lifestylism

Why The Chinese Are Getting Richer But Not Happier

2008-04-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

I've neglected this poor ol' blog, but I'm still reading in this area, and may fire it up again. This morning, this article (from the always incredible PsyBlog) demanded my attention...PsyBlog: Why The Chinese Are Getting Richer But Not Happier:

"While the Chinese are getting richer, they don't seem to be getting happier - in fact they're getting more unhappy. This paradox may have much to teach other expanding societies about the perils of financial inequality."

Reading Lately...

2008-01-18T09:32:00.000-08:00

I've been sadly ignoring this space...still reading and saving things in my bloated Bloglines account (which I've pared down to the essentials, I think), and hopefully I'll get around to pulling out the gems soon. Anyway, a couple of sites have been consistently excellent and thought-provoking:

Richard Florida's blog covers so many slices of my interests that I just devour every word -- cities, creative work, lifestyle choices, innovation, geography -- just subscribe already.
Mind Your Decisions, a quirky and brilliant mix of "personal finance (saving, investing, economics) and game theory (negotiating, market design, imperfect competition)"
PsyBlog makes psychology accessible, fun and fascinating. Posts are consistently awesome, and today's post is no exception: "Experience Beats Possessions: Why Materialism Causes Unhappiness"
Although I sometimes strongly disagree with her, I have 34 posts saved from Penelope at The Brazen Careerist. Provocative stuff, and right in the middle of lifestyle choices. Check out the Most loved and most hated posts of 2007 for the ultimate sampler.
Maybe the oddball pick in this bunch, Robert Paterson was the very first blog I ever followed, going back to 2001(ish). He's all over the board, covering an eclectic mix of topics with a thoughtful, impatient tone that I never seem to tire of. One recent post about surviving an inevitable financial crisis got me to take action with my own finances, following some of the simple advice.

The end of work as we know it...

2007-12-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

Brazen Careerist predicts the future of work, with lots that rings true for my relationship to my career and some of the trends I've been researching over the last couple of years. Bring it on, I'd say.

Best Buy Smashing the Clock

2007-06-21T13:06:00.000-07:00

Inspiring and detailed article from Business Week: Smashing The Clock. On one hand this seems so logical and obvious that it's bizarre that most organizations aren't set up this way...on the other hand, it's the opposite of the usual command and control model and represents an impossible change for most organizations (or so they think).

"At most companies, going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not at Best Buy. The nation's leading electronics retailer has embarked on a radical--if risky--experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours."

Later in the article, a simple paragraph sums up the initiative:

"But arguably no big business has smashed the clock quite so resolutely as Best Buy. The official policy for this post-face-time, location-agnostic way of working is that people are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they get their work done."

I've been doing a version of this for almost four years already, working for a company, but setting my own hours and going into the office once or twice a week (or less if there's no reason to go in). It's brilliant, and I wish more people could do it. I'm more productive and my quality of life is better. I don't waste time commuting, but I also have the security of a steady job. Like a Best Buy employee said in the comments to the article, "If offered double my salary at another company I would still refuse to leave." That's how I feel whenever I see a job posting somewhere -- no matter how cool the work, how good the salary, or how well-matched to my skills and interests...as soon as I envision having to go to an office at the same time every day, I just laugh and shake my head.

How Britain is Eating Its Young

2007-06-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

Some compelling and disturbing ideas from Adbusters this week in Generation F*cked:

"According to the Unicef report, which measured 40 indicators of quality of life – including the strength of relationships with friends and family, educational achievements and personal aspirations, and exposure to drinking, drug taking and other risky behaviour – British children have the most miserable upbringing in the developed world. American children come next, second from the bottom."

It's quite detailed and wide-ranging at the same time, with all kinds of lifestyle values and implications throughout. No easy answers, of course.

Thanks to the always-fascinating PsyBlog for the pointer.

