We’ve reached the last day of September, my friends. Another week gone. Another month gone. Another quarter gone. The relentless march of time continues, dragging us each every closer to our demise.
Haha! How’s that for some existential angst to start your weekend? Here, let me make things better. Here are four recent stories to help you master your money — and your life (and your pancakes).
An economist’s rule for making tough life decisions. [Quartz] — “But even accounting for these limitations, the results of the study still suggest a way to break out of those painful cycles of hesitation and indecision that people often get caught in when contemplating major life decisions. If the choice is between action and inaction, and you’re genuinely unsure about what to do, choose action.”
How to figure out what you want out of life. [Vox] — “When culture provides limited road maps for the future, these life events can seem nonnegotiable. External pressure from family, friends, and media further muddies the waters, potentially creating an emotional conundrum when it comes to determining what you really want for the future. Through time and reflection, you can use your values and motivations as guides for a fully authentic life.”
The last man standing in the floppy disk business. [Eye on Design] — “In the beginning, I figured we would do floppy disks, but never CDs. Eventually, we got into CDs and I said we’d never do DVDs. A couple of years went by and I started duplicating DVDs. Now I’m also duplicating USB drives. You can see from this conversation that I’m not exactly a person with great vision. I just follow what our customers want us to do.”
The world’s best pancake recipe. [Kottke] — “After discovering the recipe for Robie’s Buttermilk Flapjacks in a magazine a year or two ago, my wife has been making them for breakfast most Saturdays and they are, no foolin’, the best pancakes I’ve ever eaten. They are fluffy and moist and delicious. Here’s what you do.”
Lastly, we have a super-interesting video feature…but it’s long. It’s 50-minutes long. Don’t let the length deter you! Instead, bookmark this for future viewing (add it to your Watch Later playlist in YouTube?).
This documentary from the Defunctland channel on YouTube explores Walt Disney’s final ambitious plan, the project he hoped would leave a lasting legacy on the world: E.P.C.O.T, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
Disney’s dream city was made up of futuristic, visionary ideas. Even today, sixty years later, many of these ideas are progressive. He wanted to build the city of the future. It’s fun to see what he had planned. But, as the video makes clear, the only way for him to actually do these things was to not create a utopia, but a totalitarian dystopia.
This is one of my favorite videos I’ve watched this year.
And that’s it for September. Jim will be with you next week. I’ll be back in ten days to share more new discoveries from the world of personal finance.