Moreover, the fraction of self-employed people with retirement plans is surprisingly low. An earlier report by Lichtenstein shows that only 2 percent of small-business owners have a Keogh plan (a type of retirement plan for the self-employed) and only 18 percent have a 401(k) plan.

Although some believe that this low level of retirement savings demands the creation of additional retirement plans for small businesses, I don't think that's the answer. Washington has already created a lot of ways for small-business owners to save for retirement. But this cornucopia of plans has done little to boost the fraction of businesses whose owners save adequately for it.

Related: 4 Obstacles to Early Retirement and How to Overcome Them

Fixing the problem requires addressing how small-business owners think about retirement. Entrepreneurs are more optimistic than the rest of the population, researchers have found. While that optimism has many virtues, it leads small-business owners to believe that their companies' futures will be rosier than they actually turn out to be. Small-business owners think their businesses are less likely to fail, will generate greater profits and will sell for more than they actually do. These overoptimistic projections about the value of their companies lead many small-business owners underinvest in their retirements.

Behavioral economists have suggested some approaches that would boost the amount that small-business owners save for retirement. Here are a few:

• Make small-business owners' retirement plans automatic. While small-business owners generally have the option to establish comparable retirement plans to those available to wage workers, they have to take the initiative to establish those plans by contacting banks and financial advisers. The need to be proactive about establishing a retirement plan lowers the odds that people will create them. If Washington made the establishment of these plans automatic, the fraction of small-business owners establishing retirement plans would likely rise.
• Make it harder for small-business owners to opt out of the creation of retirement plans. Researchers have found that making people opt out of plans rather than opt in boosts participation. Policy makers could preserve small-business owners' freedom of choice but give them a nudge to set up retirement plans by changing the default from having no retirement plan to having a retirement plan. Those who didn't want to participate would be free to opt out, but they would have to actively do so.
• Make setting up retirement plans simpler. The complexity of the process of establishing retirement plans deters small-business owners from doing so. Because people are more likely to choose to enroll in retirement plans if the process is simple, allowing people to set up these plans online with one or two clicks and only a couple of choices would increase the number of people willing to do so.

Behavioral economists have figured out that human psychology has profound effects on the way in which people make decisions about a wide variety of things, including how to save for retirement. If policy makers want to boost the number of small-business owners saving sufficiently for their retirement, they need to incorporate this information into the design of small-business owners' retirement plans, not just make more types of plans available.

"A sharp memory depends on your total number of brain cells, the smooth flow of communication between the cells and the health of cells," says Joy Bauer, author of Food Cures (Rodale, 2011) and nutrition expert on NBC's Today Show.

Related: What Successful People Eat for Breakfast

She suggests eating these six foods to keep your grey hairs from affecting your grey matter:

1. Beets to regulate heartbeat.
A healthy ticker means a healthy brain. "Every cell in the body needs a steady supply of oxygen and nutrients to stay alive and work properly," says Bauer. Keep blood pressure levels in check (less than 120/80), exercise regularly, and stock up on foods such as beets that improve blood flow, ensuring a steady supply of nutrients to the brain. "A brain filled with well-nourished neurons enables you to think and remember more clearly," says Bauer.

2. Fish to maintain brain cell health.
"When it comes to food and memory, fish should be the star of the show," says Bauer. Fatty fish such as salmon, sardines, herring and mackerel contain generous amounts of omega-3 fatty acids which are important for maintaining the health of brain cells. Bauer recommends eating a four-ounce portion (slightly larger than the palm of your hand) of a fatty fish at least three times a week.

3. Berries to prevent brain cell breakdown.
Berries are busting with antioxidants called anthocyanins which help prevent the breakdown of brain cells. A 2012 Harvard study found women who eat at least one cup of blueberries and strawberries per week experienced a 2.5 year delay in mental decline compared to women who rarely ate berries. "Blueberries in particular have received a lot of attention because they can enhance spatial memory and learning," says Bauer. She recommends eating four cups of berries per week. Even if berries aren't in season, frozen ones are just as nutritious. Add some berries to your morning smoothie or bake them into your pancakes.

4. Lean protein to improve cognitive skills. 
Chicken and turkey breast, eggs and low-fat milk are excellent sources of vitamin B12 which is an important protein to maintain cognitive skills. A 2012 Tufts University study showed older adults who were mildly B12 deficient were at higher risk for cognitive decline. 

5. Walnuts to improve memory scores.
Walnuts might resemble a miniature version of the human brain for a reason. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease found that walnut consumption was associated with better memory scores and cognitive function. Walnuts are also a great source of alpha-linolenic acid -- a plant-based form of omega-3 fatty acids. Sprinkle some walnuts on your salad or yogurt or mix chopped walnuts with pancake batter.

6. Coffee to sharpen focus.
Caffeine can temporarily sharpen your focus and memory. While Bauer says a couple cups of coffee are OK to drink during the day, she recommends avoiding caffeine at least eight hours before bedtime so it doesn't interfere with your sleep. "Quality sleep is a critical component to a sharp mind," she says.

"A sharp memory depends on your total number of brain cells, the smooth flow of communication between the cells and the health of cells," says Joy Bauer, author of Food Cures (Rodale, 2011) and nutrition expert on NBC's Today Show.

Related: What Successful People Eat for Breakfast

She suggests eating these six foods to keep your grey hairs from affecting your grey matter:

1. Beets to regulate heartbeat.
A healthy ticker means a healthy brain. "Every cell in the body needs a steady supply of oxygen and nutrients to stay alive and work properly," says Bauer. Keep blood pressure levels in check (less than 120/80), exercise regularly, and stock up on foods such as beets that improve blood flow, ensuring a steady supply of nutrients to the brain. "A brain filled with well-nourished neurons enables you to think and remember more clearly," says Bauer.

2. Fish to maintain brain cell health.
"When it comes to food and memory, fish should be the star of the show," says Bauer. Fatty fish such as salmon, sardines, herring and mackerel contain generous amounts of omega-3 fatty acids which are important for maintaining the health of brain cells. Bauer recommends eating a four-ounce portion (slightly larger than the palm of your hand) of a fatty fish at least three times a week.

3. Berries to prevent brain cell breakdown.
Berries are busting with antioxidants called anthocyanins which help prevent the breakdown of brain cells. A 2012 Harvard study found women who eat at least one cup of blueberries and strawberries per week experienced a 2.5 year delay in mental decline compared to women who rarely ate berries. "Blueberries in particular have received a lot of attention because they can enhance spatial memory and learning," says Bauer. She recommends eating four cups of berries per week. Even if berries aren't in season, frozen ones are just as nutritious. Add some berries to your morning smoothie or bake them into your pancakes.

4. Lean protein to improve cognitive skills. 
Chicken and turkey breast, eggs and low-fat milk are excellent sources of vitamin B12 which is an important protein to maintain cognitive skills. A 2012 Tufts University study showed older adults who were mildly B12 deficient were at higher risk for cognitive decline. 

5. Walnuts to improve memory scores.
Walnuts might resemble a miniature version of the human brain for a reason. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease found that walnut consumption was associated with better memory scores and cognitive function. Walnuts are also a great source of alpha-linolenic acid -- a plant-based form of omega-3 fatty acids. Sprinkle some walnuts on your salad or yogurt or mix chopped walnuts with pancake batter.

