The essays by Paul Graham often come up in my family. Graham made millions when his team sold their programming work, Viaweb, to Yahoo for millions. But the knowledge Graham shares goes beyond programming.

He’s got a lot of social wisdom. My favorite is his article, Why Nerds are Unpopular.

Here’s an excerpt:

The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They’re like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.

Even if nerds cared as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more work for them. The popular kids learned to be popular, and to want to be popular, the same way the nerds learned to be smart, and to want to be smart: from their parents. While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.

Have you ever noticed that every time you get an idea, it is more than just one idea. You get a vision for an entire system. Of course all of the exact mechanics are not quite in place, but you can visualize them. And while you are thinking about one part of your idea, it seems to multiply and your options expand at an alarming rate. This is because ideas breed ideas.

I am sure that you have heard the phrase ‘success breeds success’ and that is fairly straightforward. If you have done something successful and proven yourself it will be easier to do another project that is successful as you will have much more recourses at your disposal.

Ideas can work in a somewhat similar way. If you have one idea, it can lead to many more if you would let it. And a great way to come up with more ideas is to work on one that already exists.

If you are listing ideas, have you ever noticed that you come up with around half of them on the spot while you are writing down the first half? Or simply by explaining a current idea to someone, not only will you come up with more as you clarify and expand, but the other person will generally have input.

If the person you are talking with is willing, your conversation will greatly expand your project idea or refine it until your idea has grown into a plethora of ideas that is still growing.

So write down your ideas. Let them evolve. Let them multiply. And of course, let them be developed before it is too late.

When I quit my job last month, I felt pretty uncertain of where life would go, especially because my husband quit his job the month before. I never expected to find such satisfaction in setting and accomplishing my goals instead of my employer’s.

Living without a constant paycheck is tough. When working for someone else, you start to depend on this little burst of wealth every two weeks when a boss gives you a check. When you don’t get that check, I think that you fight a little harder. You don’t clean your house as much, but you keep working when you get home after a long day.

My husband and I can only keep up this schedule until December when he starts graduate school, so I’m trying to make the most of each day. Freedom spoils you, though. I feel like I’ll be like the new college graduates with skewed perceptions of how work and life should be.

But then again, I think college grads believe in something that we long ago forgot:

1. Work and pleasure can be the same thing.
I don’t mean that you have to love every moment of everything that you’re doing *that’s impossible. But shouldn’t you be just as eager to start your work day as you are to finish?

2. Little favors can lead to big favors. Sometimes you can accomplish a lot more when you team up with others who have different skills and ideas. We’ve really tried to build good connections. While we were in Germany recently, our real estate projects kept developing. Our real estate agent was willing to serve as our emergency contact. My sister was depositing monies at the bank. And several great contractors and handymen tackled a few of our dreaded projects while my dad stopped in during his lunch breaks to follow up. With the exception of family, everyone else helped us along because we’ve helped them in the past, and they know we’ll have work for them in the future, too. Bosses can’t be feared, and as a boss, you can’t always appear so fearful.

3. Life is about living.
My last boss was a workaholic, and it made him furious that I wanted to leave at the end of the day. My memories of college often involved doing the least amount necessary to generate the most pleasing results. You figured out exactly what score you had to get on final exams to maintain your grade. And how many people actually read every text that they were supposed to? School was about more than what you learned in class. Work shouldn’t consume you when life holds far more.

4. Money isn’t everything.
I’m not thinking of reverting back to Ramen Noodles. But whatever happened to the thrill of a free meal or cheap living? How about riding that bicycle even when you can afford the gas now? We work to make money, and suddenly we don’t know what to do without the huge sums of money. You become entrenched by growing “necessities”.

5. You don’t have to be an expert to give it a shot.
In the workplace, it’s easy to see the people that are better than you and become passive. Sometimes it’s even easier for the boss to literally remind you of how unknowing you are because you lack the experience, the knowledge he has, or just plain common sense (HIS point-of-view). In college, we were fearless – what’s the worse that could happen? The sense of adventure vanishes at work, I’ve noticed. Don’t just stick with what you’re good at. Take a leap at the things you’ve never tried or don’t do as well.

I’ve never thought much about the financial savings of not having a TV in the house. Yet the gradual savings add up… and may lead you to a savings account of well over a million dollars.

An article on TheStreet.com illustrates the savings of no television that could turn you into a millionaire.