Quick Hits of the Week

• After being kicked out of the Anglican church, John Wesley would preach in the fields and drew huge crowds. When asked how he was able to attract so many, he replied, “I simply set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.” His passion was unquenchable, and people responded to it. What are you on fire for?

• Each month that you put a little money aside for retirement, what are you actually putting the money aside for? What’s your plan? I talk about things like passion in work to remind you, and myself, that we’re all put on this rock to fulfill a purpose, and that purpose doesn’t end until we stop sucking air. Don’t become obsessed with a dream of luxury that you can’t guarantee. Don’t fall into the trap of purposeless hedonism. It’s a great idea to invest in the possibilities of tomorrow, but you should never stop being productive with the one lifetime you’ve been given.

• What habits are you training yourself to keep right now for the rest of your life? Here’s 20 that you should be working on as soon as you can, and the sooner the better. Too many of them are things that I learned later than I should have.

• In America, we’ve gotten used to certain luxuries that, if they were suddenly gone, would seriously alter our lives for the worse. We take things for granted, like indoor plumbing and waste management, because they’re always there. Another thing we take for granted: Generally being free from illness. Why don’t we suffer from horrible illnesses like Small Pox or Polio? Vaccination. Massive, ubiquitous vaccination of the population. The more people who are resistant to a disease due to vaccines, the harder it is for that disease to spread to someone who’s vulnerable. Like Dana McCaffery, who caught Whooping Cough as an infant and died. Even if vaccines caused health problems like Autism (which they don’t) it’s a better solution than widespread terminal illness and higher infant mortality rates. Don’t fear the needles, people.

• Finally, this is still my favorite music mash-up. Amazing.

Is there something valuable or important or cool or funny or weird or awesome out there I missed this week? I can’t hit it all, but you should let me know about it by dropping me a line or sharing it in the comments below! I’d appreciate the heads up.

Quick Hits of the Week

• Linked without comment: 8 Personal Finance Lessons from Benjamin Franklin

• Vaccinating our children protects them from some of the most horrible diseases out there. The autism scare that was manufactured and has continued since 1998 because of a retracted publication by a discredited doctor with the help of a former Playboy model has done us all a disservice. Most recently, there was a minor measles outbreak after the Super Bowl. Two people with the measles visited Super Bowl village. Thousands were exposed. Fourteen new cases confirmed. Thirteen of those had previously declined the necessary vaccine. I admit that there are some risks involved with vaccination, and we should work to reduce those risks, but in the meantime can we keep the massively contagious and/or dangerous diseases, that have been scientifically proven to be preventable, prevented? Please?

• I’m going to do my best not to write about the latest Presidential race. At all. However, I do have one question for all of the candidates: Have you ever shot a whale with a crossbow? Because, apparently, Vladimir Putin has. Now, I’ll concede these all have the scent of propaganda to them, and an American President would be justifiably pilloried for publishing them. Good thing, too, because the Secret Service would probably frown on a bunch of that stuff.

• Leadership Freak Dan Rockwell wants us to all work on creating a better future, but if we’re stuck in the past we’re not going to make much progress. So, he wants everyone to use these five strategies to end that frustration and get unstuck. Number five is probably my biggest opportunity to improve.