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Downshifting (lifestyle)
In social behavior, downshifting is a trend where individuals adapt simpler lives from what critics call the "rat race". The long-term effect of downshifting can include an escape from what has been described as economic materialism, as well as reduce the "stress and psychological expense that may accompany economic materialism". This new social trend emphasizes finding an improved balance between leisure and work, while also focusing life goals on personal fulfillment, as well as building personal relationships instead of the all-consuming pursuit of economic success. Downshifting, as a concept, shares characteristics with simple living. However, it is distinguished as an alternative form by its focus on moderate change and concentration on an individual comfort level and a gradual approach to living.Tracey Smith, 2008 In the 1990s, this new form of simple living began appearing in the mainstream media, and has continually grown in popularity among populations living in industri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Behavior
Social behavior is behavior among two or more organisms within the same species, and encompasses any behavior in which one member affects the other. This is due to an interaction among those members. Social behavior can be seen as similar to an exchange of goods, with the expectation that when you give, you will receive the same. This behavior can be affected by both the qualities of the individual and the environmental (situational) factors. Therefore, social behavior arises as a result of an interaction between the two—the organism and its environment. This means that, in regards to humans, social behavior can be determined by both the individual characteristics of the person, and the situation they are in. A major aspect of social behavior is communication, which is the basis for survival and reproduction. Social behavior is said to be determined by two different processes, that can either work together or oppose one another. The dual-systems model of reflective and impulsi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Overtime
Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways: *by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society), *by practices of a given trade or profession, *by legislation, *by agreement between employers and workers or their representatives. Most national countries have overtime labour laws designed to dissuade or prevent employers from forcing their employees to work excessively long hours (such as the situation in the textile mills in the 1920s). These laws may take into account other considerations than humanitarian concerns, such as preserving the health of workers so that they may continue to be productive, or increasing the overall level of employment in the economy. One common approach to regulating overtime is to require employers to pay workers at a higher hourly rate for overtime work. Companies may choose to pay workers higher overti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flextime
Flextime (also spelled flexitime ( BE) or flex-time) is a flexible hours schedule that allows workers to alter their workday and decide/adjust their start and finish times. In contrast to traditional work arrangements that require employees to work a standard 9a.m. to 5p.m. day, flextime typically involves a "core" period of the day during which employees are required to be at work (e.g., between 11a.m. and 3p.m.), and a "bandwidth" period within which all required hours must be worked (e.g., between 5:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.). The working day outside of the "core" period is "flexible time", in which employees can choose when they work, subject to achieving total daily, weekly or monthly hours within the "bandwidth" period set by employers, and subject to the necessary work being done. The total working time required of employees on flextime schedules is the same as that required under traditional work schedules. A flextime policy allows staff to determine when they will ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and store value as brand equity for the object identified, to the benefit of the brand's customers, its owners and shareholders. Brand names are sometimes distinguished from Generic brand, generic or store brands. The practice of branding - in the original literal sense of marking by burning - is thought to have begun with the ancient Egyptians, who are known to have engaged in livestock branding as early as 2,700 BCE. Branding was used to differentiate one person's cattle from another's by means of a distinctive symbol burned into the animal's skin with a hot branding iron. If a person stole any of the cattle, anyone else who saw the symbol could deduce the actual owner. The term has been extended to mean a strategic personality for a produ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affluenza
Affluenza is a pseudoscientific psychological malaise supposedly affecting wealthy people. It is a portmanteau of ''affluence'' and ''influenza'', and is used most commonly by critics of consumerism. It is not a medically recognized disease. The word is thought to have been first used in 1954, but was popularised in 1997 with a PBS documentary of the same name and the subsequent book '' Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic'' (2001, revised in 2005, 2014). These works define affluenza as "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more". A more informal definition of the term would describe it as "a quasi-illness caused by guilt for one's own socio-economic superiority".'' Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic'', John de Graaf, David Wann & Thomas H. Naylor, 2001 The term "affluenza" has also been used to refer to an inability to understand the consequences of one's actions because of financi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethical Consumerism