6. Coffee to sharpen focus.
Caffeine can temporarily sharpen your focus and memory. While Bauer says a couple cups of coffee are OK to drink during the day, she recommends avoiding caffeine at least eight hours before bedtime so it doesn't interfere with your sleep. "Quality sleep is a critical component to a sharp mind," she says.

Last year Chris Anderson chucked one of the most prominent posts in tech media--editor of Wired--to become CEO of 3D Robotics, a company that helps hackers, engineers and enthusiasts build do-it-yourself drones, the small, remote-controlled helicopters and planes that are mostly used for aerial photography and surveillance on the cheap.

To those who've read the bestselling author's books, the move came as no surprise. The Long Tail (2006) makes the case that our economy and culture are shifting from mass markets to millions of niches. Makers (2012) revives the notion of profitable, low-unit manufacturing, thanks to open-source design and 3-D printing.

Aerial robotics "has been my passion for about five years," Anderson says. He founded San Diego-based 3D Robotics in 2009 with Jordi Muñoz (then 21 and just arrived from Tijuana, Mexico) to commercialize some of his projects. "It's never been easier to get into manufacturing than it is today," Anderson says. "Jordi started on a kitchen table, but then built an amazing team and advanced production facility in San Diego. He taught himself everything, bought our first pick-and-place machine on eBay and even hacked a toaster oven for use in manufacturing."

Eighteen months later the venture, which sells helicopter-like drones for $250 to $750, as well as parts, had passed $1 million in sales. That number doubled in less than a year, then doubled again. "Now, three years after the kitchen table, we have two factories, more than 40 employees," Anderson says. "Every time I'd visit the factories, my jaw hit the floor anew."

3D Robotics caught the attention of venture capitalists who understood the company's open-innovation model and what Anderson calls its "future-of-aerospace ambitions." Last fall Anderson locked up a $5 million funding round led by Jon Callaghan of True Ventures and Bryce Roberts of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. "These are the two most far-seeing VCs in the Valley," Anderson says. "Both are part of the hardware-is-the-new-software trend, including investments in Fitbit, MakerBot and littleBits."

"We were seeing a ton of activity around drones with the alpha-geek crowd," Roberts says. "And when we see these flare-ups of activity, particularly among hobbyists, we take note and begin to form our own thoughts around where commercial opportunities might emerge."

Anderson opened a Bay Area office for sales, marketing and community development, while Muñoz took the reins as president, overseeing manufacturing in Tijuana and R&D in San Diego. The company's plan is simply to ramp up with "more cool stuff," filling a growing niche among geeks, much like the computer industry did in the 1970s. And we all know how that turned out.

Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business, applied what he learned in researching his book to his own situation. Within nine months, he was 30 pounds lighter.

How'd he do it? He diagnosed his own "habit loop."

Habits, he discovered, are things we do almost unconsciously. Rather than actual decisions, they are behaviors that have become etched into our brains, specifically the part of the brain called the basal ganglia. Once developed, the habits are difficult to "uncode" from our neurology.

The good news, says Duhigg, is that "Any habit can be changed, it doesn't matter how old you are or how ingrained the behavior is." Even for mid-lifers, whose habits have been occurring for years, the same theory applies.

It's a matter of changing, rather than eradicating the habit, he says. "Every habit has three components: a cue, a routine and a reward," Duhigg says. "Something becomes a habit when your neurology associates a particular cue and a particular reward with a certain routine." The habit loop emerges when the cue causes an automatic anticipation of the reward.

For example, the cue for Duhigg and his snacking was the clock striking about 3:30 in the afternoon. The routine was going to the cafeteria to get a cookie. The reward, well, we'll get to that.

Experts he spoke with for the book told him the way to change his cookie habit was to diagnose his cues and rewards.

"I started paying attention to when this urge to have a cookie would hit me," he says. "I found it would always happen in the afternoon around 3:30, so that was the cue -- a certain time of day. Then I had to figure out what the reward was. Initially I thought the reward would just be the cookie itself. But the psychologists said, 'Well, no, a cookie is five or six rewards bundled into one and you have to figure out what it is.'"

If he was simply hungry, maybe an apple would work just as well. If he needed sugar as an energy boost, then maybe he could take a walk around the block instead. It turns out, it was neither of these.

"The reward for the behavior was that when I went up to the cafeteria I would see colleagues and chat with them and it was socialization that was driving the behavior," he says. "So when I figured that out I was able to create a new habit."

Instead of trotting to the cafeteria every afternoon, he stood up, went to the desk of a co-worker and chatted with the person for 15 or 20 minutes. Thus he created a new habit: "I gossip with them and then I'll go back to my desk and the cookie urge is completely gone."

His advice to anyone looking to change habits, whether in midlife or at any age, is to diagnose your behaviors, discovering the cues and the true rewards. Then, he says, "Choose a new behavior that will be triggered by the old cue and will deliver something similar to the old reward but as a new behavior."

I tested the theory with a few mini-experiments.

Exercise: Each day after dropping my daughter off at school, I'd make a beeline for the computer. But it bothered me I wasn't getting in exercise. Could I associate leaving the car drop-off line with working out? I realized my true reward was the feeling of accomplishment provided by immediately getting to work. So instead of automatically turning the computer on after walking in the door, I went into another room and did a 10-minute yoga routine. My reward was still achieved but in a way that allowed me to get exercise.

Productivity: After working on a writing assignment for a couple hours, I'd start surfing the web, dropping in on my favorite writer's forum, checking different email accounts, visiting pop-culture sites. But this was time better-spent working. The next time the urge to surf struck, I got up and sat on the front stoop for a few minutes. Upon returning I resumed working. My true reward wasn't to read email, but to have a mental break. My new behavior -- going outside for a few minutes -- resulted in the same reward, but with less time wasted. As a bonus, I was newly refreshed.

Now I'm looking closely at my routines, figuring out the cues and peeling back the layers of the rewards, in search of better habits all-around. Just as Duhigg's title suggests, it's a powerful feeling.

SecondAct contributor Mia Geiger is a freelance writer in the Philadelphia area.

Never mind that the college dropout taught himself to do collage work by visiting museums and galleries, and reading books. The only art class Beach ever took was in high school and "it wasn't well received because I was drawing blue hands and green polar bears," he recalls.

That whimsical imagination has come in handy. Three years ago, at age 62, as Beach was perusing the 420-character limit (at the time) status updates on Facebook, he realized they were a major bore, including his own. "Who cares what you ate for dinner and how you cooked it?" he says. Rather than continue writing and reading insipid Facebook posts, Beach had a novel idea: Why not write a 420-character short story every day on Facebook?

Just as he had taught himself to do collage work, Beach boned up on writing by reading and then doing. Writing just 420 characters (Facebook has since upped the limit to 63,206 words) "started as an exercise," he says. "But the word constraint forced me to distill the essence of the story."

Like his art work, Beach's mini-pieces have a stream-of-consciousness, dreamy feel. Some of the subjects, in fact, come from Beach's dreams; his subjects include tough guys, cops, cowboys, stolen cars, summer dresses and talking dogs. What they all have in common is that they use language sparingly. His plots are unexpected and often humorous. First line example: "Zuma Pedley hailed from Lubbock, came to L.A. in '02 with his guitar, some songs, and an ugly dog."

