James' World 2

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Of all the different things you can try to improve your productivity, a morning routine is one of the most effective.

There are a few reasons why morning routines are so useful. The first is obvious to anyone who has ever procrastinated, just getting started is often the hardest part. If you can start out with the right momentum towards your goals, you’ll avoid wrestling with yourself in the morning to get started.

The second is that the morning, particularly before the workday officially begins, is a quiet time with fewer social obligations. For many of us, the rest of the day can present a chaotic, ever-changing blast of responsibilities, urgent errands, and unexpected interruptions. The morning, in contrast, is often the most consistent part of your day.

Morning routines also set the tone for your upcoming day. Do you want your workday to begin quiet and contemplative? With vigorous exercise? Silent meditation? Creative and productive? Your morning habit can push you along a current which will carry throughout the morning and allow you to maximize whatever aspect of your personality you want to be most important.

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Good morning!

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Whether you’re on the head or tail end of the cryptocurrency craze, one thing is for sure: These digital assets are hitting the mainstream hard, and don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Notably, the country of El Salvador recently adopted bitcoin as legal tender, and New York’s incoming mayor Eric Adams is intent on transforming New York City into a hotspot for cryptocurrency. Although only 16 percent of Americans say they invested, traded, or used cryptocurrency, almost 90 percent have heard about it, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. 

Advocates for cryptocurrency and decentralized finance (where people can make financial deals with one another without being moderated by a middleman or central authority like a bank) in general argue that these platforms are transparent and simultaneously anonymous—both good things. 

The key to this vision lies in a digital technology called the blockchain, which undergirds all cryptocurrencies. The blockchain serves as a virtual hall of records, or a public ledger, that records every transaction, detailing the amount as well as the sender and receiver’s wallet addresses. 

Yet, critics and regulatory bodies are worried about the potential for harm from cryptocurrencies, such as people using them for scams, money laundering, or funding illegal activities (not to mention the enormous carbon footprint that some of these cryptocurrencies have—The New York Times reported that Bitcoin burns through more electricity than certain countries). And experts have raised concerns about the strength of cryptocurrency networks against attacks, and whether the design of some systems have warped over time to become centralized or inherently allow the rich to get richer. 

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How do cryptocurrencies work?. Brian Wangenheim / Unsplash

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What do you expect will happen when you walk into a rental-car office? Do you think you’ll turn over your credit card and your driver’s license, and walk out with the keys to at least generally the type of car you’ve reserved, having agreed to at least roughly the fee that you were quoted? Or do you picture something else?

“I’m expecting chaos,” says the comedian Caleb Hearon, who travels semi-frequently for work. “The whole time I’ve been doing it, it has been brutal and weird.” Now, somehow, the situation has gotten even worse. Horror stories abound: of cars renting for $300 a day even in medium-sized cities; of lines out the door for cars that are not available, not present, or that might not even exist. Rental-car companies sold off huge chunks of their fleets and laid off thousands of employees during the early months of COVID-19 when demand was extremely low and they were experiencing big financial losses. More than a year later, they’re still having trouble replacing cars, because of supply-chain problems in the auto-manufacturing industry—most notably a prolonged semiconductor shortage. Demand is high, supply is low, you know the rest!

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Millennium / Gallery Stock

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Of all the attempts to pinpoint the origin of modernity—an exercise of which modernity never tires—my favorite begins with medieval monks. According to this account, it was the Benedictines who came up with the idea that it was possible to do the same thing, at the same time, every day. Although time was still widely regarded as fluid and coterminous with eternity, the monastery was governed by the rhythms of that most modern instrument: the clock. The monks rose together, ate together, and prayed together, starting and stopping each task at the appointed canonical hour.

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Illustrations by Miriam Martincic

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How do most of us learn how to use our money wisely and well? When we’re growing up, we’re given special instruction in important subjects — swimming, driving, sex — to arm us with info and keep us from harm.

Yet when it comes to managing our money — an activity that every one of us needs to do, every day — we receive surprisingly little preparation. We’re not taught much about it in school, because education systems leave it to us to learn from our families and friends. However, those people often don’t fill in the gaps because money can be such a loaded or taboo topic.

Natalie Torres-Haddad, who grew up in southern California, saw many people around her struggling with debt and financial instability. She was determined to be the exception, and she purchased her first rental property in her early 20s and earned an MPA in Finance & International Business. In the process, however, she became buried in debt. Only by teaching herself the basics of money — basics that she’d never learned — was she able to steady herself and her finances.

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Illustration by Priya Mistry.

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