Grant is an expert in the field of workplace dynamics and is regularly called upon by companies to help them get the best out of their employees and to help employees to get the best out of their job (he often works with Google as well). In a nutshell, Grant’s theory is that the BEST motivation for people is not monetary, but rather a sense of helpfulness and service to others.

For any of you “Friends” viewers out there, you will remember the episode, “The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS” – in it, Phoebe and Joey engage in a contest based on the theories of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act, they wonder? One in which someone benefits while the person performing the act receives nothing in return. The episode focuses on Phoebe trying to do something for others WITHOUT feeling good (as this would make it a selfish act).

Is helping others truly a good motivator for people and can it make you more productive and efficient? It is an interesting theory especially for a company like Zirtual. Whilst ZA’s are compensated, it is clear that money is not the only motivator. A ZA must have those qualities of actually caring and wanting to make someone’s life better/easier/less stressful if the client/ZA relationship is to work.

I suppose the flip side of this theory and the immediate question that springs to mind is: where does one draw the line? As with everything in life – that question comes down to balance. Easier said than achieved, but worth striving for nevertheless.

The full article on Adam Grant in the New York Time Magazine can be read here.

Time Hack #1: Take a page from Ari Meisel’s playbook and throw your to-do list away. Yeap, that’s right. Go crazy! Draw lines all over it. Rip it up and slam-dunk that baby. Score! Now, scroll on over to your Google calendar and schedule everything you need to do. Yes, it’s that simple. Not really sure when you can schedule this task? Use your email to manage and schedule tasks for later with Boomerang for Gmail or Hassleme.co.uk. Adjust as needed and whoa-la, your to-do list is officially dead—useless I tell ya.

Time Hack #2: Automate your money like Ramit Sethi. Ramit reminds us that saving money and knowing where your money is going isn’t just about willpower. It’s making what you do with your money automatic so you don’t have to think about it. This, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, author says you should setup how much money goes where and when each month so you know all your bills are covered and you’ve got a little savings in the bank to play with. Want a more step-by-step how to on automating your bills? Check out Ramit’s video on this topic.

Time Hack #3: Stop trying to hold yourself accountable and get someone else to do it, like Leo Babauta. Yes, you can throw in the towel on aiming for perfection. Set clear goals and get someone to help you keep them instead. Babauta does warn that friends and family aren’t always the best at keeping you accountable. Instead, choose someone who is focused, supportive, and has similar goals. Then, get to work. Make your time work for you and stay committed to the process.

Time Hack #4: Get clear, then get consistent like Corbett Barr does. Barr says getting clear and repeating the same actions will get you closer to your time goals. He states, “Once you have a direction, it’s all about execution.” So stop being wishy-washy, stop saying ‘maybe if’ or ‘only when’. Instead, say ‘this is what I want’ and go for it. Corbett, who’s clearly done something right, in 18 months he started 2 blogs and earns 6 figures, confirms we need to act, not just plan or think about it.

Time Hack #5: Stop trying to manage your time. Make it your friend and create systems like Kelly Azevedo instead. That’s right, back to scheduling. However, Kelly shows you how to setup a reoccurring system for just about everything and helps you free time so you can work on the more important stuff. She explains that while a schedule is important, the foundation of having one that works comes from creating the right system to do it.

That’s it peeps. 5 ways you can hack time and go do more stuff you love. I know for sure that you have some resources and tools on hacking time. Help me rock this topic by sharing your tips in the comments!

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About the author:

I’m Maya Gaddie and finding cool, trendy and highly applicable stuff is my superpower. I’m also a writer and consumer technology enthusiast. I help empower people to become knowledgeable, confident and organized using technology. You can read more about me here.

Ladies, think to your last Saturday at the mall. You suck down an iced coffee and set off eagerly to wind your way through the aisles. The first hour and a half are glorious: you actually find a new pair of jeans, you’re debating between shoes (both which you must have) and you’ve got at least a half a dozen tops tucked in your elbow you’d wear out tonight.

You take the jeans (duh) and one top and you put your dream shoes on hold along with some of your other quality options. I’ll come back, you think to yourself.

Your next stop is eh. Some promising casual pieces, a dress you might need for an event you might attend. You move on. Nothing at the next four shops. It’s getting stuffy, you need another iced coffee. Absolutely unintentionally (you swear!), you meander past the Wetzel-Pretzel samples dude.

