Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! Happy belated Veterans Day to my brothers and sisters in arms. I am grateful to all of you who served, and are serving today. Together we create a critical collective good - security for our country.
It is hard to believe I have been officially retired for more than six years now. I made the decision to join the Army in the spring of 1989. My RA was in the Massachusetts National Guard and told me that UMass waived tuition for members of the MA Guard. The financial benefit was intriguing because it would allow me to become financially independent at 18, which it did. But I also joined because I admired the values and culture of the military - duty before self, personal responsibility, hard work. I wanted to be part of an organization that would make me a better person. I would say for almost 26 years, it did. From my years in the Guard to my years on active duty, my service made me a better version of myself.
I know I’ve shared this Austin Kleon quote before, but it bears repeating - “You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.” Being a soldier helped me develop habits and beliefs about personal agency, discipline, and teamwork that have been invaluable. Choosing who and what to let into your life is critical.
Thanks for letting me be part of your life. Enjoy the links!
Read
What: FS, Habits vs. Goals: A Look at the Benefits of a Systematic Approach to Life
https://fs.blog/habits-vs-goals/
Why: I really like the distinction between habits and goals. I was doing really well with my diet back in the spring, and almost as soon as I mentioned here that I was doing well, I fell off the diet wagon and gained back all of the weight I had lost (which puts me at about 30 pounds heavier than I was when I left the Army - another benefit of service and the control the Army helped me impose on myself). Now I’m trying to get going again. It seems the first rule of Diet Club is to not talk about Diet Club (to paraphrase a certain movie).
Success for dieting would not just be to lose weight but to make permanent behavioral changes. To succeed there, the suggestion is to focus on the habit rather than the goal. This doesn’t just apply to weight loss, but to financial success as well (see below), success at work, and all the other parts of life that are important. As an academic, an important part of my job is to write. I started this newsletter in part as a discipline - a forced habit - to keep myself writing. Having an audience to imagine helps me keep going. Someone might notice if I miss a week. Your feedback helps me keep going, too.
The Army taught us to focus on small things - attention to detail! was shouted at us from the day we ran off the bus in Basic Training. Those small details add up to big things. It’s the small habits day-to-day that add up to larger success.
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Watch
What: Bonica, Personal Financial Management Basics - Managing Expenses (30 min)
Why: This is my seventh year teaching undergraduates at a state university. One of the things I have come to believe is that much of the disparities in accomplishment in the United States are cultural. You have a cultural inheritance first and foremost from your immediate family. Many families simply do not know how to manage their money, and they pass on this ignorance to their children. On the flip side, wealthy families simply have heuristics that they operate on that they do not even necessarily discuss - they simply do - and they pass those on to their children in the same way. These heuristics tend to lead to wealth. This semester I started talking to my seniors about some of the wealth generating heuristics that I have learned the hard way. Since I had the material already written down, I’ve decided to do a series of videos explaining some of the concepts with the hope that they might be helpful to others. This is not a video for the financially literate. It’s a video for young people getting a start on life, and perhaps for those who do not know how to manage their money, but would like to do better.
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Listen
What: Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz, PepsiCo: Indra Nooyi (73 min)
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/26/1049285451/pepsico-indra-nooyi
Why: This is a beautiful American immigrant story.
Nooyi concludes: “I don’t believe my story could have been possible in any other country than the United States.”
There’s a lot wrong with the United States. But when an immigrant from India, and a woman, can rise to leadership of one of the most iconic firms in the world, it reassures me that while the United States has its flaws, it is still the best country to live in if you have ambition and you want to work hard. Period.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
See you next week!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Associate Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast:
http://healthleaderforge.org
"Were there none discontented with what they have, the World would never reach anything better." - Florence Nightingale