My experience is that the middle floors in an apartment building are the best (except for the roof deck).

On the high floors, you are disconnected from the world—people below are teeny, tiny ants as if watching on a screen.

On the low levels, the world is un-shut-outable—shouts, fumes, traffic noise, and people can look you in the eye.

On the middle floors, you are distant from street level but still connected—you can still make out faces and hear voices, but if you choose, you can easily block them out and not let them intrude on your environment.

The middle floors are the best

Buy experiences instead of things. Help others instead of yourself. Buy many small pleasures instead of a few big ones. Drawn directly from the excellently entitled paper:

If money doesn’t make you happy then you probably aren’t spending it right. Dunn, Gilbert, Wilson, 2011.

Spend better

Smarter, compact and less creased. I learned from Rob Bell.

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