Post sugar-boost, iced-coffee number two in tow, you head to your next stop. Whoa! There’s actually some good stuff in here. A shirt or two makes the cut. But your luck is fading slowly, you know it. You decide to head back to the first store: heaven, where the perfect additions to your wardrobe are waiting for you behind the counter.

The cashier hands you your on-hold items. Something strange happens: indecision. Nothing calls your name. You survey the items and think about what to buy, what to put back. It’s exhausting. You think about your car, about leaving and what’s for dinner.

So what do you do? One of two things: 1) You make a decision you hate. You choose the worst options of the bunch. It’s the blouse you’ll never wear and the dress you can’t drink a beer in. You kick yourself every step to the parking lot. 2) You don’t buy anything. You avoid the decision altogether and leave a pile of previous must-haves behind. You just can’t be bothered.

Why Decisions Make You Tired

We all know this feeling. However, we probably don’t understand what just happened. You blame the anxiousness on your tired legs or the mall music being too loud or the late-afternoon traffic you need to just go ahead and face.

In reality, you’ve been hit with a case of decision fatigue. Literally, you used up your ability to make decisions. When you first arrived to the haven of clothing you were full of juice, ready to sift through the good and the bad to find the gems. But ninety minutes of decision after decision ran you dry!

You re-upped halfway and got a boost. That iced coffee and forgotten cinnamon sugar bite gave you a late-in-the-game jolt of ability to decide. But that, too, ran out quickly and you were left at the end with a whole lot of nothing.

Guys, this is not just a girl thing. What happened is not that women realized shopping is a waste of a perfectly good Saturday. (Think about rounds 15 and 16 of your fantasy draft: after fourteen gut-wrenching decisions, you’re spent. You’ll take Dwayne Sanzenbacher, or maybe default to auto-draft.)

What happened instead is scientific. Science tells us two things. First, it says that glucose plays a role in the decision making process. Our brains use glucose as fuel to say yes or no, to turn right or left. Second, it says that we actually have a finite amount of this glucose available to use each day. When our stores of glucose are depleted, our ability to make decisions is greatly reduced.

Studies show that when these stores are low, we’re likely to go in one of two directions:

1. Make a rash and hasty decision, one that we often regret later, or
2. Avoid the decision altogether.

Dangers of Decision Fatigue

Detailed in this interesting New York Times article on decision fatigue, a study of a group of judges in Israel revealed that inmates who are up for parole bear the brunt of that second direction: avoiding the decision altogether. Researchers examined the group of judges who decide daily whether or not to grant prisoners parole.

What they found was that inmates were much more likely to receive parole if their cases were heard early in the morning or just after lunch. Why? Because these were the times the judges’ levels of glucose were the highest. If the inmates’ cases were heard late in the afternoon – after a long day of cases and decision making – they were likely sent straight back to the jail cell! Talk about bad timing…

How Zirtual Saves Your Energy

So what’s the takeaway? Well, if you’re reading this around 4 pm, you might decide to take nothing away. Your own decision fatigue may have kicked in and you’ll finally decide to stop reading after this paragraph. Men of Zirtual, you might also be confused because you’ve discovered Trunk Club and the entire first half of this article is ridiculous to you. (You guys are onto something…)

But there’s something here for you, I promise. The point is this: you can only make so many decisions in a day, so use them sparingly! How does Zirtual fit into all of this? We give you the ability to hand off some of your decisions, every single day.

Leave it to our president to provide an example. To the benefit of our country, Barack Obama drinks the koolaid. He, too, believes in the value of limiting his decisions to only the most necessary. How does he do this? He delegates as many non-essential decisions as possible. He never decides what he’ll wear in the morning or what he’ll eat for lunch. Whatever your political stance, we all can agree that we’d be worse off if Obama started to make these extra calls on his own. Seriously.

So how we can take this paradigm and utilize it? Easy. It’s as simple as a small shift in mindset. Zirtual clients have made the shift – signing up is the first step. They’ve opened the door to a helping hand.

It’s simply an implementation and a dedication to start saving your valuable glucose; to limit the number of choices you impose upon yourself every day. You have a ZA… now let him or her take some decisions off of your plate! (And if you don’t yet, take the plunge! Your brain will thank you.)