His daily Facebook entries caught on, and soon Beach had a following. He's also written serial pieces within that tight word count.

End of story? Hardly. Beach showed his work to friends, who insisted it was good enough to be a book. Celebrity buddies Jeff Bridges, Dave Alvin, and Ian McShane recorded his entries. Another friend designed a website to look just like a book. Beach used ten original collages.

Since the book, called -- what else -- 420 Characters was published this December by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, it was chosen as an Amazon Best Books of 2011, and reviewed (major thumbs up) in the New York Times, Mother Jones, and Elle. Beach was on NPR.

"That it all came together was a magical accident," Beach says. If there hadn't been a 420 character Facebook limit, he never would have become a writer. Sometimes he even ignores that teeny, old Facebook word count and writes far longer pieces.

Says actor Jeff Bridges: "Lou is a master of collage. His work is comedic, insightful, profane, blissful, common and transcendent. And, now my old friend gives another gift: his writing. He's been trickling his new art form to me over the last few years. It started with paragraphs where entire novels were implied. They were very short and very satisfying and felt like some sort of extended haiku. Like a great radio show, they leave room for your mind to fill in the blanks. His stories are longer now and intriguing. Lou still creates worlds that are both familiar and fantastic."

The writing, Beach believes, has reinvigorated his art. He exhibits with his children Alpha, 31, and Sam Lubicz, 23, who are collage artists, too. (Beach, who moved from Germany to Rochester, New York, with his Polish parents when he was just four, changed his name). No wonder his kids have a creative gene, his wife is photographer Issa Sharp.

Meanwhile, he posts stories a couple of times a week. What's the next chapter for Beach? "When I was younger, I wanted to be a musician, writer or artist. In my 60's, to be able to have two dreams come true is pretty amazing," he says. "Now, all I need is to learn to play the saxophone and I could die happy!"

"The passion that drove me to make movies was waning," says Lansing, whose jam-packed schedule left her with little time for things she began to care more about: leisure travel, enjoying her family and friends, and philanthropic work. "I knewthat I didn't want to die at my desk," she says. "I swore that when I was 60 I was going toleave my job."

Lansing kept that promise, and now, at 67, says she feels "reborn" in an encore careerpacked with some of the most rewarding work she's ever done. Hurling herself intophilanthropy, she created the Sherry Lansing Foundation in 2005, a year after leavingParamount. Through that organization, and also through her service on the governingboards of other nonprofit groups, Lansing has become one of Los Angeles' major playersin raising funds for cancer research and supporting public education and the arts.

Those who know her say she excels at identifying problems and bringing together teamscapable of solving them."I guess the way I've approached it is no different than making movies," Lansingsays. "Certain causes are dear to my heart. We go and get partners, try to find peopleenthusiastic about our ideas and collaborate with them."

Together with television host Katie Couric and seven other women, Lansing co-founded Stand Up to Cancer, which raises money to aid in cancer research and also encouragescooperation among scientific laboratories. Lansing says she has always cared a lot abouteducation -- she currently serves as chairman of the University of California Board ofRegents -- but in recent years her interests have expanded to include baby boomers, apopulation too often dropped from the American work force because of ageism, despitetheir skills and eagerness to be useful.

With more than 70 million boomers now nearing or reaching their 60s, and lifeexpectancies growing, the question of how that group can continue to contribute is oneof the major social issues of our time, Lansing says. "We're the generation that marchedfor civil rights, that marched for the women's movement, and on and on and on," shesays. "And we're going to march to redefine aging."

Lansing says she first began to see the problem following her high-profile departure fromHollywood. As she immersed herself in charity work, she encountered other people herage who had time to give but lacked the training or direction."People would write me letters or come up to me on street and say, 'I so want to do whatyou're doing, and I don't know how to do it,'" Lansing says. "I started hearing it over andover again."

In partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District, Lansing's foundationorganized a program to help retirees volunteer in the schools. But since many thousandsof boomers need to find paying full- or part-time jobs, Lansing is now workingwith Steve Poizner, a former state insurance commissioner and one-time Californiagubernatorial candidate, to set up job courses specifically for people 45 and older.

Set to launch in September as part of the UCLA Extension program, Empowered Careerswill offer certificates in 10 types of jobs -- marketing, for example, and information-technology management -- that hold particular promise for boomers because of theirexisting skills, according to Poizner. The classes will be taught entirely online, withstudents receiving an iPad so they can learn from anywhere.

"You can scale this up to help people all over the country," says Poizner, who sets a goalof 3,000 participants the first year. Lansing, who was instrumental in enticing CreativeArtists Agency to co-found the company, considers it a part of her game-changingmission to help boomers, Poizner says.

"She's visionary -- a very dynamic and inspiring leader," Poizner says. "Sherry has thisability to pull together great teams. She's done it many times in the past. She has thisability to think in a very bold, strategic way. She is that rare person who can think at avery high level about big problems, then get down to the nitty-gritty and help you designyour logo."

Lansing broached the concept to him a year and a half ago, and Poizner agreed to serveas CEO of the organization, based in the Silicon Valley town of Los Gatos. Besides beingpolitically involved in California issues, the 55-year-old Poizner had useful experiencein launching start-ups; he previously co-founded SnapTrack, Inc., which developed thetechnology to put global-positioning devices into cell phones. Telecommunications giantQualcomm bought SnapTrack in 2000 for $1 billion.

Empowered Careers was organized as a for-profit company partly to attract venturecapital -- and so far it has raised $15 million, Poizner says. It also will help raise fundsfor the cash-strapped UC system without competing with existing student programs, saysLansing, who vows to funnel any income she might have received from the venture intoscholarships.

"What we've done," says Poizner, "is pull together three of California's premierinnovation centers -- Silicon Valley working with Hollywood and the University ofCalifornia -- to focus on people's jobs and the economy."

Lansing, who was born and raised in Chicago, learned to value philanthropy early inlife, she says. Her father David, a real-estate investor, died when she was 9, and hermother Margot, though not wealthy, was always willing to help anyone in need, Lansingremembers.

"From the time I was a kid, I learned from my mother to always give back," she says. "Itwas deeply embedded in me. As I got older, that need got stronger for me than makinganother movie. It defined who I was."

After graduating from Northwestern University, Lansing worked briefly as a schoolteacher before becoming an actress -- she appeared in the 1970 films Loving and Rio Lobo -- and later a head script reader at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She was40, and already in the top job at 20th Century Fox, when her mother died of cancer -- aheartbreak that ignited her passion for cancer research.

Even while making movies, Lansing helped to raise money for good causes. She arrangedfor proceeds from the premieres of two major films -- 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,and 2005's War of the Worlds -- to benefit the American Red Cross' Disaster ReliefFund, according to Red Cross spokesman Attie Poirier.

Lansing also collected money for charity through a program of payroll deductions, recallsLisa Paulsen, president of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a nonprofit createdin 1942 by Samuel Goldwyn, Humphrey Bogart, and other luminaries. Once Lansingwrapped up her career at Paramount, Paulsen recruited her to head up the foundation'sboard, calling her "a leader among leaders."

