Materialism Fails

I was fascinated by a news item I saw yesterday here on Britain's Daily Telegraph site, where it was reported that a recent UNICEF study concludes that in Britain materialism is rampant.  Indeed, according to the report,

materialism has come to dominate family life in Britain as parents 'pointlessly' amass goods for their children to compensate for their long working hours.

One researcher goes on to conclude that:

While children would prefer time with their parents to heaps of consumer goods, [their] parents seem to find themselves under tremendous pressure to purchase a surfeit of material goods for their children.

I haven't found a similar study focused on America, but it doesn't take too much imagination to believe that materialism is rampant here, too.  The observation of Reg Bailey, chief executive of Britain's Mothers Union, speaking about British society, could apply equally well to American society:

I think it is an issue with the nature of our society, that so often we’ve placed a dependence on things rather than being.

As I've written before here, contentment comes from not from seeking stuff, but from seeking REM:  relationships, experiences, and memories.  British kids are crying out for time from their parents; according to the UNICEF study, their parents seem to despair of giving it to them because they are working too hard to provide stuff for them instead. But stuff can never provide long-term contentment, because the thrill of acquisition never lasts; pretty soon we adapt to the new thing, the feeling of elation wears off, and we turn to pursuing the next new thing.  What a treadmill to be stuck on!  Lord willing, I will be able to recognize when I am on it....

Materialism certainly is a problem in America, but I wonder if its effects are as severe as in Britain, which in an earlier UNICEF report ranked worst of 21 developed countries for child welfare.  According to the Telegraph article,

British children were twice as likely as the average to have been drunk by the age of 15, and significantly less likely to be in two parent families than those elsewhere, were more likely to have tried drugs and had one of the worst diets in the developed world.

Why has materialism seemingly had a more deleterious effect in Britain than in America or other developed countries?  Sue Palmer, author of the book Toxic Childhood, has a hypothesis:

We are teaching our children, practically from the moment they are born, that the one thing that matters is getting more stuff.  We are probably the most secular society in the world, we do not have the counterbalance of religion but at the same time we are a very driven society very into progress and making money. (emphasis added)

According to the Scripture of that religion that Britain used to have, Jesus warned the crowd, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."  (Luke 12:15).  Be rich not in stuff, but in relationships.  Pursue experiences with those you love instead of another gadget.  Stockpile memories, not shirts.  You, your children, indeed all your loved ones, will be the happier for it.

Perspective, again

News about the American and global economies continues to be pretty grim, with zero new jobs created last month in America, European debt crises still driving markets downward, and bank shares everywhere under attack by speculators.  Every coffee shop I'm in is filled with people looking for work, or fretting about their circumstances.  I don't know anyone who doesn't feel poorer than he did three years ago, even if it is just on paper.

So I appreciate the shot of perspective that the Economist provided in this week's issue in a article about the global middle class.  Accompanying the article is this chart showing the growth of the middle class around the world over the past two decades:





According to this joint study by the African Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank, nearly 2 billion people have risen into the middle class from poverty since 1990, which is welcome news.   But what really made me think is the asterisk at the bottom of the chart, which defines what the study's authors mean by "middle class":  people living on $2-20 per day. 

I don't want to belittle or dismiss the worries of any Americans, because whether you are making $1 a day or $1000 a day, to suddenly have your income eliminated or severely cut creates short-term hardship.  But the next time I'm tempted to lament my retirement account balance while sipping a $4 coffee drink, I hope I can hold my tongue and spare a thought instead for the billions of people who would view my situation with envy, and who are working hard every day with bustling determination to earn their way up to my blessed situation.

Yes, You Do Have Limits

Leo Babauta of zen habits posted a thoughtful and helpful reminder of one of the core principles of Present Tense Living: we have limits, therefore we can't do everything. Don't get so busy trying do it all, have it all, or be it all, that you fail to appreciate the what you already do, or have, or are.

This day is special. Make it a good one!

Another year gone by.....

I celebrated my birthday yesterday, and each year brings into sharper focus the truth behind Gretchen Rubin's observation that the days are long, but the years are short. I am now the age that my father was when I was fifteen, which cannot be possible because my father was old when I was fifteen, and surely I'm not old now.

If I double my age (43) I am faced with a number that is higher than the average expected life expectancy for men, which means I most likely have more yesterdays than tomorrows. I don't find that in itself particularly troubling, because there are enough tomorrows still left (probably) that I don't quite need to count every one. But what I do find thought-provoking is the slow transition of potential into permanence. When one is young, just starting a career or embarking on adult life, one is full of potential. There is a foundation of family, education, and some experience, but there is much more potential than there is performance, and part of the challenge and excitement of life at that age is turning that potential into something; of choosing a course from among several possible paths, and setting out to see what happens.