• Hand your calendar over. It’s silly to decide between a 3 o’clock or a 4 o’clock meeting if you have 100 other decisions to make in the day.
• Let your ZA order your lunch. As long as he or she knows what you hate, life will go on.
• Have your ZA book your flights and reserve your hotel rooms — and let your ZA choose what these will be. Again, as long as your preferences are known, you’ll always be better off handing these tasks off.

Take a look at the decisions you make everyday and make a list. (Admittedly, you’ll have to use some extra glucose on this first day. We suggest a piece of cake to help.) Decide which decisions you can hand off and start doing so!

A tip: Zirtual’s slogan is, “Delegate the tasks you loathe to an assistant you’ll love”. Start with the decisions you don’t like to make. Which can you delegate?

If you want to limit the decisions you make to only the most important, this is all a no-brainer. Beat decision fatigue, save your glucose, let a Zirtual Assistant help! And in turn, you’ll improve the decisions you do make and vastly increase your productivity.

I became a new mother 6 months ago, and a ZA roughly 2 months ago. While it does present additional challenges, I consider myself very blessed and incredibly lucky to have found Zirtual. Through Zirtual, I feel as if my client relationships have become, in a certain sense, my other “babies”. I get to nurture them, watch them grow, and with time they become dependent on me too. I have to be there for them, much like I have to be there for my own child.

There are a few things that I’ve found to help me in my day-to-day operations as a ZA. First, I must be ok with the fact that not every day is going to go the same as the one before it. Some days are good, some can be a little more stressful. My daughter may not nap at the same time, or she may take a shorter nap than usual, and while we do have a routine somewhat intact, it’s never the exact same everyday. Because of this though, I’ve learned to adapt and welcome it. It helps keep me on my on my toes and ready for whatever the day throws my way.

Second, I find that working in shorter, more focused blocks of time really helps.

Working in 90-minute intervals turns out to be a prescription for maximizing productivity. Professor K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues at Florida State University have studied elite performers, including musicians, athletes, actors and chess players. In each of these fields, Dr. Ericsson found that the best performers typically practice in uninterrupted sessions that last no more than 90 minutes. They begin in the morning, take a break between sessions, and rarely work for more than four and a half hours in any given day.

After that I like to take some time to be with my daughter, do laundry, or anything that needs attention around the home. I find that taking breaks to play, blow bubbles, or simply relax really allows me to decompress and refocus myself mentally to pick up where I left off, or to start something new.

And lastly, working during nap time! I try to maximize this time whenever possible. Even if it means working with a sleeping baby on my shoulder.

I love the flexibility that Zirtual gives me. Anyone who has a baby can appreciate this and knows just how important it truly is. In addition said flexibility, the ability to carry on adult conversations helps to keep my brain sane and from talking in too many baby “ooohs” and “ahhhs”. Zirtual is an incredible company to work for and I’m excited to be a part of the family, growing together.

Why so stressed? Would eliminating just one or two things from your life reduce a large amount of this stress? That’s the point of the 80/20 principle. I’m going to write about how you can utilize the 80/20 principle with your Zirtual Assistant to help live a more impactful life.

The 80/20 principle, or Pareto principle, is named after the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto noticed that 80% of his country’s wealth was held by approximately 20% of the population. Thus, over time, it has been concluded that the results from not only wealth, but many situations stem from only a small amount of the causes.

Okay, so what exactly does that mumbo jumbo mean? It means that you get most of the “stuff” (80% of results) from only a small amount of the “work” (20% of causes). This can be applied to most areas in your life. And, in many cases, the ratio may be even more extreme – up to 99:1!

Think About It
- 80% of your sales come from only 20% of your customers.
- 80% of customer complaints come from only 20% of your customers (this situation may be an even more substantial ratio – 95% of complaints may come from 5% of customers).
- You wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time.
- 80% of your daily phone calls are to only 20% of your phone book.
- 80% of your stress comes from 20% of the annoying small tasks you must attend to each day (data entry, emails, etc.).