"She's very funny, she's kind, she listens a lot. She's a consensus-builder," says Paulsen,who joined with Lansing and Couric in co-founding Stand Up to Cancer. "She's veryresults-oriented. I couldn't think of anyone else I'd prefer to lead our organization."Lansing sits on a host of charitable boards -- The Carter Center, former PresidentCarter's Atlanta-based organization to promote human rights; Teach for America,founded to improve education in poor communities; the California Institute forRegenerative Medicine, which deals with funding and ethical standards for stem-cellresearch and Civic Ventures, Marc Freedman's San Francisco-based think tank devotedto baby boomers and encore careers.

Her schedule is often crowded, she admits. "The day starts at 7 and often finishes at 7,"Lansing says. There are committee meetings, subcommittee meetings, speeches to give,budgets to analyze. "But to me, what's so exciting is I can't give you a typical day."The variety keeps her fresh, she says.

"When I was in the movie business, all my friends were in the movie business," shesays. "All I ever talked about was the grosses of a film. Your world gets bigger as you gointo a nonprofit. It's a tremendous opportunity to grow and be relevant and feel youngerthan you've ever felt."

Lansing also has more flexibility than ever. She can make time to read the paper, takewalks and hang out with her husband, Oscar-winning director William Friedkin, and theirtwo sons. They have traveled extensively, she says.When Friedkin was shooting his most recent movie (the Matthew McConaugheyvehicle Killer Joe, due out in July) Lansing was able tojoin him in New Orleans.

"We went to Africa on safari together," Lansing says. "We were sitting on top ofan elephant together as the sun came up. It was magical. We get to have enormousadventures together. It's the happiest time of my life."

Jay Lichty, 56, Tryon, N.C.

Then: Worked as a residential home builder for 30 years.

Now: Luthier, Lichty Guitars, creating high-end custom guitars and ukuleles. Guitars start at $4,000; ukuleles start at $2,200.

How he got started: He started building instruments as a hobby in 2009, about the same time his contracting business declined due to the economy. Fate intervened: He took a guitar workshop and, "The phone never rang after that workshop," Lichty says. He decided to pursue instrument-making as a business.

He made his first couple instruments out of his garage but realized he needed a specialized space "with the right tools and humidity" for the wood. He built a workshop, and took additional classes. His wife, Corrie Woods, developed a website and studied how to make their website land on the first page of search engines, so that when people Googled terms like "custom guitars," his name would be up high. She also handled advertising and created press releases. "We started nationally, then went globally," he says. "That is the key to our success because 99 percent of our sales are from our website."

Biggest challenge: "The marketing. Without the customers it's just a hobby and the bills keep coming. In this economy, it's getting our name out there and finding the people that have the money to spend," Lichty says.

Advice to other entrepreneurs: "I try to live my life by following my bliss, and not taking the path of least resistance," he says. "If something presents itself to me, I investigate it, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't stick my head down and not look where I'm going. My advice is to be open to the possibilities."

Best part of the job: "That it's not a job. My shop is 20 steps out my front door. I'm working harder than I ever worked but I never feel like it's something I could call work. It's just what I do and I spend as much time as I can doing it," Lichty says.

Favorite type of music: Guitar music and finger-picking guitar music.

Inspired by: "The guy who I took the workshop with, Wayne Henderson (based in Virginia). He's just a great all-around person," says Lichty. "I like who he is in the world. His guitars are sought after and collectible and he's just got a real easy way."

Goal: "With each guitar, to make it better than the last one," he says.

Danny Gold, 58, Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Then: Worked as a district manager, selling Fender guitars to shops in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Now: Owner of Danny's Guitar Shop, an independent store selling fretted musical instruments and offering lessons, in Narberth, Pa.; host of Danny's Guitar Shop, a local PBS cable-television show he started with two partners and features visits to guitar factories, chats with musicians, and more.

How he got started: "After 10 years of being on the road for 40,000 miles a year, it starts to wear and tear at you," he says. "I was also becoming disenchanted with the way retail distribution was changing. Suddenly big-box stores and (large) specialty stores (appeared). It wasn't just about mom and pop independent guitar stores, it just got super saturated and it became less and less fun."

He had an idea to start a guitar-focused TV show and in December 2007, decided to pursue it. It took a few years to come to fruition, with Gold and his partners starting the program as a segment on a Philadelphia university's radio station, then putting it on the back-burner. In June 2009, after talking with people about the lack of small independent guitar shops, he opened his store.

"They all said it was a great opportunity, here's a void you can fill, just keep it small, keep it simple, low overhead, offer lessons," Gold says. "I found this great little location in Narberth, a town I've always loved. It's got a personality all its own and the space has a front porch and windows with sunshine coming through. I just said OK, let's do it." His weekly show began airing on a Philadelphia PBS station in February. His shop sometimes serves as the backdrop for the program.

Biggest challenge: "Staying focused and being able to multi-task," says Gold. "You really wear a lot of hats. I'm running a teaching operation, I'm constantly purchasing things from different vendors, I have to be an accountant and do my bookkeeping and stay on top of that. I have to do the merchandising design so the place looks good and everything is displayed nicely. I have to be a salesman."

Advice to other entrepreneurs: "You have to balance everything out. You have to make a living and also try to do what you love doing," he says. "Life is too short to do stuff that is distasteful. I've found everything you do leads you to the next step."

Best part of the job: "I don't think a day goes by where I don't have a good time interacting with the people who come in and out of here," says Gold.

Favorite type of music: Catchy, pop-y rock and roll.

Inspired by: "Dave and Alice Phillips of Dave Phillips Music & Sound. They started with one store in Allentown (Pa.), and now they have three stores. They are very passionate about what they do," he says.

Goal: "To make a living and have fun," says Gold.

Steve Beckwith, 55, Bolton, Mass.

Then: Worked in the corporate high-tech industry for 25 years; left in January 2008 after accepting a buyout offer.

Now: Luthier, Beckwith Strings, creating handmade standard and custom guitars. Guitars start at $1,500.

How he got started: He began building guitars while working at his corporate job. "I'm kind of in the middle of the back half of the baby-boom generation. I figured by the time I'd retired I'd want something to do," he says. "The plan had been to slowly build up the skill set."

Biggest challenge: "My biggest problem was the economy. I started (the business) in January 2008. My target market is retiring baby boomers. What happened at that time was people that had work didn't know if they had work for very long so they tightened up on their spending, on their disposable income," Beckwith says. "Things have turned around since then but weathering that out really helped a lot. I'm starting to see a comeback."

Advice to other entrepreneurs: "First, make sure you can do it financially," he says. "Second, just drive ahead and do it. People will tell you there are obstacles -- listen to them, but don't let it discourage you."

Best part of the job: "When I string a guitar for the first time and I start playing it," says Beckwith. "There are adjustments you have to make when you put strings on a guitar and I might say, 'I'm not sure I like the way it sounds.' You go from, 'Geez, I don't know about this,' to 'Hey, this isn't bad,' then two days later, 'Wow this sounds really good.'"

Favorite type of music: American roots.

Inspired by: "My wife has always been very supportive of what I'm doing," he says. He was also inspired by his wife's dedication to a non-profit organization she operated for a decade, which offered low-cost spay and neutering services for animals.

Goal: "I want to build the best guitar I can possibly build," says Beckwith.

SecondAct contributor Mia Geiger is a freelance writer in the Philadelphia area.

Actually, the full title is Father's Day: A Journey into the Mind & Heart of MyExtraordinary Son, by Buzz Bissinger, best known for examining Texas' rabid high-school football culture in Friday Night Lights. That earlier book, which became a movieand a television series, demonstrated Bissinger's talent for writing about people, and hedisplays it again here in addressing his family -- especially his son Zach.

