Simon's Cat: Shelf Life

8 Ways To Embrace JOMO: The Joy Of Missing Out

I was a junior in college when I went to see Dear John by myself. It was the first time I’d been to a theater alone, if only because the movie trailer suggested I would ugly-cry like all get-out. The fewer people who see me in that state, the better.

As willing as I was to fly solo, I “just knew” it would be a terrible time. I “knew” that not having a friend to talk to during the previews or feel awkwardly comforted by when I lost control of my tear ducts was going to make for an experience I’d deny ever happening later. So imagine my surprise when I not only enjoyed myself, but I did it all over again the next month. And I didn’t stop there. 

My newfound appreciation (dare I say preference) for alone time made its way to restaurants and concert venues. Sure, I would bring a book or a barely-checked Twitter feed to focus my attention away from sad-eyed strangers wondering if I had friends or was being stood up—but those fell away when I realized I didn’t care (much) about what people might be thinking.

Now, instead of feeling embarrassed by the idea of showing up someplace alone, I feel empowered. It’s just me, my thoughts, no small talk, and some pasta. It’s perfect.

And I’ll let you in on a little secret: Alone time—even when it involves missing out on social events or activities—is also, apparently, good for us all.

The Need to Know

Time alone is technically known as solitude, or the time you spend getting to know yourself. It can be tough to embrace a desire for solitude as a normal, healthy thing, given that society tends to favor extroverts (or people who thrive on socializing and activities), and some science shows being outgoing is a greater indicator for happiness. Then there’s social media, which is all about the power of social interaction. Take all these factors together, and it’s no wonder solitude gets the short end of the stick.

Yet there can be so much joy in these solo hours—or what blogger Anil Dash first dubbed JOMO (joy of missing out) in a popular blog post nearly two years ago. Put another way, JOMO is the opposite of FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s relishing alone time, letting go of needing to be “in the know,” and unplugging from emails, text, social networks, and events in an effort to embrace solitude and cultivate one’s relationship to one’s own self.

If solitude hasn’t ranked towards the top of your to-do list lately, intentionally spending time alone might sound, well, boring. But not all boredom is created equal. Daydreaming, for example, promotes creativity, while a lull in external stimulation can encourage us to go after our goals.

Meanwhile, research shows that alone time can also boost cognitive power and overall wellbeing, with some of the best ideas and work coming from a quiet, inner place.

Perhaps most importantly, solitude allows us to engage in what psychologist Anders Ericsson calls Deliberate Practice. It’s easier to turn our focus inwards, and resolve (or refine) personal problems and behaviors, when there are no distractions. And the insight gained from this practice is what Ericsson says is the key to exceptional achievement and success.

The takeaway? Taking breaks from constant connectivity to enjoy some alone time is just as important for our overall health as hitting the gym or cooking up a healthy dinner.

Your Action Plan

Solo movies and meals are certainly one way to ease into spending more time alone, but there are a thousand ways to solitude. For beginners to well-seasoned enjoyers of solitude, here’s how to uncover the joy of missing out.


1. Allow yourself to be uncomfortable at first.
Even if solitude appeals to you, it’s something certain personality types (read: introverts) may feel more comfortable doing by default. If you’re less sure about spending time alone, start small. Try sitting quietly for 10 minutes or not bringing your phone along for a 15-minute walk—hey, it’s a start! It’s also helpful to choose activities you enjoy, whether it’s sitting outside in the grass or doing yoga, says Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.


2. Bring along “safety blankets.” 
Books, phones, and even a notebook and pen are all things you can bring to the literal table when practicing solitude. By focusing on what’s in front of you, you’re less likely to worry about onlooking strangers and what they might be thinking about you. As you get more comfortable, you may feel the need to leave these blankets at home. But there’s no rush or rule that says it’s not really solitude if you have them with you (especially non-tech “blankets”). Again, start small. While it’s ideal to spend time alone without access to social media, take some baby steps if you need ‘em by bringing along the tech gadgets the first few times you venture out solo.


3. Take a seat at the bar.
Having someone wait on you in a dining room full of other people’s friends and families can be intimidating—so take a seat at the bar instead. Not only can it be a more comfortable choice for first time solo diners, but you’ll notice how many other people are also there to enjoy a drink or a meal alone.


4. Schedule solitude every day.
Once solitude starts to feel more comfortable, pencil it in every day the way you would exercise or a lunch date, says Cain. This keeps you accountable to your self.