Living an 80/20 life

The first step to living a Pareto optimal life is to think about all the small tasks that accumulate throughout the day, creating the most stress. It will probably only be a few items. Is it data entry? Is it labeling emails? Maybe it’s scheduling meetings or filling out expense reports? Whatever they may be, make note of them and delegate. Send these lower-level time sinks over to your ZA and have someone else manage them for you. It will probably only take a small amount of time, if any, to train your assistant, ultimately freeing up your valuable time to focus on other, more productive, more meaningful aspects of life and business. The best thing about outsourcing is that you’ll probably find yourself procrastinating less. It’s really easy to procrastinate action items that are mundane and tedious. But now that they’re gone, you’re on your way to being more productive.

The next (and really important) step to living a Pareto optimal life is to think about the 20% of things that you do to provide 80% of your income, revenues, profits, and general wellbeing. Now do them more! Ideally, since you’ve freed up more of your time by delegating, you’ll now be able to spend more time on your profitable activities.

Believe me, this gets addicting. You’ll starting thinking about Pareto all the time. In fact, I caught myself at the grocery store thinking about what 20% of foods I eat 80% of the time. The list goes on and on—have fun with it.

Cheers to a more productive and stress free life!

What, you might ask, does this have to do with business? First is that working for a company like Zirtual, which has employees all over the United States, many of our own have been deeply affected by this tragedy. Second is that it might not seem like the right thing to talk about in a business setting, but the ways in which we act under the most extreme stress reflect how we can act in other situations.

I’m grateful to work for a company that values teamwork, creative, generosity and empathy toward clients and its workers. However, every business always needs a reminder that there is room for improvement. When we talk about tragedy, we talk about philosophies for living a better life, which thus get reflected in our business practices on a daily basis.

To me, the acts of heroism during the Boston are astounding in their selflessness but they also reveal how much more of myself I can give to the work I do and to being a citizen with a social conscience. Hearing stories of runners, after completing the marathon, continuing to run to a hospital to donate blood, or residents of the city who offered their homes and food to those displaced, reminds me that I need to look more closely at my actions and what I can do for others.  It forces me to ask, “What can I do to support the communities I belong to in order to ensure that we all succeed?”

Having worked at Zirtual for almost a year now, I definitely believe in the principle that a community, even a business community, is strongest when everyone is looking out for each other. Yes, we all make sacrifices, but we also know that if we ever find ourselves in a crisis, we’re all going to be there to provide support to get past that crisis. The Boston bombings are a reminder of new ways we can support each other and find common ground. They’re also a reminder of how we can continue refining our business philosophy.

Though it’s still difficult to wrap my head around what happened, I know I’m grateful to be part of communities that respect and care for each other. I’m also grateful that other communities remind me how, by setting aside differences, we can achieve a lot more than if were divided. Hopefully we can work apply these lessons both to personal and professional lives even more than we already do now.

Use Airbnb if you’re looking into long-term stays.

Airbnb, which was founded in 2008, is a San Francisco based company that allows individuals to rent out rooms or entire apartments. They’ve since grown to have 250,000 listings in virtually every country in the world. While standard hotels might make sense for short-term stays, who can afford standard hotel rates for a month or longer?

When booking for São Paulo, I was easily able to select neighborhoods, limit searches to specific prices per night, and easily contact hosts with questions about their properties. In the end, given how expensive housing is in the city, I was able to find both a neighborhood I wanted to be in and a property within my price range.

When using Airbnb, here are some important suggestions I’d offer:

• Before booking, always contact hosts. Often times their availability calendars aren’t necessarily updated in real time.

• If possible, try to book properties with more reviews; though there are guarantees in place from Airbnb if a property isn’t satisfactory, give yourself peace of mind by looking at existing reviews. If they mention noise problems, cleanliness issues, or say the host wasn’t particularly friendly or responsive, don’t book the property. If you’re doing a long-term rental, you want to feel as comfortable as possible.

• Check the terms of service and cancellation policies. Unlike most hotels, Airbnb requires you to pay for your entire stay upon booking. They will offer a pre-authorization charge in the full amount, and they can often have very strict cancellation policies.

• If something goes wrong, contact their customer service. Airbnb has phone, email, live chat, and social media support. Use it. After my host cancelled and I had to find a new property, I reached out to their Twitter account, which responded within an hour to my concern.

Consider Couchsurfing as an alternative to hostels for shorter stays.

