On turning 50: a personal story about luck, curiosity, disillusionment, and hope.
The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized
Are the most successful people in society just the luckiest people?
Memories, dreams, reflections
In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old…
Chasing life goals is a recipe for disaster – so try these tiny experiments instead
Whether its our careers, health or relationships, we often set the bar too high and end up feeling disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Try this new way of thinking … and you may just see some real results
Learning From Older Adults: An Intergoal Compatibility Account for Successful Happiness Pursuit
Academic Abstract People want to pursue happiness but often fail, a phenomenon known as the paradox of pursuing happiness. The mechanisms underlying this paradox remain elusive. Age differences in happiness—specifically that older adults appear more successful in pursuing happiness (the emotion paradox of aging)—provide valuable insights into effective happiness pursuit. Drawing on this literature, we propose an intergoal compatibility account to interpret both paradoxes through the lens of intergoal interactions, an intuitively critical yet underexplored factor in existing interpretations. This account asserts that greater compatibility (fewer conflicts and greater facilitation) between happiness pursuit and other important personal goals enhances the effectiveness of happiness pursuit, and such compatibility can be enhanced through contextual influences (e.g., age-graded developmental tasks) and strategic self-regulation (e.g., goal adjustments). This account generates testable predictions and practical implications for enhancing happiness pursuit across the lifespan. Public Abstract Why do people often struggle to achieve happiness? And why are older adults happier than younger adults, even though they face more losses in life? While these questions have drawn extensive attention, they remain puzzling. A crucial yet insufficiently explored factor in successful happiness pursuit is intergoal compatibility —the extent to which the pursuit of happiness aligns or conflicts with other important personal goals. For younger adults, the demands of age-related developmental tasks (e.g., educational and career aspirations) often create conflicts with the pursuit of happiness, diminishing its effectiveness. Conversely, in older adults, happiness becomes more prioritized and compatible with other important personal goals, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of pursuing happiness. A lesson we can learn from older adults is to pursue happiness in ways compatible with other important personal goals.
Why older people are happier and what we can learn from them | Psyche Ideas
Around the world, happiness tends to peak later in life. It has more to do with balancing priorities than elderly wisdom
On technological optimism and technological pragmatism
"There are no guarantees that things are going to turn out very well for anyone.”
"Last night I got an email from someone who said 'I'm 46, is it okay to start producing music?' I said 'yes, start now!'": How a 67-year-old pensioner went viral performing industrial techno at home
What started as a post-retirement hobby has led The Last DJ to runaway success and his first gig in 40 years. Now he's on a mission to inspire others to do the same
Brett Scott (@brettscott)
Despite all the rhetoric about automation supposedly making our lives easier, the true story being told by Big Tech is that our lives are better when speeded up You are supposed to be in an ever-accelerating race, packing more units of experience into the same unit of time, a phenomenon that requires a contraction of patience and a blurring of experience as everything quickens In the end, this is what ‘convenience’ actually is. It’s a state of being in which you become disassociated and disengaged from the texture of the world around you. You pass through it dreamlike, and suddenly wake up decades years later as an elderly person on your deathbed, thinking “WTF happened”, as then the memory slips away
I Started Programming When I Was 7. I'm 50 Now, and the Thing I Loved Has Changed | James Randall
I still love developing but the shifts that AI have brought are tectonic and are forcing me to re-evaluate my own relationship to building things
Three important steps in my maturation process – Thomas Dullien / Halvar Flake
My father passed recently, and he was twice my age. I am approximately the same age that he was when I was born, and I am now “the old generation” - there’s no one left in the generation above me.
On Dying Well: Ben Sasse and the Vocation of Suffering
Ben Sasse’s recent announcement reveals to us both goods and virtues that show in his dying a glimmer of light, a stirring of hope, and the possibility of spring even in one’s final winter.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every ...
Life insurance, loss aversion, and temporal orientation: a field experiment and replication with young adults
Young individuals rarely seek information about life insurance—a product that offers long-term benefits that might not motivate a desire to act now. Framing life insurance messaging as a gain in the present (e.g., “ensure your loved ones are protected today”) is thought to motivate younger individuals to seek information about insurance policies. A field experiment with a large life insurance issuer and a pre-registered experiment reveal that loss aversion and temporal orientation frames influences whether individuals aged 25–49 years shop for life insurance. Specifically, the results suggest that the superiority of gain frames over loss frames requires positioning the benefits well in the future, despite the need to act now. This study thus also contextualizes the realities and practical difficulty of framing financial products in ways that might interest a potentially vulnerable population.