Ethical consumerism (alternatively called ethical consumption, ethical purchasing, moral purchasing, ethical sourcing, or ethical shopping and also associated with sustainable and green consumerism) is a type of consumer activism based on the concept of dollar voting. People practice it by buying ethically made products that support small-scale manufacturers or local artisans and protect animals and the environment, while boycotting products that exploit children as workers, are tested on animals, or damage the environment. The term "ethical consumer", now used generically, was first popularised by the UK magazine ''Ethical Consumer'', first published in 1989. ''Ethical Consumer'' magazine's key innovation was to produce "ratings tables", inspired by the criteria-based approach of the then-emerging ethical investment movement. ''Ethical Consumers ratings tables awarded companies negative marks (and overall scores, starting in 2005) across a range of ethical and environmental cate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retirement Age
This article lists the statutory retirement age in different countries. Background In some contexts, the retirement age is the age at which a person is expected or required to cease work. It is usually the age at which such a person may be entitled to receive superannuation or other government benefits, like a state pension. Policymakers usually consider the demography, fiscal cost of aging, health, life expectancy, nature of the profession, supply of labor force, etc. while taking the retirement age into account. The increase in life expectancy is used in some jurisdictions as an argument to increase the age of retirement in the 21st century. Retirement age by country and region Many of the countries listed in the table below, are in the process of reforming the retirement ages (see the notes in the table for details). The ages in the table shows when an individual retires if they retire/have retired in the year given in the table. The trend in some countries is that in the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Age
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—most recently part of the Eastern Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retirement
Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours or workload. Many people choose to retire when they are elderly or incapable of doing their job due to health reasons. People may also retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when bodily conditions no longer allow the person to work any longer (by illness or accident) or as a result of legislation concerning their positions. In most countries, the idea of retirement is of recent origin, being introduced during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Previously, low life expectancy, lack of social security and the absence of pension arrangements meant that most workers continued to work until their death. Germany was the first country to introduce retirement benefits in 1889. Nowadays, most developed countries have systems to provide pensions on retirement ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organization''– ''Basic Documents'', Forty-fifth edition, Supplement, October 2006. A variety of definitions have been used for different purposes over time. Health can be promoted by encouraging healthful activities, such as regular physical exercise and adequate sleep, and by reducing or avoiding unhealthful activities or situations, such as smoking or excessive stress. Some factors affecting health are due to individual choices, such as whether to engage in a high-risk behavior, while others are due to structural causes, such as whether the society is arranged in a way that makes it easier or harder for people to get necessary healthcare services. Still, other factors are beyond both individual and group choices, such as genetic disorders. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quality Time
Quality time is an expression referring to how an individual proactively interacts with another while they are together, regardless of the duration. Overview Sometimes abbreviated QT, it is an informal reference to time spent with close family, partners or friends that is in some way important, special, productive or profitable to one or everyone involved. It is time that is set aside for paying full and undivided attention to the person or matter at hand. It may also refer to time spent performing some favorite activity. Relationship counselor Gary Chapman suggests that quality time is one of five "languages" which are used (more or less, preferentially, by a given individual) to express love and articulate their feelings and emotions. History Its use as a noun expression ("quality time") began in the 1970s. One of the earliest records of this phrase in print was in the Annapolis newspaper ''The Capital'', January 1973, in the article "How To Be Liberated": '' The Time Bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commuting
Commuting is periodically recurring travel between one's place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. By extension, it can sometimes be any regular or often repeated travel between locations, even when not work-related. The modes of travel, time taken and distance traveled in commuting varies widely across the globe. Most people in least-developed countries continue to walk to work. The cheapest method of commuting after walking is usually by bicycle, so this is common in low-income countries, but is also increasingly practised by people in wealthier countries for environmental and health reasons. In middle-income countries, motorcycle commuting is very common. The next technology adopted as countries develop is more dependent on location: in more populous, older cities, especially in Eurasia mass transit (rail, bus, etc.) predominates, while in smaller, younger cities, and larg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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