Hostels are great, but often times they’re not particularly private or quiet, which can dampen the mood of your trip. Couchsurfing, another San Francisco based company, allows individuals to offer up couches or spare bedrooms at no cost. As the company says, “Couchsurfers share their lives with the people they encounter, fostering cultural exchange and mutual respect.” The service is not simply meant for someone who wants a free place to stay. The host and guest exchange knowledge of their own cultures to foster global relationships. I decided to go this route for Rio de Janeiro because it would allow me to get a more intimate sense of the city in the short time I’ll have to spend there.

Like Airbnb, Couchsurfing has some things to keep in mind:

• Only use individuals who have verified listings. To get verified on the service, you receive a postcard at your home address with a verification code. This helps ensure your hosts are saying they are living where they are living.

• Find multiple prospective places for your stay. Unlike Airbnb, with its service guarantees, Couchsurfing is a free service and often hosts tend to be world travelers. Have multiple possible arrangements in place so that you’re not left stranded at the last moment, especially if you’re in a foreign country.

• Be highly personal in your messages to people. People are opening up their homes for free and you should have a message that reflects why you want to stay with them. Do you share a love of movies or a specific type of music? Be sure to mention details like this in your message.

Though searching for the perfect place to stay is never an easy part of a trip, these suggestions will help reduce some of the stress or potential shock that can emerge during the planning process. Though I’ve run into some hiccups in my own research, with this knowledge, I know I can also better serve my clients in the future. Do you have any suggestions for how to reduce the stress of booking travel accommodations? Feel free to share them below.

Hearts dropped on Wednesday when Google announced they would no longer support, and eventually shut down their RSS reader on July 1, 2013. The mega-search giant is shutting down the 7-year old project due to “declining usage”. I myself can understand their decision as I’ve made my way to other readers like Flipboard on my iPad and iPhone.

Unfortunately there are still die hard news junkies that relied on Google Reader to get their daily dose of World gossip. How will they move on from here? To help soothe your RSS wounds,  we have compiled 3 alternatives to Google Reader.

1. Feedly – One of the best RSS reader alternatives you can find, and free! Some say it can get a little getting use to if you’re stuck on how Google Reader’s style was. Feedly is laid out more like a newspaper, rather than a constant flow.
2. The Old Reader – This reader is basically a stripped down version of Google Reader. It has an all too famiilar interface with a few minor pieces missing: apps and social integration outside of Facebook. This would be the ideal solution for the news junkie looking to keep the design they’re use to. They even have a way for you to easily import your feeds right from Google.
3. Use your Zirtual Assistant – When it comes to research, your ZA is the best. Why not send them a list of your favorite websites and have them compile the coolest, most-viewed article on them? Shouldn’t take more than 30-minutes (depending on your list size) and it will save you all that time you spent filtering through article after article.

RIP Reader. You will be missed.

At first glance, it seems like helping my clients book airline tickets, set up a Google Voice account, and schedule doctors appointments has nothing to do with teaching scales, playing English horn in an orchestra, or making oboe reeds. However, I have found that working as a ZA helps my music career, and that my musical growth helps make me a better Zirtual employee.

Being a professional musician is hard. There are only a few job openings every year in my area of expertise, and thousands of accomplished young music school graduates, hungering for any position they can get, even if it pays only $5000 per year. Even the best-funded orchestras in the country are struggling to make ends meet, and many of my most successful colleagues and teachers are facing pay-cuts, lockouts, and strikes.

So although I have spent years dreaming of winning a full-time orchestral position, I now find myself forging a different kind of career. Despite the fact that many classical music institutions throughout the US are struggling to make ends meet, Chicago still has a large, vibrant community of performers, teachers, and patrons. This fall I decided to pursue a freelance career rather than take auditions for full-time orchestral positions. I play a few concerts each season with larger local orchestras, while also being hired by smaller venues to play chamber music.

Being a freelance oboe player has become a fun and flexible career. However, it is also quite unreliable. Some months, I get calls for more gigs that I can handle. Other months, my phone does not ring. My job as a Zirtual Assistant is what allows me to get through these quieter months without having to give up the flexibility that I need to take gigs when they do come around.

When I was first hired by Zirtual, I was happy to have a job with flexible hours and a steady paycheck. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I would wake up every morning excited to check my email, that I would truly enjoy being a ZA. One of the things that I love about being a musician is that I am constantly challenged to learn new things and continue to improve. Being a Zirtual Assistant provides this same challenge. Each of my clients is in a different field and I get to learn a new skill, try out a new app, research a new fact, or connect with a new person almost every day.