Born prematurely, Zach suffered brain damage and was left with an IQ of about 70.He grew up attending special schools and cannot live alone or drive a car. In searchof a closer bond with Zach, Bissinger embarked on a road trip with his son from theirhometown of Philadelphia to Los Angeles, re-visiting many of the places they had livedover 24 years.

The resulting book, detailing Zach's fascination with maps, his savant-like memory andthe toll that Bissinger's own quirks and career ambitions took on his family, is "rivetingand a bit frightening," writes reviewer Dwight Garner of The New York Times. Whatstarts out as a simple car trip becomes "a barely guided tour through Mr. Bissinger's ownroiling anxiety, his depression, his narcissism and his profound insecurity, not to mentionwhat he sees as his failings as a man, as a father, as a son and as a writer," Garner says.Still, he adds, it is "impossible to put down."

"If you're expecting a sentimental tale about a heroic dad who has always acceptedhis son's limitations, look on another shelf," says Deirdre Donahue, who reviewed thebook for USA Today. "What gives Father's Day its punch and power is Bissinger's honesty, particularly about fathers and sons."

Tim Whitaker, a writer for the blog thePhilly Post, says he knows from direct experience that Bissinger can be prickly anddifficult, but he praises the Pulitzer Prize-winner for owning up to his peccadilloes in anaccount that "never grows wearisome." By the journey's end, Whitaker writes, "Bissingerdiscovers a kindness and strength of character in his son" that's seldom found in normaladults, and it "touches us deeply."

Not every dad will crave a book that moving and intimate, so here are four other optionsfor Father's Day. These span the gamut from fatherhood to war and, of course, sports.

1. Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son by Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez and Hope Edelman. In alternating chapters, the Hollywood father, Sheen, and his actor and filmmaker son, Estevez, describe their special bond, formed in part while traveling inIndia during the filming of the movie, Gandhi. Later, they explored their family rootsin Spain and collaborated there on The Way, a film about a man's spritual pilgrimagefollowing his son's death, with Sheen starring and Estevez's directing.

Although the dualmemoir offers little insight into Sheen's bad-boy son Charlie, "it's a loving account that'salso very candid," says reviewer Jessica Gelt of the Los Angeles Times. The authorsvividly describe some "painful moments," Gelt says, "including Martin Sheen's alcohol-fueled psychotic breakdown on the set of Apocalypse Now."

2. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by LauraHillenbrand. It's likely that Dad has read this true-like tale -- it's been on The NewYork Times' best-seller list for more than 18 months -- but, just in case, remember thisdifficult-to-forget study in iron-willed resolve. Former Olympic miler Louis Zamperini,an Air Force lieutenant, was shot down during World War II and survived not only 47days adrift on the ocean, battling starvation and shark attacks, but also two years ofhardship and abuse in Japanese prison camps.

It's "a one-in-a-billion story," says reviewerSam Anderson of New York Magazine, who says, "It sucked me in and swept me away."James D. Hornfischer, who reviewed the book for The Wall Street Journal, compares thedramatic, inspiring tone of Unbroken to Hillenbrand's earlier bestseller, Seabiscuit, whilenoting that Zamperini also told his story in a fine previous book, Devil at My Heels: AHeroic Olympian's Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II,co-authored by David Rensin, which is also still in print.

3. West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life by Jerry West and Jonathan Coleman.West was one of basketball's greatest stars, a prolific scorer -- and later a top executive-- who helped to make the Lakers one of the sport's storied franchises. West's silhouettebecame part of the NBA's official logo, but his clean-cut image belied a deeply troubledindividual who never overcame the scars of his childhood in small-town West Virginia.

Usually, when celebrities write their life stories, they emphasize achievements, notesreviewer Rene A. Henry of the Huntington News in Huntington, W.V. Not so withWest. "As I was reading the book," Henry says, "I thought of myself as a therapistlistening to him talk and taking notes."

Mike Downey, who reviewed the book for theLos Angeles Times, also notes West's candor about even the most personal subjects. "Hewas physically abused in his youth, despising his father to the extent that young Jerrykept a gun under his bed and entertained thoughts of using it on the old man," Downeysays. "He suffers from a clinical depression so acute that even his daily Prozac doesn'talways keep him from feeling suicidal."

4. Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter by Frank Deford. Few journalists have coveredas much in the ever-changing world of sports as Deford, who joined the staff of Sports Illustrated in 1962, fresh out of Princeton, and became an icon.

Deford is responsiblefor "some of the best magazine writing of the second half of the 20th century," saysformer colleague Jay Jennings in a review of the memoir for the San FranciscoChronicle. While uneven, the book has insightful remembrances of stars such as WiltChamberlain and Billie Jean King, says Jennings, who also recommends reading Deford'searlier book, The World's Tallest Midget, and Gary Smith's collection, Going Deep, tofully appreciate the era.

Chris Tucker, reviewing for The Dallas Morning News, laments that Deford does not quote at length from his classic profiles. "The voicehere is...whip-smart...but necessarily concise," Tucker says. "If you want to see himstretch out in elegant long-form prose, grab a collection like 2000's The Best of FrankDeford or [his] sadly overlooked novel Everybody's All-American."

SecondAct asks: What books are you enjoying? Share your recent reads in the comment section below.

Starring as a shark on ABC's hit business competition show Shark Tank, Robert Herjavec knows a good idea when he see it. The self-made entrepreneur is the founder of the mega-successful tech-oriented Herjavec Group and he's now looking to spread the wealth by investing in promising startups.

Among the many deals Herjavec has made on the show, several companies have tripled in size since his initial investment and partnership, including standouts like ChordBuddy, Grill Charms and Lollacup.

Herjavec shares his personal top 10 with SecondAct.

What are you...

1. Working on: Building our Company from $125 million to $250 million in next three years (we have gone from $400,000 to $125 million in the first 10 years). I'm also working on winning the Ferrari Challenge championship with my race team.

2. Reading: I love to read but so little time. The last book I picked up was just to re-read Sun Tzu's Art of War.

3. Watching: I devour movies with my kids. We have a theater in the house -- popcorn, family, Blu-ray latest release -- nothing better.

4. Listening to: Absolutely loving Saul Williams. I play List Of Demands before every race and workout. When I am on the brink of exhaustion (as I often am), I play this song and, boom, I'm ready to rock.

5. Following on Twitter: Fernando Alonso. He's a Ferrari Formula 1 driver -- incredibly competitive season this year and he is leading in the points.

6. Playing: Racing. I race a Ferrari 458 Challenger car all over North America in a very competitive series. The next race is the Montreal Grand Prix. I'm leading in points so far but lots of races left.

7. Inspired by: Rick Hansen, the Canadian who travelled the world in a wheelchair in his Man in Motion tour. I recently met him for the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration to commemorate his amazing achievement. He told me when he first lost his legs he would have given up his soul to get them back; today, he would not change a thing. He told me, "It is not the stuff that happens to you in life that matters, it is what you do with it that only matters." I went out the next day and ran 10 miles faster than I have ever done. I felt so motivated, humbled, and blessed...and then I threw up, I'm really not able to run that fast!