Parental Leave

2007-06-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

In Canada, more dads taking time off when babies arrive, increasing from 38% in 2001 to 55% in 2006. Those numbers still seem awfully low to me...almost half of fathers don't take ANY time off when their babies arrive? Dads can take a parental leave of up to 35 weeks (that guarantees they can return to a position equivalent to the one they had) with the government kicking in 55% of their earnings (up to a max of $423/week) while they're on leave. It's a good program -- I've taken advantage of it twice, and will again in August this year. In spite of this opportunity, two thirds of fathers return to work within one month of the child's arrival, mostly using vacation time...so most aren't even using the program.

90% of Canadian moms take time off work, with half staying home between 12 and 47 months and another third returned between six and 11 months. Canadian moms get 15 weeks of paid leave (at the same benefit rate as above) and then the additonal 35 weeks can be split between spouses, so perhaps moms usually use the full amount, leaving nothing left for the dads.

Many families can't afford the reduction in income(s) for a full year. We've always saved up enough money to make the leaves feasible, but I've agonized a fair bit over the length of my leaves -- despite the legal protection here, stepping outside of the organization that employs me means falling out of the loop and sending the message that I'm not interested in climbing the ladder.

The Wikipedia entry for parental leave is fascinating, showing the different approaches around the world. It makes U.S. labour policies look pathetic -- I mean, most African countries have better parental leave programs.

Life Review

2007-06-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

Interesting post from Avi Solomon -- No Need to Die to Benefit from a Life Review:

"Essentially, the life review exercise involves completing the following sentence:

When I reflect on the possibility of undergoing a life review experience upon the end of my life, I wish to..."

The mystery of the daytime idle

2007-06-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

The mystery of the daytime idle: Why aren't you working?

A freelance author tackles a compelling topic by wandering around San Francisco in the middle of the day asking people why they're not at work. It's funny and smart and light-hearted, with just enough analysis to keep things interesting:

"Almost half of us get less than seven hours of sleep a night, and it's gotten worse in recent years. Our workaholism has spawned entire walls of self-help books. And yet this parallel universe exists right alongside the work-obsessed one. It looks nice, too, as parallel universes go."

Via the Globe and Mail's "The Office" blog, which includes some interesting comments as well.

Power of Green

2007-04-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

Loved reading along as Jim Kunstler and Stephen Downes deconstructed a surprisingly absurd article by Thomas Friedman about the "Power of Green" this week. All three are loaded with lifestyle values and choices with local and global implications.

What to Do

2007-04-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

Another Jeremy asks all kinds of interesting questions about finding his life's path. He has the credentials and knack for helping people find out what they do well, but perhaps it's harder to apply that thinking to ourselves. And just because we're good at something doesn't mean we should pursue only that:

"I could spend the rest of my life working with those people I meet...I could even make some kind of consulting/coaching practice out of it. But should I? Just because people invite me to do it -- does than mean I ought to?"

Penelope had an interesting post along similar lines last week called Try being a dilettante before changing careers. Read the whole thing, but here's the conclusion:

"Change in one’s life does not require a career change. In fact, a career change should be last. After lots of experimenting with small steps in an effort to find out who you really are. That’s how I found out, again, that I’m a writer."

Perfect Girls

2007-04-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

Will Richardson linked to Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too from the New York Times. The multimedia feature adds the photos and voices of these hard-driving teenagers. Like Will, I've got daughters too, and these stories are both encouraging (girls can do anything now!) and discouraging (girls feel they have to do everything now!) to middle-class dads like us who wish our girls could self-actualize without feeling the intense stress and pressure to conquer the world.

The focus of the article is actually more upper-class than middle, and economic concerns underpin the whole thing. This incredible drive to get into the best colleges seems to be all about landing plum jobs later and subsequent incomes to sustain a lifestyle they're used to.

"There is something about the lives these girls lead — their jam-packed schedules, the amped-up multitasking, the focus on a narrow group of the nation’s most selective colleges — that speaks of a profound anxiety in the young people, but perhaps even more so in their parents, about the ability of the next generation to afford to raise their families in a place like Newton."

How to Disappear

2007-04-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

Chris Corrigan often digs up these interesting gems -- How to Disappear is a series of 30 hand-drawn panels outlining a recipe for turning urban neighbourhoods into real communities. It's low-fi and fun and totally pie-in-the-sky, but with a grounded, practical streak that makes you think...maybe not so pie-in-the-sky?

