When you were a kid, you probably did sit-ups at school for an ab workout. But is the sit-up the best ab exercise? That’s actually a simple question: No way! There are far better ab exercises than a simple sit-up, which can exacerbate back problems and only focuses on one small area of the abdominals.
The sandpaper on belt sanders, orbital sanders, and other powered sanders can get gunked up with sawdust and become less effective unless you clean it. If you have an old tennis shoe around, you can refresh your sandpaper in a jiff.
Chrome: Sometimes, gauging whether or not you want to read an article is just about how much time you have at a given moment. Readism is a simple little extension that adds average read times to articles so you can make that choice quickly.
The Nutri Ninja Auto-iQ is an early contender in our affordable blender Kinja Co-Op
, and Amazon’s marked it down to an all-time low $133 today.
Do you have any burning questions for the Lifehacker team? Let’s chat about our latest hacks, what’s in our bag, how to peel a kiwi, which mechanical keyboard is the loudest, and more.
I bought the Apple Watch a year ago. I stopped wearing it two months ago, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever wear it again. That’s because it doesn’t really do anything that anyone needs, and even when it does, it doesn’t always work like it’s supposed to.
Adding a camera to a Raspberry Pi is as easy as plugging in the official module. The original Raspberry Pi camera module was just a measly 5 megapixel camera. Today, it’s been upgraded to an 8 megapixel camera made by Sony.
You’re reading The 3 Values of Continuing Your Education, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Sometimes it seems like higher education has become so ingrained in our culture that it’s simply a platitude to suggest anyone go back to school. That said, only 39.4 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 hold college degrees, meaning that the benefits of higher education must not be as apparent as we may think. Let’s examine three concrete benefits derived from continuing your education: higher pay, better work and greater happiness.
Let’s begin with what’s likely the most commonly cited benefit of pursuing higher education: making more money. But exactly how much more money are we talking about? Median wages at our baseline, a high school diploma, are $668 a week, or $34,736 a year. A bachelor’s degree raises those numbers to $1,101 a week, or $57,252 a year – an increase of almost 65 percent. A master’s degree improves things even further, bumping median weekly wages to $1,326 and annual wages to $68,952 – almost 99% percent over our baseline. It takes a high school graduate two days to earn what a master’s degree holder earns in one. Now that’s value!
Higher wages are a result of better job opportunities, which require greater educational attainment.
Let’s start at the bottom of the equation with unemployment. The unemployment rate at high school graduates is 6.0 percent. That’s nearly double the rate for bachelor’s degree holders, which is 3.5 percent, and more than double for master’s degree holders, which is about 2.8 percent. Without higher education, you’re twice as likely to not have a job, period. Indeed, it’s predicted that by 2018 almost two-thirds of all occupations in the United States will require a college degree.
Beyond winning you a job, higher education can get you more work. Underemployment, or being employed only part time when seeking full time work, is less frequently discussed than unemployment, but it is much more pervasive. Underemployment of high school graduates currently stands at 12.9 percent – more than twice the rate for holders of bachelor’s degrees, at 6.2 percent, and thrice that of master’s degree holders, at 4.2 percent.
Seventy-four percent of American adults believe a postsecondary degree is essential to getting a good job, but what do the people making hiring and promotion decisions think? The same! Companies themselves attest to this, a third of managers surveyed say they have sent workers to back to school for higher education, 81 percent of them even picking up part of the tab. That is a win-win!
Now this may be something you haven’t heard before, but higher education may not just be the key to more money and a better job, but to greater happiness. That’s a big statement that the numbers support: When examining well-being levels across American cities, researchers found that happiness has the closest relationship not with wages, unemployment or output, but with educational attainment, measured as the share of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Similarly, educational attainment has been shown to boost happiness early in life and keep it that way, unlike income, which raises over time but does not increase happiness.
More money, a better job, greater happiness — you can have it all, and higher education is the way to start.
Roslyn Tate is an editor on the 2U Inc. website. A recent Goddard College MFA she enjoys helping people achieve their goals through academics and art. 2U partners with leading colleges and universities to offer online master’s degree programs to students around the world.
You’ve read The 3 Values of Continuing Your Education, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
If you need help jogging your memory, you might try your hand at drawing. A recent study found that we remember items better when we draw them rather than write them down.
You probably don’t need a $400 Vitamix
to make the occasional smoothie or margarita, but you still don’t want to spend money on something that can’t chop ice cubes, or that’s going to break after six months. So we want to know, what affordable blender do you recommend?
Sig Nordal 