8. Imagining: What our company will look like in three years -- I'm super psyched. I can see it: it's not fuzzy, it's not fluffy, it's not some cloud-like vision. I can see it as clear as daylight. it is across the river I just need to get us there. Mind you, I can see what it will look like but there are sharks, piranhas, snakes and all kinds of bad things in the river we need to cross. But then again, what worthy goal is easy to achieve?

9. Finding as your biggest challenge: There are no big challenges. Success for me has always been the million little struggles that we face every day and conquering them.

10. Wishing: The only thing I ever wish for are the things I cannot control, such as good health for my family. Anything I have control over, I don't wish for -- I simply go out and try to make it happen. I have never wished to be rich; I have never bought a lottery ticket. I don't want the end result, I want the achievement.

I'm not talking about minor annoyances -- a traffic jam, sour milk, spending 30 minutes on hold to get one stupid question answered. Rather, I mean the major disruptions that turn lives upside down. Job loss, divorce, bankruptcy -- you get the idea.

In The Happiness Project -- which shot to the No. 1 slot on The New York Times bestseller list -- lawyer-turned-writer Gretchen Rubin chronicled a year focused on trying to be happier. At the start, she acknowledged that some might find her quest a bit odd, as her life was already picture perfect: happy marriage, healthy kids, fulfilling work and "plenty of money to do what we wanted -- even enough to feel secure, the toughest and most precious thing money can buy." In essence, Rubin's goal was to savor her life, not to transform it.

By contrast, when I launched my Plan B Nation blog las November, I sometimes jokingly referred to it as "a Happiness Project for the rest of us" -- for those of us struggling with work or money, often both at once. While Rubin grappled with the feeling that she was not as happy as she should be, many of us face the inverse challenge: How can we be happier than we "should" be? How can we be happy despite uncertainty and loss?     

Last weekend, I reread The Happiness Project with these questions in mind. I wanted to see how Rubin's strategies lined up against the ones that have worked for me. As it turned out, I found multiple points of overlap, but I also noted that my own techniques had a marked Plan B Nation twist. I decided to follow Rubin's lead and frame my techniques as resolutions. Here are three that have turbocharged my pursuit of happiness.    

1. Choose your people wisely. In hard times, we may be especially vulnerable to upward comparison -- to feeling worse about our own lives when compared with those of seemingly better-off friends. This is because our desires are shaped by what sociologists call our reference groups -- by the people we admire and want to be like. I first encountered this concept in Boston College professor Juliet B. Schor's The Overspent American and have found it incredibly useful in navigating Plan B Nation. As I previously wrote here, changing my personal reference groups has made me far happier.

2. Make your environment work for you. Behavioral economists talk about creating good "choice architecture" -- external conditions that support us in acting on our own behalf. This is another concept that has made a real difference in my life. One example: I discovered that I became far happier -- as well as more productive -- when I moved my home office away from home, to a shared workspace populated by other freelancers and entrepreneurs. Similarly, I'm much more likely to get to the gym now that I'm taking a class with friends, and going to the gym, in turn, makes me happier and more productive. For me, instituting good choice architecture often feels akin to removing a set of weights. Life in Plan B Nation is hard enough. Why make it harder? 

3. Give back. Research suggests [pdf] that the money we spend on others may actually make us happier than the money we spend on ourselves. At the core of this finding is the notion that doing nice things for others gives us pleasure, and luckily, there are countless ways to do this without depleting our wallets.

[Related: To Buy or Not to Buy] 

Without quite realizing it, this has become something of a habit for me -- and one well worth maintaining. This morning, I surprised a work friend with an iced coffee. (I knew she wanted one.) A few minutes later, I did a Facebook shout out for a friend's reading at a local bookstore. These small gestures gave me a warm feeling of connecting to people I care about. In other words, they made me happy.  

Reflecting on her decision to embark on The Happiness Project, Rubin writes that she wanted to be better prepared for adversity when it struck. For those of us smack dab in the middle of adversity, this may not resonate. But whatever our individual starting points, we all yearn to be happy -- and we all can be happier. We may need to try many tactics before finding some that work. But the fact that the path ahead is hard to see doesn't mean it's not there.  

Do you have a happiness resolution that works for you? If so, please share it below.

Read more: Welcome to Plan B Nation

"I took it as a challenge," says Martin, 39. "When I worked as a personal chef for other celebrities, I had constraints such as the wife doesn't eat fish or the husband doesn't like onions. I figured I'd do what I do best, which is cook my regular dishes, but just not use animal products."

Martin figured out a way to make dishes like fried chicken without meat, eggs or dairy taste so delicious that even his employers' more carnivorous friends enjoyed them. "They felt that it was very different from what they were getting from devout vegan cooks because I was just making regular food vegan instead of making vegan food," Martin says. DeGeneres was so appreciative that she featured him on her show, and then she told him "You've got to make a book."

That book, Vegan Cooking for Carnivores, was just published, and it remains on several bestseller lists. SecondAct caught up with Martin, who lives with his wife and their son in Los Angeles.

SA: What is the biggest misconception about vegan cuisine?
RM: The biggest misconception is that it's not that tasty. People are not going to go vegan if they have to give up flavor or texture. Most of the dishes in my book are common, but they just so happen not to use animal products. The red beans and rice and the shepherd's pie recipes look, smell and taste like the real deal.

SA: Who is this book for?
RM: When you go vegan, whether it's because of the animals or the environment or your health or all three, the end result is what you're eating can be pretty limited. That might be okay with you, but your friends might not dig it. Quinoa and spinach salad is not going to win them over, but these dishes are.

SA: A lot of people are doing Meatless Mondays. What's your advice to people who would like to eat less meat?

SA: What's the most important ingredient for a vegan pantry?
RM: The first thing you need is egg replacer. It's sold in a huge container so you make that one purchase, and you're good for a while. You use that as much as you use baking powder.

SA: Any specific tools you recommend?
RM: Cheeseless pizza is rad if you've got great crust and awesome sauce, but most home-cooked crusts are all floppy and need cheese and sausage to make them tasty. The best way to get a crispy crust in a home oven is to use a pizza screen. It makes a big difference.

SA: Your book emphasizes using proper technique, especially knife skills.
RM: When I had friends and family members who were not good chefs, test my recipes, I learned that none of them had sharp knives. Chopping is a real chore if you use a dull knife. Take your cheap knives to a professional and get them sharpened. Then, cutting onions is not such a chore.

SA: Your book also really details tofu preparation.
RM: Before I began cooking vegan, my tofu never tasted as good as it did at the Indian restaurants. You really need to squeeze the hell out of it. Once you do that, it takes on a meatier consistency.

SA: Are you completely vegan?
RM: I'm about 95 percent vegan. There's not just one (non-vegan) thing I'll eat, but I taste stuff. I'll go to someone's house, and they'll know that my wife and I don't eat meat, but I don't sweat it if they've added chicken stock to the soup. At home, we eat vegan, but if you're at someone's house or at a restaurant, it might or might not be vegan.

SA: I understand your mom was a big influence on your cooking.
RM: As the youngest of 15 kids, I saw that my mom spent a lot of time cooking, and I learned I was afforded more time with her if I was in the kitchen. I followed her around. My dad was a businessman, and when we went out to dinner when he was entertaining, my mom and I would order the wackiest thing on the menu and then try to replicate it at home.