Now, of course, after 20 working years and with a young family of my own that is growing up, much of that potential has been turned into something else: accomplishment, in come cases; opportunities missed, in others; and simply roads not taken, because one can't do everything. Life's path is wider, more fully trod; some of my potential has been turned into a permanent record of where I've been; and while there remain opportunities to move onto other paths, the distances between the paths are farther; and rather than go back to the beginning to start a new path, I find I must take the more laborious route of fighting through the undergrowth and brush of life's forest to get there.

This is why change is harder as one ages: a change now involves overcoming a lifetime of decisions that have led to this point on the path, and such a change of path might involve a very difficult climb. Plus, one might be bringing along others on the journey, which slows down the move. Yet I am young enough still to have potential that can be used perhaps to reach different paths than the one I currently am walking down; and I wonder if there are not rewards merely for attempting the switch.

Are you going in the direction you want to go? If not, what would it take to move to a different path?

Time Tracker

I work for a generally benign employer that overall treats its employees well. This year, however, has seen the introduction of an insidious new tool that all employees are required to use that I find highly offensive: Time Tracker.

Time Tracker is an online tool to track employees' time off, i.e., time away from work. As of this year, I am required to enter a "request" for not only my vacation days, but for holidays as well, measured down to the hour. A few moments after I enter my "request," I receive an email graciously informing that my request for time off has been approved. Thanks, benevolent employer! (To be fair, my company also provides two paid days off per year to every employee for community service activities, which is admirable.)

The mandatory use of Time Tracker bothers me in several ways. First, the implication is that all my time belongs to my employer, and they graciously will allow me to have a set number of hours a year to myself, subject to advance approval. This is a slave mentality more suited to nineteenth-century farm workers than to twenty-first century knowledge workers. In my mind, Time Tracker should be reversed: all my time belongs to me, and I am willing to grant some of it to my employer, subject to my prior approval.

Second, I am a knowledge worker, whose output cannot be measured in hourly increments like a factory worker and who therefore is not paid by the hour. I have agreed to perform certain responsibilities in return for a set salary. There is no meaningful way to measure my output in any given hour, and my work can be done in or out of an office. Consider: if I have an idea in the shower this morning, that I incorporate into a client presentation while on my computer at the coffee shop this afternoon, that enables us to win the client's business tomorrow, how many hours have I worked? What was my output per hour? Who knows? Who cares? The truth is, I do whatever work I need to do whenever I need to do it to fulfill the responsibilities I have committed to do. Time Tracker belittles that commitment.

Third, the introduction of Time Tracker sends me the message that my employer doesn't trust me. I have to account for my free time by the hour, but not my work time. Where was Time Tracker last week when I was at the office from 8:00 am to 8:30 pm trying to get a deal closed? If I take the afternoon off to play with my kids but field a call from a client during that time, am I working or not? Before Time Tracker, these conundrums didn't matter; I believed my employer trusted me to do the job when and where it made sense. Now, it seems my company is telling me, we don't trust you after all: you need to account for (and get prior approval for) every minute you are not working. It's silly.

Finally, the email from HR explaining why we are adopting Time Tracker is a model of corporate doublespeak. It says using Time Tracker "allows us to help team members make their work-life balance a top priority." (Really? It seems like trusting me to get the job done whenever and wherever I want to would be a lot more helpful for making work-life balance a top priority.) Using the tool also allows us to "accurately account for time." (Hint: buy a watch. It works for most of us.) And, for managers, incorrect time balances for their employees can "adversely affect your [department] budget." Time is money! Watch out for those lazy employees trying to steal it!

Time tyranny like this invites subtle forms of rebellion: long lunches, the occasional unrecorded afternoon off (horrors!). I decided to rebel by entering my annual allotted paid time off in the first days of the year. So, it looks to the system like I was gone for the whole month of January. Won't someone be surprised when they see my revenue results for January--how productive I was while not working! Maybe they'll encourage me to take more months off........

BOOK REVIEW: The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin

What would make you happy?

Gretchen Rubin set out to answer that question for herself, and in discovering her answers and recording her experiences in The Happiness Project (published in 2009) she does not presume that the things that bring her happiness will also bring her readers happiness. Instead, she provides several valuable principles that can help us find our own happiness in our own lives.