5. Unplug throughout the day.
You can’t reap the benefits of solitude if your phone is notifying you of every new email, or text, or snap. Similarly, sitting quietly doesn’t mean silently scrolling through your Twitter feed. Once you’ve graduated from the “baby steps” phase, try to remove that stimulation for a few minutes, hours, or even a whole day at a time—whether it’s leaving your phone in another room or turning it off completely—so that you can really focus and reflect on your own.


6. Meditate.
Meditation is a particularly great way to practice solitude, and it can be accomplished in as little as 60 seconds a day. Research finds the practice also relieves stress, benefits the brain, and may reduce risk for heart attack and stroke.


7. Experiment with what works for you. 
Reading a book in the park? Great. Venturing out of town with a perfectly-crafted playlist to attend a local book fair? Equally great, if not even better. Once a solitary comfort zone is established, upping the ante can enrich your experience. It also gives you the opportunity to explore and discover what you truly love to do, and to find value in what you’ve already been doing.


8. Believe Like Bukowski.
Author Charles Bukowski once wrote that “isolation is a gift.” And he’s right. The creative and reflective power that comes from solitude is worth the break from social media and group outings. That’s not to say you shouldn’t ever spend time with your friends and family, just that it’s important to remember that spending time with yourself can be just as joyous. So let yourself enjoy, and be grateful for all that alone time gives you.

How Much Grit Do You Have?

The test below was a solid predictor of cadets who would be able to survive boot camp. I scored a 3.5. You?

https://upenn.app.box.com/12itemgrit

My Clan's All About Harmony

This week Scotland voted down the notion of independence. The internet tells me below that McDonald is a Scottish surname. Glad that my countrymen did me proud by toughing it out!


"This is probably the most famous of Scottish clan surnames. Recorded in the modern spellings of MacDonald and McDonald, the derivation is from the pre 10th century Gaelic name Mac Dhomhnuill. This is a compound which translates literally as "The son of the world ruler". Whilst this may not have been the actual meaning fifteen hundred years ago, it is perhaps not entirely coincidental that one branch of the clan are known as "The Lords of the Isles". This was an assumed title, which much resented by early Scottish kings, King David 11 in the year 1369 going to considerable, if unsuccessful lengths, to try to dispossess them by force. In the Gaelic the name was pronounced Mak Oonil, and attempts at pronunciation have rendered a variety of spellings including; MakChonehill (1479), McConile (1570), Mak Donald (1571) and M'Oneill (1576). Early church registers in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh record the christening of John, the son of Alane McDonald, on July 4th 1672, and the marriage of John McDonald and Grissell McFuffan on July 29th 1687. Among the many famous nameholders are Flora MacDonald (1722 - 1790), the rescuer of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, and Sir John MacDonald, (1815 - 1891), the first premier of the Dominion of Canada. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Therthelnac MakDonenalde. This was dated 1251, when he was a charter witness at Lesmore, during the reign of King Alexander 111 of Scotland, 1249 - 1286. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling."

How Successful Retirees Stretch Their Savings

By Mandi Woodruff, Yahoo! Finance:

By the time she hit her late 40s, Toni Eugenia wasn’t sure she would ever be able to retire.

“I didn’t even know there was a word called budget,” she says. “I was living paycheck to paycheck. Whatever I wanted, I put it on a credit card.”Eugenia, 56, a pharmacy technician who lived in Houston, was nearly $200,000 in debt and earned a little over $50,000 a year. She had barely contributed to her 401(k) in more than 15 years of working full time.  

A few months shy of her 50th birthday, she decided to make a change. She enrolled in a 12-step personal finance course taught by Dave Ramsey, who preaches the value of a debt-free lifestyle.

“I took that course and my whole life changed,” she says. Within three years, she and her fiance managed to pay down all of her debt — including a $150,000 mortgage, a $19,000 timeshare and more than $30,000 worth of credit card debt. In 2013, they decided to move to Seattle, where they married. Eugenia’s wife, 11 years her junior, continued working, but Eugenia, they decided, could finally afford to retire — a decade sooner than most working Americans today.

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Photo: Toni Eugenia (right) and her wife, Miriam, retired in Seattle, Wash.

Eugenia is among more than 500 retirees who shared the keys to their success in a new eBook"The Retiree Next Door" to be released on Thursday by MoneyTips.com. The personal finance education site asked retirees who considered themselves to be living comfortably to discuss everything from their net worth and income to their shopping habits and savings strategies.

“About six months ago we did a survey and found that one-third of baby boomers had no retirement plan,” says Marc Diana, CEO of MoneyTips.com. “We wanted to go to the other end of the spectrum and [talk to] retirees who were successfully retired to see if they could help connect the dots.”