SA: How did your interest in food translate to a culinary career?
RM: I majored in political science, but I worked as a waiter at chain restaurants. I decided that I was a really good waiter so I got a job at a better restaurant. What happened was I fell in love with the food there (at Steps on the Court in downtown Los Angeles). When I graduated, I asked if I could work in the kitchen a couple of days a week. I made nothing compared to when I was a waiter, but I loved it so I asked the executive chef where I should go to culinary school, and he said the Culinary Institute of America. I sold everything I had, took out some terrible student loans and never looked back.

SA: Why did you become a personal chef?
RM: I first took a job as a personal chef because I needed the money. What I discovered is that this was what I was supposed to be doing, working in a big house, feeding a family. I'm kind of reliving my childhood all over again, and being a personal chef really bridges my love of being of service and my love of cooking. As a personal chef, I'm a dishwasher, housekeeper, waiter and chef.

SA: Are Ellen and Portia just as great as we imagine them?
RM: They're a lot of fun. No slight to my former employers, but the one thing I love about Ellen and Portia is that they're so normal. They're not surrounded by handlers, and unlike when I've been around other celebrities, I don't have to constantly think really hard about what I say. They get my sense of humor.

Keep reading: Top Chef Master Rick Bayless Reinvents Himself on Stage

Now that 11.7 million people and companies are using it, though, Pinterest is emerging as an online tool that job seekers can use to market themselves and explore potential careers, industries and employers.

Pinterest lets you save photos or images from news stories, blog posts or other online content in the form of pins that are organized into folders called boards. You can follow other people and re-pin, comment or "Like" their pins. You also can link your Pinterest boards to your accounts on Facebook or Twitter.

"If you're in a creative or design field, it's an amazing place to build a portfolio or create a visual resume," says Annie Favreau, managing editor at InsideJobs.com, a career exploration website.

Here's how to use Pinterest for a job search:

1. Optimize your Pinterest profile. Adjust account settings to allow your profile to appear in results of searches on Google and other search engines. Load your profile description with keywords that match the job you want. Include a recent photograph and links to your website or LinkedIn profile so potential employers can learn more about you. Here's one example of a Pinterest resume, from a Harvard Business School student who hopes it'll lead to a job with the online network.

2. Set up an online resume and portfolio. Gather samples of your work onto one or more boards to use as an online resume. Don't get cute with labels; call your resume board "My Resume" or something similar so it's easy to find. Pinterest is especially useful if you work in photography, architecture, interior design or other creative fields, "because it has this strong emphasis on the visuals. It's one more access point into your work," Favreau says. But anyone can use the site to create an online portfolio. Just make sure that the resume or portfolio you're linking back to has an image you can pin. This San Francisco Chronicle story shares how one Bay Area marketing manager uses Pinterest to showcase his current and previous jobs.

3. Dedicate a board to careers you're curious about. If you're searching for your next act, use Pinterest to find information on jobs or careers. Use the search box -- located in the upper left-hand corner of the site's front page -- to enter related words or phrases. Pin anything that comes up that you want to save for future reference.

4. Create boards for companies or industries you'd like to know better. Pinterest can give you a glimpse into a company's culture that you can't get from reading their "About Us" page, Favreau says. "If they're sharing Instagram pictures of their office, you won't find that a whole lot of other places," she says.

5. Follow experts. Keep up with employment trends by following the university career centers, jobs websites, outplacement specialists and career coaches that have set up shop on Pinterest. SecondAct has a board dedicated to all things work-related called Get a Job. I've also created a Job Hunting and Careers board with pointers to my stories here and other resources. Favreau also recommends following Career Bliss, BrazenCareerist, and Lea McLeod, a Portland, Ore., career expert who works with midcareer and other professionals.

6. Leave comments. Strike up a conversation with a career expert or someone who works in a field you're interested in by commenting on one of their pins. As with any other type of online or real-world networking, you never know where it could lead.

7. Wander around. Do some browsing to see what's out there. "If you're constantly coming back to the same area, or something keeps popping out at you, if might be worth exploring" as a career option, Favreau says. She also recommends using the site as a mental boost for your job-hunting efforts, and created a Career Inspirations board for that reason.

8. Protect your work. If you're sharing photography or other original work on your boards, use watermarks to protect individual images just as you would when displaying them on other websites. You want your work to be out there, but it pays to be on your guard, Favreau says.

9. Be professional. If all you do on Pinterest is share pictures of puppies, think twice about sharing your Pinterest profile with potential employers. "But if you are using it for a job search, it is an impression of who you are, so when you're creating your boards, make sure they line up with your professional appearance," she says.

10. Watch out for spammers. The bigger Pinterest grows, the more spammers it's attracting. To prevent unwittingly passing along spam disguised as a normal pin, be sure to click through on images to see where they lead before re-pinning them. Don't click on pins that look like ads or giveaways, which Pinterest doesn't offer or condone. Here's what else you can to do to avoid Pinterest spammers.

A final word about Pinterest: It can be extremely habit-forming. "I set myself to short periods of time, like 15 minutes, because although it can be an amazing tool, it's also a distraction," Favreau says. "It's so easy to [lose track of time] it's kind of shocking."

Read more: What's With All the Interest in Pinterest?

This man is wearing jeans with creases. Ironed-in creases. And tassels on his expensive loafers -- like my dad's.

I went on to deride this look as making a statement of sorts: that my prospective date was a yuppie with no style sense -- and I didn't want to get to know him better for that reason. His style was, for me, a deal-breaker.

It seemed to make total sense at the time, but when I read it now it makes me cringe. How could I have been so superficial? Yet it seemed normal at the time, and probably was, given my age.

Deal-breakers have always been part of dating -- out of necessity. When we're young, we need to discover what those boundaries are to mitigate the potential chaos of dating a new person every night. Tall, short, rich, poor, spiritual, atheist? When you're in your teens and 20s, you couldn't care less. If this person is fun and attractive, it's party time!

There seems to be a bell curve when it comes to deal-breakers: The longer we date, the more exacting the list becomes. In our 30s and 40s, our restrictions become constrictions, until they reach a point of ridiculousness. (See this long list compiled by the female staff of the youth-centric culture and fashion website ecosalon. Inappropriate use of flip-flops? Sporting a soul patch? Really?)

Then, after a certain point, it appears as though our long list of deal-breakers shortens, as we come to terms with what's really important to us. My list might have once looked like this:

Washboard abs
Sports car
Financially set
Sexy-hot
Laughs at my jokes

Now it really boils down to: laughs at my jokes. (Not completely. See below for my full, middle-aged list.)

It's also interesting to see how our perspective changes over time. What we once viewed as deal-breakers (e.g., his best friend is a woman, he spends a lot of time with his parents) are now viewed as positive character traits. And where I once said I'd never (again) date anyone with substance abuse issues, at this age I know too many of them to cut them out completely. So now I say I'd go out with someone who has this issue as long as they are getting help with it.

Still, certain things remain constant across demographic lines. The popular online dating website eHarmony conducted a poll of 700,000 of its members on must-haves and deal-breakers, and the results were not terribly surprising.

Both sexes agreed in general terms what they couldn't tolerate in a partner, although they ranked these various behaviors differently. Among the deal-breakers: lying, cheating, rude behavior and drug use. Infidelity was ranked fourth among deal-breakers for women, and sixth for men.

