A popular hobby for years, putting a bird on it has only recently become a viable career.

Now that life is so much easier than it was a hundred years ago — very few of us are farming 12 hours a day to feed ourselves — we’ve grown into a world where we don’t just expect to have a job, but have a job that we love. Turn our passion into our work. This Medium post explores the phenomenon:

With fewer reasons to stay in one job, workers began to explore a wider variety of options. For some, these options included turning a hobby into a business. Young people turned to what they loved, what they were good at, with an entrepreneurial mindset angled toward self-employment. It’s why we have so many artisan lollipops and food trucks.

But the side effects are things like convincing yourself that turning your pass time into a second job is somehow noble. Or not really enjoying the thing you loved the same way you used to once you tack on the added pressure to perform, earn, or succeed.

What are the benefits and costs of turning a hobby into a career?

Have you ever wanted to try? What would you do? What stopped you?

Is there something to be said for working a traditional job and pursuing other creative or recreational things purely for pleasure?

So as long as I go childless, I can commute via stretch Hummer, guilt-free.

My wife, further proving that we are 100% on the same page regarding certain issues, shared this NPR story about the environmental impact of childbearing. Apparently all the things you do to be greener pale in comparison to just not adding another human to the world:

Oregon State University researchers have calculated the savings from all kinds of conservation measures: driving a hybrid, driving less, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances, windows and light bulbs.

For an American, the total metric tons of carbon dioxide saved by all of those measures over an entire lifetime of 80 years: 488. By contrast, the metric tons saved when a person chooses to have one fewer child: 9,441.

But when it comes time to “what do we do about it”, the topic gets even hotter (get it?):

Rieder proposes that richer nations do away with tax breaks for having children and actually penalize new parents. He says the penalty should be progressive, based on income, and could increase with each additional child.

Think of it like a carbon tax, on kids. He knows that sounds crazy.

No big deal, right?

Is it ethically right to try to persuade people not to have kids?

Is it fair to use financial incentives to accomplish this?

Could this ever possibly work in the real world we live in?

[Chart heading this post from original Oregon State University report.]

Charts: the most time-honored way for nerds to make major life decisions.

The chart above, and the accompanying post on Wait But Why, is one of the most level-headed and human examinations of how we make “The Marriage Decision” I’ve seen in a long time. In particular, it emphasizes that perfection is nonexistent, and that long-term happiness is a matter of plotting the right elements of a relationship in the right places on that chart up there. And also acknowledging:

The key with [deal-breakers] is that there are very few. These aren’t wants—these are needs. Your wants are important, but remember, the only people even eligible for the deal-breaker test are those who have already passed the gut test—plenty of your wants have already been taken care of in step 1 of our system.

Knowing your deal-breakers can help you know the right relationship when you see it, but it can also go a long way for anyone already in a relationship, because it lends insight into one of the trickiest aspects of a relationship: compromise. A great way to be unhappy is to refuse to compromise on things you wish were true about your relationship that aren’t. But another great way to be unhappy is to be too willing to compromise on your deal-breakers. That’s why this is so important—deal-breakers not only help Deciders and single people figure out what should be unacceptable in a relationship, they also remind already-Decided people that most of the problems in their relationship are probably non-deal-breakers that it’s okay to chill out about. Because so many relationship problems boil down to one or both members treating non-deal-breakers like deal-breakers—or vice versa.

Though some might see this sort of examination as cold (the piece addresses that too), I find it to be something much more positive and constructive. Not so much cold as… calm. Accepting. Honest. So whether you’re in a relationship, already married, or looking for someone, it’s probably valuable to take honest stock of what goes where.

What are your real, honest, totally inflexible deal-breakers?

Which aspects are actually just nice to have (or not have to deal with) that you are more able to compromise on?

What else would go in this chart with your current (or ideal) relationship?

**note: this may not be a good one to do off-the-cuff over beers with your current significant other without at least some prior consideration. It’s your funeral.**

Sure he seems happy, but the half-full glass harbors a dark secret.

Like many cynical Gen-Xers raised on a healthy diet of irony and apathy, it’s easy for me to be annoyed and dismissive of the cult of positive thinking. Even though I am an optimist in the traditional sense (things are generally ok and we can make them better!), the personal pep-talk industry seems pretty shallow and pointless. What a relief then, to find that science not only supports this claim, but cautions specifically against the harm in positive thinking, as reported in Aeon:

Positive thinking can make us feel better in the short term, but over the long term it saps our motivation, preventing us from achieving our wishes and goals, and leaving us feeling frustrated, stymied and stuck. If we really want to move ahead in our lives, engage with the world and feel energised, we need to go beyond positive thinking and connect as well with the obstacles that stand in our way. By bringing our dreams into contact with reality, we can unleash our greatest energies and make the most progress in our lives.

…

Consistently, we found a correlation between positive fantasies and poor performance. The more that people ‘think positive’ and imagine themselves achieving their goals, the less they actually achieve.

…

We looked at all sorts of goals and pursuits, including learning a foreign language, doing well in mathematics, succeeding in business negotiations, making more effective decisions, kicking cigarette habits, exercising more, and giving help in workplace settings. In all of these cases, we found the same pattern: obstacles led people with realistic goals to apply more effort and perform better, and people with unrealistic goals to pull back. Across many areas of life, mental contrasting seemed to be a beneficial way of regulating the effort we put in so that we stay in the game and succeed.

So, knowing that all that “The Secret” nonsense is not only empty but actively hurting your chances of success, what are we to do?

How do you fall victim to the negative aspects of positive thinking?

What are the things you often think about doing, are proud of yourself for considering, and tell yourself you’re going to do, but still never seem to do?

What could you do differently to counteract all this?

“I just HAVE to know which of my weird relatives thought that dog photo was cute.”

This Medium post from a former Google “Product Philosopher” (a weirdly pretentious title to be sure, but once you get past that he has a lot of smart things to say) on “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds” is very much worth the 15 minutes it takes to read.

In it, he covers a handful of ways the web and mobile apps are designed to manipulate your choices and play on our human psychological weaknesses to keep you using them, or do what they want you to do vs what you may actually want to do, mostly without you even noticing.

A few examples: using Yelp to find a place to go after a movie will probably lead you to a bar or restaurant to spend more money, when a park bench could do perfectly fine. Notifications just vague enough to pull you back into apps for very little information, which leads to more news feed scrolling. Netflix autoplaying the next episode of a series. Even the basic principle of a menu forcing a choice between a few options they’d prefer you to take. Super interesting stuff we probably don’t think about much (*begin conspiracy voice*) because that’s exactly what they want.

Which apps or website do you think manipulates your choices or steals your time the most?

How aware are you of this as it happens?

What, if anything, do you do to combat these designed manipulations?