2 Things I Read For You, 2 Things For You To Read — Feb 06, 2018

This is TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read) Tuesdays.  I summarize and discuss two articles — one from a blogger, and from one a “traditional news” source.  I also provide links to two other blogs you should read on your own.

This concept is inspired by my father, who sends everyone in the family articles links by email, by my older brother, who sends articles so long I never read them, and my wife, who became tired of me sending her articles, and has been telling me “TL;DR” for years.

I write these 1-4x/month. Click here to read all of them over time.

2 Things For You To Read:

#1: Femme Frugality discusses Why You Always Need to Check Your Medical Bills.  I can empathize, as I’ve discussed my own experiences in this realm in a discussion of the Financial Folly of the US Healthcare System.

#2: Jonathan at Partners in Fire discusses a personal topic — Mental Illness: Overcoming It And Finding Financial Peace.

2 Things I Read For You

#1

Source: Wall Street Physician

Title: Increase Your Happiness By Spending Money on Others

Summary: The title sorta gives away the take home message.  So the longer version — spending money on others or donating money may not help you retire faster, but it can actually make you happier.  Even small amounts of giving for others ($5-$20) can help.

Conclusion: I cheated — he’s summarizing a journal article from Science, as well known biomedical journal.  That’s what I sometimes do here.  This was a good one though.  Not only are we donating 10% of this blog’s revenue to charity, my wife and I have made more of a point of being more intentional with giving, including setting up a Donor Advised Fund.

Read This Also: Do You Really Need To Cut The Starbucks Latte? My wife knows my feelings on this — I love the Pumpkin Spice, I hate the cost.  All else being equal, cheaper is better.  While I don’t 100% agree with WSP (I 85-90% agree), this is worth reading, unless you are my wife, in which case there’s nothing to see here.

#2

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Title: The Mental Tricks of Athletic Endurance

Summary: Simply believing you are able to do more, through various preparation methods or mental tricks, can actually lead you to athletic performance levels you did not think possible or could previously reach.  Being told you’re running faster than you are, being told an injury isn’t as bad as it is, or seeing smiley faces can make you perform better.  Fancier people can do things such as brain stimulation techniques.  Numerous methods have shown that altering our internal perception of things lets us achieve things our body will sometimes tell you it cannot reach.

Conclusion: The cliché “mind over matter” now has scientific proof to back it up.  The point of this is not to suggest that you should push yourself to the point of injury — I’ve injured myself too many times to count playing sports even without pushing myself (such as my Wiffle Ball injury in 2001) that led to steroid injections, months of therapy, and recurring/ongoing pain that still plagues me).

The point is that the feedback we receive from our body — the signals of fatigue or pain — do not always represent a true stopping point.  The burning feeling from lactic acid buildup doesn’t mean you are at your limit, but you have to be able to trick or train your mind to focus on different indicators.

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