You don’t need millions to retire happy

The idea that you need millions saved up to retire comfortably doesn’t exactly ring true, at least in this survey. More than 70% of retirees surveyed say their net worth is less than $1 million. Two-thirds live on less than $100,000 in annual income, and 80% cite Social Security benefits as their main source of income.

This could be comforting news to many workers who are feeling behind on their retirement savings. A recent report by the Employee Benefit Retirement Institute found that only 11% of workers have managed to save more than $250,000 for retirement outside of their defined contribution plan.

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Source: MoneyTips.com

The key, as many retirement experts note, is mastering cash flow — the amount of money retirees have coming in vs. how much they’re spending on a daily basis.

During the three years it took Eugenia and her wife to eliminate their debt, they drastically reduced their expenses. Eugenia sold her car and motorcycle and took the bus to work. Both of them took on second jobs and worked seven days a week. They took inventory of their belongings and decided they could do without most of them. If it wasn’t bolted down to the floor, they sold it on eBay or at one of their bi-weekly garage sales. Eugenia even started shopping yard sales on her own and flipped some of her purchases for profit on eBay.

“People thought I was absolutely nuts,” she says.

When they decided to move, they didn’t pin their hopes on living in a McMansion or cruising the Mediterranean every summer. They moved into an over-55 community in a quiet town outside of Seattle and invested $100,000 (cash) into a modest home within walking distance of her wife’s job (no car necessary). It costs them roughly $1,000 a month to sustain their lifestyle.

More than 40% of the retirees surveyed said they spend less than their monthly income, and more than one-third reduced their living expenses when they retired.

 Eugenia may have gotten a late start saving for retirement, but she is far from alone. More than half of the participants surveyed said they didn’t start saving for retirement until they were in their 40s. Making up for lost time was the first step Eugenia took once she became debt free. She hired an investment advisor who now manages her $250,000 retirement portfolio, a large component of which is in low-cost index funds.

“We have enough cash saved up now that we can probably live for eight to nine years even if my wife lost her job tomorrow,” she says. “We live a very simple life and we like that.”

Living the good life on Social Security alone

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Photo: Mike McDonald

Like the majority of retirees surveyed in this report, Social Security is often the main source of income for people after they leave regular paychecks behind. The challenge is planning a lifestyle that you can afford with monthly benefits that average $1,294.

Mike McDonald, 67, retired in 2013 after his wife passed away. The couple, who raised six children, were living in Florida at the time and planned on selling their home and living out their golden years by boat. After his wife's passing, McDonald purchased a sailboat and decided to carry out their plans on his own. He's spent the last year sailing around the coast of Florida, docking his boat at marinas along the way. 

“I just wanted to get away,” says McDonald, who worked more than 40 years in both the trucking industry and as a condominimum association manager. “I sold everything and set up an account where I could withdraw money from my CDs each year and I use that along with my Social Security income.”

He and his wife had invested in half a dozen rental properties throughout the Southeast (10% of retirees own rental properties, according to MoneyTips' survey). When McDonald retired, he quickly sold them, along with their home and most of their belongings. The proceeds helped fund his nest egg, which, after raising six children well into his 50s, wasn't quite as large as it might have been otherwise.  

In addition to his Social Security income, he has about $250,000 in savings, the fruits of investments he made himself (with help from his wife and a family friend), including proceeds from the sale of his rental properties. According to MoneyTips' survey, 41% of successful retirees say they manage their own finances.

"My philosophy is to have a lot of small money coming in from a lot of different directions," he says.

But so far, McDonald hasn't had to touch his savings. He's been able to sustain his lifestyle on his Social Security benefits alone, roughly $2,170 a month. He does this by keeping his expenses as low as possible. Most marinas charge $500 to $600 a month for him to dock his 47-foot sailboat, and the fee includes amenities like cable and WiFi. He has Medicare but has also set aside an emergency fund that he can tap into at anytime.  

Without a car (he bikes 25 miles per day) or a mortgage to worry about, his expenses are so low that he rarely has to touch his nest egg. By his calculation, his savings will last him well into his late 80s.

Says McDonald: “I keep hearing about people who can’t live off their Social Security check and I’m doing just fine." 

Marathon: Smiles And Smiles

So yesterday I met up with a new student. A college student taking both accounting and math classes. She joked that she might have to stretch the session to 2 hours. She was wrong.

It was four hours. From 4:30 till 9:00.

So here's the thing. I loved every minute of it.

