How to Live?

I’ve been led into deep thoughts from recent random events.  First, the events:

• Two weeks ago I celebrated my birthday with my annual reading of Seneca’s On theShortness of Life.

• Yesterday I read of the death of Tim Stack, 60, CEO of Piedmont Healthcare, a prominent hospital system here in Atlanta.

• Today I saw the report of the death of Gore Vidal, 86, celebrated author.

Now, the deep thoughts:

I never met Tim Stack or Gore Vidal, but I couldn’t help thinking of each as a reference point for me: if I live to Mr. Stack’s age, I have 16 years left; if I live to Mr. Vidal’s age, I have 42 years left.  That’s a big difference.  What would I do differently today if I knew for certain that I have only 16 years left to live rather than 42?

Enter Seneca: 

“…all save a very few find life at an end just as they are getting ready to live.” 

I’ve known people for whom that is true; they look forward their entire working lives to retirement, so that they can really live, and then they die or become incapacitated and can’t do it.  It is tragic and sad when it happens.  I don’t want to do that, and if it comes to pass that I have only 16 years left, I need to get busy living.  But what if it turns out I have 42 years left?  How do I prepare for a long future life, which may not come, without passing up on too much life today, which I certainly have right now?

Getting this balance right is very difficult.  It is unrealistic for most of us to extract ourselves from common bourgeois existence to pursue leisure full time.  (I’m using “leisure” here in the classical sense, meaning activities that have intrinsic value in themselves, without regard for the ends they might achieve, like money.)   Yet at the same time, many of us realize that the hectic pace of modern American life, a treadmill of earn --> acquire --> earn more --> acquire more, with very little time devoted to leisure pursuits, probably isn’t the best way to live, either.  We know we should get off the treadmill at some point, hence the “When I retire, then….” dreams.  But should we really put off good living until then?  Do we run the risk of fulfilling Seneca’s prediction that we find life at an end just as we are getting ready to live?

Yet there seems to no good or easy time to get off the treadmill early.  We need to pay off the student loans; then we need the bigger house; then we need to put the kids through school; by then there is the beach house to take care of, too, and the wardrobe to keep current, and then electronic gadgets seem to need upgrading more frequently than ever…….

Enter Seneca again:

  …”very wretched , therefore, and not merely short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep.  By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return.”

And so it is that the treadmill remains attractive because our focus rests on the fruits of our labor:  the trinkets, tokens, and totems of success that our society has deemed valuable.  But the very real risk is that we overvalue the trinkets while we undervalue the time that it takes to earn them; we assume we have an unlimited store of time from which to draw; and when that turns out not to be true, we are surprised by the shortness of our lives.  The true value of our time suddenly comes into focus, just as we run out of it; and we find ourselves with no time to really live.

So how do we find the right balance?  How can we really live throughout our lives, and not save all the good stuff for the end that may get cut short?  There are no easy or obvious answers.  But it is certainly something to think about.

“Why do you delay?  Why are you idle?  Unless you seize the day, it flees.”

                                                                                                                -Seneca

Lazy, or just efficient?

Paul Johnson, the prolific historian who recently published a concise biography of Winston Churchill, once met the great statesman, when Churchill was old and Johnson was young. "Mr. Churchill, to what do you attribute your success?" asked Johnson. Churchill responded, "Economy of effort. Never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down." I thought of this story over the weekend when in the course of a conversation with my wife I made the observation that I am lazy.

"You're not lazy!" she exclaimed, reminding me that I manage to hold onto a decent job, I help out around the house to a (generally) satisfactory degree, and I even occupy many of my leisure hours with meaningful activity. She was of course thinking of the dictionary definition of lazy: "disinclined to activity or exertion," and I suppose by that standard she is right. I am certainly no workaholic, but I am not afraid of a little exertion.

But modify the definition with a qualifier--"disinclined to unnecessary activity or exertion," and by that revised definition I am proud to consider myself lazy. Indeed, it is my hypothesis that this kind of laziness is going to come to be seen as a virtue in the 21st century, as computing power continues to increase and the information stream turns into a river that threatens to drown us all who are trying to keep up.

