Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations, Lifehacker's weekly dip into the pool of stoic wisdom, and a guide to using its waters to reflect on and improve your life.

"Self-improvement" is a tricky framework for resolutions. We take the phrase for granted, but what is it really saying? That changing a lifestyle habit improves your very self? That implies moral value to your choices, labelling some habits intrinsically "good" and others "bad". This ends up at the idea that your lifestyle choices affect your inherent worth and value as a person. And honestly, that sucks.

Chris Kutarna is a scholar at Oxford and the co-author of The Age of Discovery. His theses, that we are in a period of renaissance, is one that he touched on during his recent keynote at Data61's recent LIVE event in Melbourne. I spoke to him later about this and how it would affect the future of technology.

It's a good idea to have some kind of financial buffer to help keep you in the black. The problem is, not everyone can afford it. If you're struggling to set aside money for things like an emergency fund, start small with a change jar.

Should you stay or should you go? It's rarely a simple decision to make, but if you think through your options you can make it more confidently. This flowchart can help.

The internet is responsible for an immeasurable amount of technological advancement for seemingly every aspect of our daily lives. But which elements of human society have fallen by the wayside? What happened pre-internet that we just don't see anymore? While some of the entries are still clinging on for dear life (or may even see a resurgence thanks to hipster culture) this handy infographic sums it up pretty well.

When you decide that life needs to change, the biggest problem areas of your life will stand out. The gap between where you are and where you want to be is overwhelming. Don't focus on the end point. Focus on the minor steps you can take to get there instead.

By now, you've probably heard a thing or two about the habit loop. It tells us a habit is formed by a cue, routine, and a reward. But there's one more factor that determines your success with a new habit: its simplicity.