Interestingly, men were more concerned about poor hygiene than women. (So much for the stereotype of the sloppy bachelor.) Mean-spirited behavior was more of a deal-breaker for men (fifth place) than it was for women (eighth place), while women said anger management issues was their fifth biggest concern, compared to men, who ranked that concern eighth. Among deal-breakers, women were more inclined to jettison a lazy suitor than men, who ranked that characteristic ninth and tenth, respectively.

Women and men parted ways when it came to completing their final item on the top 10 list of deal-breakers. Women took the high road, saying they can't tolerate someone who is racist, while men took the superficial road, saying that a potential girlfriend being overweight is their final deal-breaker.

On a more positive note, both sexes agree on many of the "must haves," like a sense of humor, an affectionate and kind nature, good communication skills, loyalty, emotional healthiness and honesty.

Differences between the sexes also followed traditional lines. Men put a high premium on a woman who is patient: someone who "can handle life's frustrations or momentary setbacks with a patient and steady demeanor." In addition, men listed "passionate" as the seventh most important quality a woman could have, but passion was not on the top 10 list for women at all. Women listed having a mate who is both fiscally solvent and wants a family -- neither of which were qualities listed by men. Maybe some things never change?

Now when I think about my must-haves, they are less about appearance and more about substantial things like spiritual and humanistic beliefs. To wit:

Kind and good-hearted (almost goes without saying)
Socially adept (I go to a lot of events)
Open-minded
Good communicator (They say if you want to grow old with someone, they'd better be fun to talk to.)
Oh, and leave the six-pack in the refrigerator.

Washboard abs don't matter a whit anymore.

SecondAct asks: What are your must-haves and deal-breakers? Share them in the comments section below.

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Science is still fuzzy on exactly what changes in the human mind as we learn, and why some people seem to be so much more adept at manipulating the information -- thinking creatively -- than others. Malcolm Gladwell's books Blink and Outliers are fascinating examinations of how the mind works, both on a subconscious and conscious level. In the latter, Gladwell makes a case that luck and hard work are often far more important than you'd think to the success of high achievers such as Bill Gates and the Beatles.

While that may be true, it doesn't fully explain the special way of seeing things that made Picasso Picasso, or the cerebral capabilities that lifted Mozart and Einstein to greatness. Researchers continue to tease out these secrets of the brain, as these five recent books reveal:

1. Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. Following his earlier bestseller, How We Decide, Lehrer reached No. 1 on The New York Times' list with this exploration of creativity, which was excerpted in The Wall Street Journal. The late tech wizard Steve Jobs is one subject of Lehrer's analysis; so is the fact that the color blue seems to enhance creative output. The book is an "entertaining, Gladwellesque plunge" into an evolving scientific frontier, says reviewer Michael Mechanic in Mother Jones. Old methods come into question. The author challenges, for example, the wisdom of brainstorming meetings. Meanwhile, Lehrer suggests that failure and frustration are necessary to the creative process, as the Huffington Post notes with a video illustrating Lehrer's concepts. Reviewer Michael S. Roth of The Washington Post finds it interesting that Bob Dylan achieved songwriting success only when he gave up on trying to write a great song, allowing a sort of "ghost" to inhabit him and produce the lyrics. "We can learn to pay attention to our daydreams," Roth says.

2. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning by Gary F. Marcus. Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Science held for decades that new memory circuits form far more easily in the young, and that it's relatively difficult for adults to pick up additional languages or complex skills. At 39, Marcus, a cognitive psychologist, tests the theory by immersing himself in learning to play the guitar. "Guitar Zero makes some delightful counterintuitive points," says a review in The Wall Street Journal by Dr. Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist and author of The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. "Kids are not quicker learners; but they are more persistent," says Doidge, who notes that Marcus applied childlike obsessiveness to his ambition. The author received guitar lessons from neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, who wrote the earlier book This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Marcus "does not become the next Jimi Hendrix," Doidge says, but eventually he plays well enough to perform on stage. The book goes far beyond the simple point that practice makes perfect, says Nick Owchar of the Los Angeles Times. The author looks at how the brain becomes rewired and how learning produces "feelings of control and novelty" that are, Owchar writes, "crucial to our psyches. Rock on."

3. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow. Humans exert a lot less control over their own lives than they like to think, says Mlodinow, who explored the powerful influence of chance events in his earlier book, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. This time, in a similarly lean, accessible volume spiced with wit, he looks at how our conscious thoughts are shaped by perceptions and biases hidden from our awareness. Technology "has revolutionized the field of neuroscience, allowing researchers real-time looks at brain activity during all sorts of experiments," points out Marc Mohan, a reviewer for Portland's The Oregonian, who notes that Mlodinow cites some fascinating studies. One topic Mlodinow explores is "the propensity of people to marry people with the same name," Mohan notes. Reviewer Jesse Singal, writing at The Daily Beast, says Mlodinow makes a compelling case that, although we delude ourselves into believing we think and act logically, "our rational brains aren't really calling the shots."

4. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. If Subliminal is not exhaustive enough for you, delve even deeper in this book by a psychologist who shared a 2002 Nobel Prize for his work in decision-making theory. "Through anecdote, biography, and keen, plain-spoken insight, Kahneman presents an unsettling account of human judgment's common fallibilities that is both captivating and convincing," says reviewer Stephanie Kovalchik in the statistics magazine Significance. As Gladwell did in Blink, Kahneman examines the fast, intuitive part of the mind that often excels at sensing danger and making decisions in the blink of an eye. However, he gives more weight than Gladwell to the slower, more developed intellect. "For enthusiasts who have taken up Blink as a defense of their sixth sense," Kovalchik says, "Kahneman's book can be summed up with a single sobering rejoinder: don't think so fast." Reviewer Christopher Shea of The Washington Post likes the examples of psychology at work -- juries, for example, awarding higher payouts when damages are capped at $1 million, as if a "gravitational force" were pulling them toward the limit. "Human irrationality is Kahneman's great theme," writes Jim Holt in The New York Times. "It is an astonishingly rich book: lucid, profound . . . consistently entertaining and frequently touching. By the time I got to the end . . . my skeptical frown had long since given way to a grin of intellectual satisfaction."

5. The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present by Eric R. Kandel. Here's another Nobel Prize winner: Kandel, a neuropsychiatrist, shared the award in 2000 for his studies of memory, chronicled in his 2006 memoir, In Search of Memory. His focus in this book is on how we perceive art, and how beauty affects the mind -- a new field of study known as neuroaesthetics. "Through brain imaging and other studies, scholars . . . have explored the cognitive responses to, say, color contrasts or ambiguities of line or perspective in works by Titian, Michelangelo, Cubists, and have examined how the brain's pleasure centers respond to appealing landscapes," says reviewer Alexander C. Kafka in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Kandel, an art lover who was born in Austria, concentrates on the Austrian Expressionists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, as well as writer Arthur Schnitzler and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In doing so, he has written "two extraordinary books in one," says reviewer Robert Epstein of Scientific American. The first is about the five geniuses; the second "reviews the recent explosion of research in brain science, bringing us up-to-date on what is currently understood about the neural correlates of vision, memory and creativity." All in all, says Epstein, "it is an amazing ride . . . that's astonishing in both depth and breadth." Jonah Lehrer, author of the book Imagine listed above, interviews Kandel in this Wired Science blog post.

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