Laziness is not yet mainstream; busyness is still the norm, and many people aspire to appear even busier than they are; this is because of the American tendency to equate busyness with importance. Indeed, my laziness probably limits my career prospects: I work for a big company, and the politics of big companies require one to excel at certain superfluous activities: face time in meetings that decide nothing, preparing reports and analyses of data that don't directly contribute to decisions (but do contribute to a perception that one must be busy), PowerPoint presentations to other groups in the company to explain graphically how busy one has been. (It is the grown-up version of your high school History teacher who demanded a 20-page paper on the Boston Tea Party. What if I can tell the story well in 15 pages? or 12? or 10?) Parkinson's Law is alive and well: "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion."

The lazy person fights a lonely fight against this pattern of measuring inputs, and instead shifts the focus to outputs. The question for a lazy person is not "How much work am I doing (regardless of outcome)?" but "What is the minimum amount of input I need to provide to achieve the desired outcome?" Laziness does not mean always do the minimum acceptable; it means do as little as possible to achieve the desired result, which might still be a very high standard. Churchill attributed his success to economy of effort, and yet he still accomplished more than most of us would even dream of, and to a very high standard.

But in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century, laziness will deliver distinct advantages. Lazy people learn to discern the important from the merely urgent; this skill is invaluable when sorting through an email inbox that seems to refill more regularly than the miraculous jars of water that Jesus turned into wine. A lazy person is not afraid to say no to activities that don't support the goal; again, useful in work environments filled with cross-functional teams with no clear boss and no clear mandate. Finally, lazy people are efficient; they are constantly looking for a better way to do routine tasks, to free up time for more meaningful pursuits. In organizations that are trying to do more with less, this expertise can set one apart. Remember the old adage: "Want to know the best way to do something? Ask a lazy person."

Laziness involves certain challenges, however. First, one must be very thoughtful and clear about objectives. I believe much of our day-to-day busyness is merely activity that we use to avoid being honest with ourselves about what we need to or want to do. Second, if you work at a conventional company, you may have to accept a certain diminished career outlook, at least until your company recognizes the virtues of laziness for its bottom line. Unfortunately, many companies still like face time and frenetic activity, rather than actual results, as a signal of importance. And finally, you have to have a plan--what are you going to do with the time you free up by being more efficient? Are you interesting enough to have a life outside of work? Less work on any one project should mean you can work on more projects. If instead less equals less, then you have reverted to the traditional definition of laziness, and that is not a good place to be.

So join me in shedding the fear of being called lazy. Embrace economy of effort! Take back your time! Don't let the pervasive culture of busyness lead you to the trap of measuring your inputs instead of your outputs. Remember that what you do is more important than how you do it. Take Thomas Jefferson's advice to writers that the greatest skill is that of "never using two words when one will do" and apply it to all areas of your life.

Be lazy!

Success

The conventional wisdom for career advice in recent months seems to be this: express your thanks that you have kept your job by working even harder to succeed with the fewer resources that are now allotted to your company by the shrunken economy. I don't know where this conventional wisdom came from--probably a convention of employers--but it is a little depressing that the primary response to the worst economic slowdown in the lives of anyone under 50 is not to pause to evaluate whether a change is perhaps desirable--is it possible that our relentless pursuit of more, more, more was fruitless in the end?--but instead to double down and work even harder doing the same things. Yes, most of us need to work to live, but it seems to me the philosophy that work is the source of happiness has taken a beating in the past year or so.

Thus I was refreshed this week when while reading I came across Ralph Waldo Emerson's definition of success:

To laugh often and love much;
To win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children;
To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To give of one's self without the slightest thought of return;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a rescued soul, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exaltation;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.

Note that nothing in this definition requires a job to achieve; in fact, a person successful by this standard could work in any field, or none at all. Perhaps that is the point--he or she would not be defined by a job, but instead by the obvious positive results of a lifetime of relationships, experiences, and memories. What a way to live!