Early Retirement Extreme: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence

For instance, why do we still work eight hours a day, 50 weeks a year, when we're twice as productive as we were 50 years ago?

The question you need to answer is what you want to do with your life given that you don't have the time to do everything? Do you want to spend most of your life paying off the interest of a 30-year mortgage and working so you can fill increasingly bigger houses with increasingly more stuff while being stuck in your daily commute in increasingly nicer cars? Or are you prepared to give up the stuff so that you can do whatever you want, whenever, and wherever, within reason? What will your legacy be--what you owned or who you were?

If you have debt, you're not a free person. You're explicitly owned by your debt and implicitly owned by the creditor.

Health is thus a condition of well-being and an ability to appreciate life. It's not necessarily optimizing or conforming to a set of measurable quantities like life expectancy or blood pressure, nor is it removing all symptoms using drugs. Health is the presence of something positive, rather than the absence of something negative.

What will your legacy be--what you owned or who you were?

To paraphrase Einstein, you can't solve your problems with the same mindset that created them.

Walkers easily travel three miles by foot. Drivers get in their cars to get from one side of the parking lot to the other. Neither quite understand why the other is so crazy, when it's so easy to do things their way.

Don't mention that you also happen to manage a six-figure portfolio to your "voluntary simplicity" friends and don't mention that you only have one bedroom to your investment friends unless you're prepared for the resulting discussion.

In other words, money is paid and gas is burned to make one's possessions as comfortable temperature-wise as the inhabitants

this case it's sensible to develop a skill to just before the point that it begins to require maintenance, continued practice--beyond this point, replacing skill and time with capital assets makes more sense.

Doing something that is considered very difficult at least once in your life is highly recommended.

People with more money than time buy $3,000 road racing bicycles with ultralight carbon frames to shave two pounds off the bike, regardless of the fact that they themselves are probably at least 10 pounds overweight.

The mass education in high schools reflects the mass production of the real world. The teaching style has one teacher (supervisor) lecturing (leading) 20-25 students (workers) sitting in rows, much like a manager and his employees.

Complexity, therefore, results in flexibility. Increasing complexity always increases capability and adaptability.

Any connection with nature and most connections with technology are lost. There's a belief that nature is irrelevant and that anything can be solved using the current methods--now technology; previously magic or praying.

The real problem is not how much we earn; it's how much we waste, perhaps to demonstrate our supposed wealth, when we spend it.

Many profit-driven corporate strategies are based on fashion, planned obsolescence, unneeded upgrades, and masterful emotional manipulation --marketing--causing people to continuously replace goods which are still in good working order.

The volume of the pyramid represents the will to change from an unsatisfying situation to something else and depends on vision, how practical the change is, and the level of dissatisfaction with the situation.

During the day, professionals attend to their jobs. During the evenings, they vegetate in front of their TVs, thereby prevented from learning anything, and this effectively keeps them in their jobs.

What happens is that air-conditioning makes sweat glands ineffective as they're never called into use. This means that when moving outside in the hot air, more blood has to be directed away from the core and the muscles to cool the body.

Further, in the US walking is something you do inside the mall, and in Europe walking is something you do to get to the bus stop.

traditional best way is to learn several recipes and notice which ingredients they have in common. If one recipe includes an ingredient that is used in only that recipe, avoid the recipe. The more it's optimized, the easier it is to manage the system, but obviously there are diminishing returns to obsessing over which recipes have the most synergy.

For example, the amino acid tryptophan, which is found in abundance in chocolate, oats, and milk and meat products, is a precursor for the neurotransmitter serotonin, which improves mood.

Most activities require some combination of agility, strength, and work capacity. Yet aerobics, running, or jogging enhance none of these qualities.

Commercial detergent is an interesting concoction of sodium carbonate, borax, and inactive ingredients (color agents), all of which are very inexpensive, plus advertising campaigns, management salaries, distribution systems, etc., which comprise most of the cost.

High-intensity workouts generate more than 1000W (see High intensity interval training), which is comparable to a small space heater. For room-heating purposes you can substitute the company of 10 friends with one intensely exercising person.

Is your money best spent on an extra bedroom or five years of freedom?

Many houses increasingly serve not only as living quarters but also as storage areas for toy collections, personal libraries, galleries of art and other assorted knick-knacks, small supermarkets (massive refrigerators), home cinemas, and restaurant-sized kitchens which seem proportional in size to the time the owners spend away from them,

Buying a set of, say, screwdrivers to "save" money is rarely worthwhile. You will end up breaking the ones you use constantly and with a collection of ones you never use. Never buy the set.