The give your kids tasks is kind of an obvious, “why do you get paid to write this?” nobrainer, but the monopoly money idea is quite elegant; I'll be stealing that for my hypothetical one-day-in-a-decade kids.

<joke>Can your kids exchange monopoly money for real money to purchase a monopoly game to artificially inflate…

I worried about that for a long time, until a very smart friend pointed this out to me: "Maybe fulfillment is too much to ask of a job. Maybe the right answer is to accept a job that is just OK, but gives you enough time and money to get fulfillment elsewhere." Some people are lucky enough to find both in one place,…

I don't write in my books, but I use a notebook for note taking (one for literature, one for non-fiction) and I use a method adapted from "The Well-Educated Mind". For literature the idea is to summarize each chapter into one of those old fashioned run on chapter titles like, "Chapter 1, in which Bilbo Baggins is…

Haha definitely. I have trouble evolving from small talk into actual meaningful conversation, so I found Thorin's advice on putting small details out there useful. (I also keep my ears peeled for other people's small details.)