I feel it's optimal to donate my dollars to the lowest-income areas. There, the problems faced even by their high-ability kids tend to be sufficiently multidimensional and intractable that I fear my dollars wouldn't make the biggest difference. It strikes me--and I'm relying not on data but only my perhaps flawed logic--that my dollars will likely make the biggest difference by focusing on schools with a high percentage of lower-middle class people, especially those with a good percentage of new immigrants who were at least middle-class in their home country.

I'm thinking that the wisest point of entry is a lower-middle-class school district's after-school and summer program. There, egalitarian pressures may be more moderate, although I'm not sure. I plan to investigate.

Donating time

Of course, one can give charity not just with dollars but with time. I've chose to make writing--for example, this blog--to be my charity of choice. I like writing and like to think that my posts give significant free help to people--maybe even including this post. (I had posted another example here, which a commenter wisely argued is not a good one. So I've deleted it.)

You
So now we turn to you. Is there anything in this article that makes you clearer about what you might want to donate your money or time to?

A New Idea for a Great and Easy to Create Summer Camp: Camp Think

Here's an advance look at a short piece scheduled to appear in the Mensa publication, The Intelligencer:

Camp Think

by Marty Nemko

There are camps for sports, arts, science, and religion. Why not a camp that focuses on improving thinking skills, a Camp Think?

It could contain such activities as:

• a camp-wide effort to develop a plan to solve a societal problem, for example, substance abuse. The resulting White Paper could be submitted to an appropriate local, state, and federal official.
• A debate on such issues as: Should taxes be raised?  Soda banned? Marijuana legalized?
• Contests: Which team (and/or individual) can make the robot that wins a 20-year dash? A rocket that flies highest with parts that cost under $50? Develop the best idea for a reinvented elementary school? Win a logic-problem quiz show? Create the best skit? Museum exhibit? Develop the best improvement for next year’s camp?
• Because life isn’t just about thinking, there would be time for songfests, talent shows, storytelling, and yes, even traditional camp arts and crafts--I still fondly remember learning how to make a lanyard using the diamond and box stitches.

None of these require fancy facilities. You could have a small day camp in your home or apartment complex’s community room.

If you’re looking for something to do this summer, you could do much worse than plan a one- or two-week summer day camp for at least a small number of kids.