Link Roundup #83: 10 Things to Know This Week
Accelerate your personal finance knowledge with this regular feature on Ringgit Oh Ringgit – the Link Roundup! I promise you’ll find these 10 links informational 🙂
1. 8 Signs That a Friend or Colleague Is Toxic to Your Mental Health – Fatherly
An important article compiling characteristics of toxic people and the way they make you feel, and most importantly, what you can do to distance yourself or even cut them from your lives.
This is more important to your personal finance than you think. Toxic people will sabotage your growth and manipulate you to spend more than you can afford to (and on them!)
2. I’m Self-Employed and Work From Home — Here Are 5 Rules I Set to Stay Productive and Avoid Burning Out – Apartment Theraphy
Where is this article when I first started my self-employment journey years ago! (But then again, perhaps I needed to burn out in order to appreciate how nice it is to not burn out, and take steps to prevent it)
All the advice here is gold. The 5 rules are:
- Not everything needs to be monetised
- Have a designated workspace
- Always get dressed for work
- Keep firm boundaries around your office hours (if you can)
- Maintain a daily routine before and after work
If you’re working from home, how are you doing and are you applying the rules in your life? I’m pretty good at 1 and 3, and still working on applying 2, 4 and 5 well.
3. We Make $3K/Month Selling Trash – Vice
This couple fascinates me. So basically what they do is, they drive around and takes items thrown away that are still edible/in good condition then sells them online. They track dumpsters and trash days and everything.
I kinda love it as a side business. It directly reduces the number of items going straight to the landfill, and they make good money in the process. It’s probably one of the most eco-friendly side businesses you can ever do.
(It also shows how many items are thrown away even though they are in good condition, just because the shops just don’t want the hassle of donating/selling themselves)
4. Nine psychological tricks to quietly make more money – Entrepreneurs’ Handbook
Keyword: quietly.
Nicely written article. I like the communication style.
5. Get More Done: Try These 10 Simple Tips for Better ToThe Secret Lives of Hoarders: What I Learned as a Professional Home Cleaner – Vice
It’s very rare for hoarders to be covered in the media with empathy and understanding, instead of as entertainment (ie ‘Look at how weird these people are’).
These paragraphs were very insightful:
..hoarding can affect anyone, certainly not only those who are grappling with scarcity, as commonly believed. Hoarders and their homes can look very different from one another. I have wealthy clients with “organized hoarding,” possibly because they have housekeepers who regularly help to pack and conceal the accumulating items.
..People with less money, on the other hand, are not as equipped to stave off visual evidence of their hoarding problem. They have neither dedicated housekeepers nor an abundance of space to hide their things.
6. Try this science-backed scheduling trick to relieve your anxiety – Fast Co
This is a practical article for those of you who worry a lot. It give the step-by-step guide on how to start practicing ‘deliberate worrying’, so that you can soothe your nerves better.
7. Kongsi Women: The Women Who Built Malaysia – The City Maker by ThinkCity
..the kongsi women, also known as lai sui mui (meaning ‘mud girls’ in Cantonese on account of the buckets of mud-like liquid concrete that they carried), were a unique tribe of female labourers making up about 60% of total workers on a site.
Working ten or more hours a day, with only two days of leave per year, the women worked tirelessly, carrying buckets or balancing pans on their head of premixed concrete and other materials, laying turf, polishing floors and more.
60%… I don’t know anything about these women labourers, yet they played a big role. Do I even know my country at all.
8. Women can only succeed as leaders if they show these 3 emotions – Ladders
Oh look, yet another study that prove we indeed judge women and male leaders differently.
A new study out of the Drexel University found that when females in positions of leadership express positive emotions, they’re seen as more effective leaders than their male counterparts. But if they show negative emotions, they’re seen as less effective.
Over the course of five studies amalgamated into one, just about 1,300 participants were asked about their opinions concerning what leaders’ emotional expressions said about their leadership skills. Female leaders earned lower ratings on the whole as leaders when they showed more anger, fear, and remorse.
On the other side of things, female leaders were highly rated when they were demonstrated cheer. Women who expressed pride or were described as calm, didn’t have higher or lower perceived leadership skills.
Tl;dr – Women leaders have to learn how to express anger and negative emotions in a way that reframes them as positive, so that she is not perceived as a less effective leader. At the same time, society must apply critical thinking to ‘we judge on merit not gender’ assumption.
9. 50 Tips to Break Out of a Career Rut and Make Your Day Job Feel Like Your Dream Job – Parade
A compilation of 50 quotes from people who specialise in advising people on dream jobs and career transitioning. Have a browse if you’re feeling ‘stuck’ in your career right now, maybe one of the tips will be the exact thing you need to break out of it.
10. How ‘Sex & The City’ Ruined Women’s Relationship To Money – The Financial Diet
Really enjoyed this critical analysis of Sex & The City and how it affect a whole generation of women’s relationship to money.
Don’t be fooled, the cultural effect is BIG. For example, many of the luxury brands were not household names nor desired before the series.
Have a watch. Maybe you’ll recognise how your own approach to money is directly/indirectly influenced by shows of this genre (doesn’t have to be specifically S&tC).
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That’s it for this round, catch you next time! Want to submit a link you thought was great? Reach out to me on FB or Twitter.
To read past link roundups, please click here.