It quickly becomes evident that Rubin is a highly motivated, compulsively organized person. To launch her project, she reads widely the works of philosophers, psychologists, neurologists, and poets to identify the physiological, psychological, and behavioral factors that seem to lead to happiness. Then, in the spirit of Ben Franklin's famous self-improvement project (which he described in his Autobiography), she makes a chart of these happiness virtues and sets about to work on a few of them each month for a year. (For many of Rubin's readers, I suspect that simply learning to organize like this would go a long way to boosting happiness, or at least to reducing stress.)

Rubin's quest is not of the total life change variety. Unlike the authors of other recent entrants in the Discover Yourself genre who undertook major disruptions to their lives' routines (like traveling to India or cooking difficult recipes nearly every day of the year), Rubin acknowledged from the beginning that she is generally satisfied with her life, family and career, and that a major change of location or career wouldn't really boost happiness. Instead, Rubin sought happiness by finding more enjoyment in her daily existence; by appreciating more readily the raw material for happiness already present in her life. (At this blog, we might say she sought to live in the present tense.)

The narrative of her year spent working on these virtues is by turns earnest, sad, obvious, trite, poignant, impressive, and exhausting; sometimes more than one of these at a time. Rubin retains a sunny optimism about the project throughout, and I think by the end concludes that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. (In this instance, that means that even though she may not have perfected any of her individual happiness virtues, the whole project provided a noticeable boost to her well-being.)

I found that Rubin made one of her most profound observations right at the beginning of the book, when she unveils what she calls her "Twelve Commandments," or rules to live by. Number one is "Be Gretchen," and throughout the book this commandment serves as a reminder not to try to change her fundamental nature. No amount of mental resolve or personal discipline can change your fundamental interests and abilities, and you will only set yourself up for failure (with a resulting loss of happiness) if you try. It doesn't matter if everyone says you should do power yoga to get fit; if you hate yoga, you will never stick with it and thus won't get fit. As Rubin states it in her Happiness Manifesto: "what's fun for other people may not be fun for you, and vice versa." Rubin did an admirable job of keeping that principle front and center.

Also, Rubin proves that a series of small improvements can add up to make a major improvement in our lives. None of her individual happiness virtues is that big of a deal on its own. (Example: "Take Time to Be Silly") But because she was disciplined and stuck with her project, the little improvements worked together to change her outlook on her life; to help her appreciate the causes for happiness that were already all around her. That is a realization from which I'm certain we all could benefit. In a way, that is the goal of Present Tense Living: to appreciate life today.

In the end, I was impressed by Rubin's efforts and inspired to be David, and to be more aware of my everyday blessings. I haven't decided whether to undertake my own happiness project yet, but I have loaned the book to my wife to get her perspective on the idea. Perhaps we will decide to do one together, or to do separate ones at the same time so we can encourage each other. If you've read the book, let me know what you think, and whether you've done your own happiness project. How did it go?

The WiFi Made Me Do It!

Overheard from the seats behind me this week as our plane taxied to the gate:

"Wifi on planes has killed my reading time. I used to really enjoy catching up on newspapers during flights. Now I just have to work."

I wasn't bold enough to turn around and ask the question that immediately entered my mind: Why? Yes, Wifi is available on many flights now, but it is not mandatory that you use it, or at least it hasn't been on any of the flights I've taken. You are still perfectly free to use plane time to catch up on your reading (as I do), or even to to be delightfully "unproductive" by watching the TV shows or movies on offer on many flights, or sleeping, or staring out the window. Perhaps the gentleman behind me works for a slave-driving boss who tracks when employees are on flights and expects them to maintain email access during airborne hours. If so, the gentleman needs a new job.

But before we cast too many stones at my hapless fellow traveler, we must recognize that his mistake in logic--"if I can work on a plane, I should work on a plane"--is a mistake that we have all made in general form to varying degrees. Just one example: for those of you old enough to have been in the work force before about 1999, think back to that time. Did you spend your evenings at home reflexively checking your Blackberry for emails from your boss? No way! And yet now, because we have can have email access 24/7, it has quickly become standard operating procedure that we should use that access.

Never mind that a high proportion--80%? 90%? 95%?--of our emails are either junk, or cc:'s that we don't need to see right away, or non-urgent administrivia that could easily wait until the next day or the next week. No matter--I email, therefore I am! I'm in the flow! I'm important--look at all this work!

If I may offer a gentle reminder: since those pre-1999 low-tech days, the number of hours in a day has stayed steady at 24. Therefore, all that time you now use to stay in the flow has come from somewhere else. What have you given up? Reading on planes? Exercise? Time with your spouse? Time with your kids? Hobbies?

Technology is a great tool. But its use is not without cost. You are still responsible for how you choose to spend your time; don't say the WiFi made you do it. Be deliberate and choose wisely, because each minute can be spent only once.