Great Courses by The Teaching Company

This might sound like a paid advertisement, but it is not. I am just a consumer who's always been impressed with The Teaching Company's products.

This company produces quite a number of audio and video courses under its Great Courses series. I have listened to and watched several full courses. They take time, but they are invariably excellent, no exceptions.

It turns out that I have been using their products for over 10 years now, but I only started to pay attention when Bill Gates mentioned them by name, in his GatesNotes blog. I had been searching for around 3 years for a macro-economics book whose material would be accessible to me. Bill Gates recommended a macro-economics series by Timothy Taylor titled America and the New Global Economy. This course came the closest to what I was looking for. My wife and I watched all 36 episodes earlier this year.

Bill Gates also recommended the "Big History" course by Oxford's David Christian and we are watching parts of it now. I don't have the words to describe how good this course is. (Bill calls it "his most favorite course" by TTC.)

As an aside, I am delighted (and grateful) that someone with my modest means can get to enjoy the exact same products that Gates with his purchasing power can.

If TED talks are fast food for our brains, then the Great Lectures are the healthy gourmet meal plans for our intellects.

Most of these DVD set costs several hundred dollars, but I am also seeing quite a few for under $40. Personally, I have always borrowed these from the libraries. Do check them out from your library and give it a try.

Each episode of any Teaching Company disk that I watch serves to remind me of why I should always chose time over everything else -- time to spend viewing the Great Courses.

Emphasizing Mind over Material

Discussions around the concept of time versus money interest me. I recently came across a couple of articles that discuss wealthy people's non-conventional approaches to spending their money.

The first one is an article in the LA Times (by Jessica Guynn) wherein she writes about how the new Silicon Valley millionaires who are shunning the traditional materialism of the affluent. They make up their own minds about what makes sense for them. "I have pictured myself owning expensive things and easily came to the conclusion that I would not have a materially more meaningful life because of them," says Moskovitz, one of the neo-millionaires mentioned in the article.

As Jessica writes:

It's not that this new generation of tech entrepreneurs doesn't seek status, Marwick said. They just seek it in different ways.

"This is not a community that values good looks, visible wealth or having a hot body. Those are not the ways that they distinguish high status from low status," Marwick said. "Technology millionaires don't hobnob with celebrities or buy a fancy car. They travel to Thailand or they fund an incubator. These things are just as expensive, but that's the classic hacker ethos that prizes the mind, not materials."

Read the full article here.

The second one is by Barry Ritholtz, a columnist for the Washington Post titled "7 life lessons from the very wealthy." At some level all of us know these lessons, but it is always good to be reminded.

One of Barry's lessons is:

Don’t become “cash rich” and “time poor.”
Work is the process of exchanging your time for money. Remember: What you do with your time is far more meaningful than the goods you accumulate with your money. If you are working so much to become rich but you ignore your spouse and miss seeing your kids grow up, you are actually poorer than you realize.

Barry Rithotz runs a blog called "The Big Picture." Read the full article here.

Assorted Links - Living deliberately

A few quick assorted links for today. All of the following mostly deal with the idea of spending the limited time we have available thoughtfully and deliberately.

1. Merlin Mann of 43 folders on "Cranking."
Mann's day job is to write about time management. He posts about it and is writing a book on “how to reclaim your email, your attention, and your life." He wants us all to find the time and attention to do our best creative work. In the process though, he finds that he is not following his own suggestions. This post is in reaction to that realization.

2. Is a Well-Lived Life Worth Anything? (HBR)
Umair Haque laments the loss of "Eudaimonia" and says that we have replaced it with "Opulence" and materialistic pursuits. Some of the phrases he uses are worth thinking about: hedonic opulence vs. seeking eudaimonic prosperity. Let's hope that the Eudaimonic Revolution which he predicts does indeed happen, where everyone tries to "master the the art of living meaningfully well."

3. PenMachine's (Derek Miller) Last post.
Derek Miller's very last post. In this poignant read, he writes about everything he will miss, his family having to cope without him, and reminds us that we live in a "wondrous place."