What afflicts America’s young today can’t be properly called a loneliness crisis. It seems more to me like an absence-of-loneliness crisis. It is a being-constantly-alone-and-not-even-thinking-that’s-a-problem crisis. Americans—and young men, especially—are choosing to spend historic gobs of time by themselves without feeling the internal cue to go be with other people, because it has simply gotten too pleasurable to exist without them. The problem is not loneliness. The problem is that we’ve forgotten how to feel lonely in the first place.
Since the 1970s, America has over-regulated the physical world and under-regulated the digital space. To open a daycare, build an apartment, or start a factory requires lawyers, permits, and years of compliance. To open a casino app or launch a speculative token requires a credit card and a few clicks. We made it hard to build physical-world communities and easy to build online casinos. The state that once poured concrete for public parks now licenses gambling platforms. The country that regulates a lemonade stand will let an 18-year-old day-trade options on his phone.
_____________________________
As part of a larger project, an author read 102 books over the past twelve-and-a-half months. Here were some of the insights he took away:
- Exercising regularly is probably the single best thing you can do for your health. (Outside of quitting smoking.)
- Happiness, not stress, leads to productivity.
- Despite our preconceptions, we may be happier at work than at home. People experience more flow at work than in leisure.
- Energy, not time, is the limited resource in our ability to be productive.
- You can’t beat the market. Nearly everyone is better off simply buying a diversified low-cost index fund. Neither can any fund you invest in. The percentage of funds that beat the market after fees is so low that you can round it to zero.
- You can’t time the market. Frequent trades expose you to taxes and whittle away your capital on fees. Buy and hold is better.
- If you need an advisor, find someone who charges hourly. Paying a percentage of your assets seems cheaper, but the cost is enormous in the long-run.
- We’re overweight because we eat too much. The increase in calories consumed is enough to entirely explain the change in body mass. Successful weight loss requires you to stick to a dietary pattern forever. The weight will always come back the moment you stop.
- Loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking cigarettes. The stress of loneliness weakens our immune system.
- There are numerous explanations for the increase in time alone, but a simple one is just better entertainment options available.
- Sleep serves many important functions. It flushes the brain of metabolic byproducts, consolidates memories, reinforces the immune system and recalibrates synaptic connections.
- If you have insomnia, don’t worry, you probably are sleeping enough. If you’re sleep deprived you will fall asleep, so despite feeling cranky and low energy, most insomniacs are not actually sleep deprived.
- Asking yourself “what went well?” at the end of the day can give you a big boost to your happiness.
- ADHD is about as heritable as height, is not caused by parenting style, doesn’t go away as you age and, despite popular disbelief, medication works pretty well.
102 Lessons From Reading 102 Books
___________________________
Why do doctors now seem so rushed and dismissive? You wait 45 minutes in the exam room when the doctor finally walks in. They seem rushed. A few questions, a quick exam, a glance at the clock and then a rapid-fire plan with little time for discussion – and you leave feeling unheard, hurried and frustrated.
Increasingly, health care organizations and physician groups face intense financial pressures. Many doctors can no longer sustain their private practice due to declining reimbursements, rising costs and increasing administrative burdens; instead, they’ve become employees of larger health care systems. In some cases, their practices have been acquired by private equity groups.
With this shift, doctors have less control over their workloads and the time they get with their patients. More and more, payment models fail to cover the true cost of care. The default solution is often for doctors to see more patients with less time for each, and to squeeze in additional work after hours.
That negative, impolite tone you may have experienced might be because the doctor has many patients waiting and a full evening ahead just to catch up on writing visit notes, reviewing medical records and completing other required documentation. During the work day, they’re often fielding over 100 messages and alerts daily, including referrals and coordinating care, all while trying to focus on the patient in front of them.
________________________________
200 years of data across 56 countries, showing 25-year and 5-year returns from different starting P/E ratios (the price of a stock dividend by its earnings). The takeaway? Even over relatively short periods like five years, valuations matter a lot. If you buy when stocks are expensive they tend to do worse than when you buy them cheap.
Here are the forecasts for different categories of stocks over the coming decade based on their current valuations:
Tuna Thoughts 