But wait... there's less!

This is every mug I own. How many did I buy? Zero. They seem to just appear. I don't even drink tea or coffee. In winter I have might have a hot chocolate or cocoa. So 9 mugs seems like a lot. How does this happen? I reckon most mugs are gifts. There are two reasons for this. 1. It's a safe bet. People need to drink. It's kind of like buying your dad socks for father's day. But the difference is that socks wear out and need replacing. Cups don't. One of these mugs i received as a kid in the 90s. It still works fine. Now it has 8 friends. 2. It's often for what's on the mug. It might be a greeting card-style message, or a sports team logo, or something humorous. It's a good thing that something functional can also provide an inspiring message or pleasant memory as you use it. But the problem comes when we have too much. If I use the cup my sister gave me at Christmas, then I'm not using the 'awesome brother' one she already gave m

My wife and I currently work about 3 days per week. Even just typing that feels like a rebellious act in a society that herds us towards five days a week of work. My wife was recently doing one of those "graduate outcomes" surveys that the university arranges. It asked how much she works. When the answer was less than 5 days, it asked if she was looking for more work. She said no and was asked to choose one of the following reasons. They thought up 10 options and not one was even close to "this is how much I want to work". Each option was just a variation of 'There's no work for me' or 'I have no time'. It's as if they couldn't even imagine a person who doesn't long to hand over even more of their life to work. I reckon that surveys like this, and about a hundred other things, herd/lure/peer-pressure us into working 5 days per week even though there's no real reason to.