Sometimes, what I learn as a ZA even helps my music career. For example, I am more comfortable with technology, and finally starting to design a personal website. Conversely, the problem-solving skills that I have acquired as a musician have been invaluable to me as a ZA. For example, while I was in music school, I learned how to prepare a lengthy solo recital through diligent, daily practice. This skill has helped me break down the large projects that my clients send to me into small, manageable tasks. When I was hired by Zirtual, I was thrilled to become a part of a company that recognized my work ethic and problem solving skills, regardless of my background.

I know that there are many other Zirtual Artists out there. We are happy to be welcomed into a community that redefines work life, offering us the flexibility to pursue our passions. I am looking forward to growing with such a company and to share my experiences with all the aspiring artists of the world that find themselves in a similar situation.

For Nature Lovers

Glass Beach – Fort Bragg, CA

You’ll have to wake up early to make the 3-hour drive, but it’s worth it! 50 years ago, Glass Beach was a dump- literally. Decades of wave action turned trash into treasure and now the beach is covered in beautiful (and totally safe) seaglass. There are also tidepools to explore.

Muir Woods Natural Monument

Located just North of San Francisco in Marin County, John Muir himself called this park “The best tree-lovers monument that could possibly be found in all the forests of the world.” Admission is $7, and once inside you can take a scenic walk in the redwoods, visit Muir Beach, or take a guided tour.

Lake McClure

Lake McClure is a great getaway for fishing, swimming, picnics, watersports, or camping if you have a few days. The lake is a 3 hour drive East of San Francisco.

For Animal Lovers

Elephant Seals

For most of the year, you can visit Big Sur (2.5 hour drive) to watch the resident colony of Elephant Seals molt, mate, and flop around on their giant bellies. There are also large groups of extremely fat and friendly ground squirrels in the parking lot.

Harley Farms Goat Dairy

Harley Farms is a large goat farm in Pescadero, CA. Goats are some of the most friendly, fascinating and adorable livestock animals around**. Visit Harley Farms to see 200 Alpine milk goats in action. They offer farm tours (you need to pre-register) and a farm shop with delicious cheese, bath products and more.

For the Thrill Seeker

Skydiving

I found this quote while Googling, “why skydive”. “Gather up as many good experiences as possible. It increases your chances of being a pleasant elderly person.” So, if you want to reduce your chances of becoming a curmudgeon, grouch, or sourpuss, it’s just a short drive to Watsonville, home of Skydive Surf City. You can dive from 10,000 up to 14,000 feet, and still have time to visit Santa Cruz for lunch.

Hot Air Balloon

If you’re like me and skydiving is a bit too adrenaline-pumping for your tastes, a slow, wandering hot air balloon ride over wine country is a good option. Napa Valley Aloft is located about 1.5 hours from the Bay Area. You’ll have to wake up at the crack of dawn to meet their 7:00am call time, but a champagne brunch is included.

White Water Rafting

If you prefer staying close to the ground, try white water rafting on the American River near Folsom, CA. They offer day trips and weekend trips for all levels of experience. The American River is said to be one of the best rafting rivers in all of California, and it is only a 1.5 hour drive from San Francisco.

For the History Buff

Mariposa

Mariposa is a historic gem located only 2.5 hours east of San Francisco. A former mining town and the county seat of the, “Mother of California Counties”, it is home to the oldest still-in-use courthouse west of the Rockies. You can also visit the Mariposa Museum and History Center, which the Smithsonian called, “the best small museum in America!”  **

If you have a little more time, you can drive up Highway 49 from Mariposa through the Mother Lode and visit even more gold rush towns.

Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park

Sutter’s Fort is located in Sacramento, on the site of the first non-Native settlement in California’s Central Valley. John Sutter built his “fort” in the 1840s to develop what he considered to be California’s treasure—agricultural products such as grapes and wheat, and herds of cattle. Gold was discovered there in 1848. Prospectors flooded the land and soon all that was left was the central building which has been reconstructed and furnished to reflect 1846 aesthetics.

** Full disclosure: The author is a goat farmer who lives in Mariposa, CA and volunteers at the museum. Come visit and I will be happy to give a personal tour!