Absolutely it helped that she was working hard at it. She is a student who has lived with what I'd call an irrational fear of math. I say irrational because she was clearly picking things up as we went through the material.

Keep in mind that she had worked on math the previous night for six straight hours, up past midnight, trying to understand. Once she had a teacher at her side to smooth over the bumps, she began to roll.

She even used the word "fun" after we'd been at it for three hours. The excitement of finally going beyond mere (and horribly boring) memorization of the formulas - the excitement of finally understanding where they came from, why they made sense, and how easy the problems really were after that - overrode what surely must have been a dwindling tank of mental energy. In fact, it might have refueled that tank.

As a supervisor I used to say to people trying to build their career path: Find a need and fill it.

There is a vast unmet need for math students. God's given me the gift of filling that need. This is why a four hour tutoring session late into the night leaves me energized, and a single hour of insurance overtime tended to be draining. The light in her eyes as she progressed was brightening me along with it. Without passing this class, she might have to drop out of school. Now she has a chance.

This is my mission field. Occasionally there are long or rocky straightaways, but nothing compared to the fire of enthusiasm.

How A Missed Flight Changed A Life

By Mary-Rose Abraham of Yahoo! Travel:

What does it mean when you purposely miss a flight back home?

There were three of us who didn’t make it onto the plane late that night in Los Angeles. Two businessmen were loudly demanding another flight to make their morning meeting in New York. But when it was my turn for the lone airline agent to rebook my flight, I greeted her with the same nonchalance as when I walked to the gate and found the jetway doors shut. Oh well. 

In many years of traveling, it was the first time I had missed a flight on purpose. When I should have been running to the gate, I spent the time combing my hair in the bathroom, not hearing my co-worker’s frantic phone calls from the plane. But I knew why I had no sense of urgency: because I didn’t want to go home. Because it was at that moment that I realized that New York didn’t mean home anymore.

A night at LAX can lead to an epiphany (Photo: ekash/E+/Getty Images)

It was nearly midnight, and the terminal at LAX was empty. I considered sleeping at the gate since I was rebooked on the first flight of the morning, but I wanted to get away from the airport. As I took a taxi back to my mom’s home, the place where I grew up and where I always stayed during a work trip, I realized that I had only bought myself a few hours before I had to turn back and get on the plane again. But even that felt like a little triumph: more time away from New York.

It was the final sign that I had to leave that city. And it was no surprise that it happened at an airport. During my four years in New York, the airport has always been where I felt most strongly about where I wanted to be. At first, I would actually sense a dull ache when looking at the distant New York City skyline from a gate at JFK, and excitement upon seeing it again from the terminal on my return. A few years later, I felt neither, only resignation. The airport was my emotional gauge, providing some clarity during a time of devastating change.

New York’s energy can be a blessing and a curse (Photo: Roman Kruglov/Flickr)

My second year of living in New York came to mean loss, hitting all at one time. My marriage fell apart. My father became very ill and passed away within months. Close friends left one by one. At times, it all seemed like more than I could bear. I was actually grateful for the energy of the big city — maneuvering through a crowded sidewalk, packing into a subway train, working long hours as a journalist at a television network — that demanded my attention and stopped me from lying down to wallow in self-pity. It buoyed my own surprising strength during one of the worst times in my life.

By year four of living there, I recovered enough to look forward instead of back. No longer did I want the frantic energy of the city, nor a life that had seemed to stagnate in its sameness. The next move would have to be bold, to test my newfound strength. I found out what it was during my first vacation in many years.

I chose Morocco, a place I’d wanted to visit for a long time. My vacation was a small group tour visiting much of the country for nearly two weeks. As I traveled through a place so wholly different from the U.S., meeting local people and spending time with my fellow travelers who came from all over the world, my little life in New York suddenly seemed rather provincial. So it got me thinking that instead of just visiting, why not consider living in another country?

There were good reasons. It would be a challenging next step for my career. When I shared the idea with a longtime mentor, an accomplished journalist whom I deeply respected, he revealed that one of his few regrets was not accepting a job opportunity in China many years before.

Most of all, I had my airport test. Just imagining my arrival at the airport of this unknown destination filled me with excitement but also a lot of fear. A gauge that moving abroad was the right choice.

That’s the great thing about airports: the promise of new and life-changing adventures (Photo: Francemora/iStock/Thinkstock)

I thought back to my missed flight from a few months ago. I lost money on cab rides and missed an entire day of work. But that experience is what gave me the proverbial kick in the pants not just to daydream about the idea of moving away, but to actually take steps to leave.