TV and Health

2007-02-28T09:52:00.000-08:00

This list of quick stats on Television & Health is nothing new, but once in a while these things hit me hard. Average of 28 hours a week watching TV -- passively sitting there, taking in mostly junk and doing nothing. 28 HOURS is a lot of time in a week to do something meaningful. How is it that people believe they're so busy and don't have enough time to do the things they want to do when they're blowing a quarter of each waking day on mindless entertainment?

Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 3.5
Number of minutes per week that the average child watches television: 1,680

The Blunt Wisdom of Robin Wright Penn

2007-02-17T00:17:00.000-08:00

Celebrity news on Lifestylism? Not really, but I guess this is a little different. I enjoyed this interview with Robin Wright Penn by my favourite movie writer, Katrina Onstad. It has some interesting bits about the choices this actor has made and her interpretation of the balance between work, parenthood and celebrity. On motherhood:

“No one really prepares you for motherhood,” says Wright Penn with typically appealing bluntness. “No one says to women, or men: ‘Guess what, guys? You are going to be non-existent for about eight years.’ They prepare you for pregnancy and that’s it. They don’t prepare you for marriage, either.”

On celebrity and getting work in Hollywood:

“If you don’t play the celebrity thing, then you don’t get offered the commercial movies,” she says with a shrug.

I guess it's easier to make these choices when you make a couple of million dollars a year, but it was still refreshing to hear this:

But staying out of the fray is a choice. Wright Penn takes only small roles during the school year to be available to her children, and says she can go virtually anywhere without being recognized.

Longer Work Day Cutting into Family Time

2007-02-13T10:38:00.000-08:00

Longer work day cutting into family time: study. The article is solid, including some reaction from a representative of the Vanier Institute of the Family pointing out the negative effects of this trend, most of which is fairly obvious, I guess. I was interested in this counter quote, though:

"However, Lochhead said, it must be remembered that there is an element of individual choice in spending more time at work than with family, and the study, above all else, shows that Canadian workers are committed to their jobs."

I forget that sometimes, when I hear that people are working more -- I always assume that they'd rather be doing something other than working. Perhaps that's just my own personal bias.

Update: Garth reflects on the Globe & Mail's feature on the same study.

Adventure Divas

2007-02-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

I hadn't heard of Adventure Divas before, but apparently there's a PBS series and several books out already. I was mostly interested in the profiles of women doing fascinating and important things all over the world. Inspiring! Makes you want to circle the planet and make an impact.

Rex on Climate Change

2007-02-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed Rex Murphy's viewpoint on climate change on The National last night and found the article this morning. An excerpt:

"So the question for us is really, is the moral weight of our example worth the immediate, real costs to our economy and lifestyles? Will you drive 30 per cent less, buy 30 per cent less, approve putting a brake on the oilsands, offshore oil, the auto-making industry? In hard terms, will we use less energy, pay more for fuel, live less excessively, fly less often right now, just to show the world that we Canadians are willing to back up what we say about global warming by what we do?

This is not just a question for our politicians. It's a question for us all. Do we believe our moral leadership is worth the personal and public cost of providing that leadership?"

The only thing I might quibble with is this lumping together of personal lifestyle choices (driving less) with national-level environmental regulation, especially on industry. I like the focus on lifestyle decisions and personal impact, and I am willing to drive less (where we live, people already think we're freaks to only have one vehicle for a family of four), but by myself I can't make coal-fired power plants illegal, or limit CO2 emmissions from massive oil extraction and processing projects. This intersection between the personal and political realms goes to the heart of this lifestylism project -- revolutionizing your lifestyle won't cause the necessary revolution on these issues, and politics alone can't solve the problems without people changing their lifestyles. Are we willing to make hard choices in both realms?

Career Planning a Waste of Time?

2007-02-01T16:00:00.000-08:00

The author of this post thinks Career Planning is Time Wasted. I agree with the research cited, and the argument is well articulated -- people are notoriously bad at predicting what will make them unhappy -- but I'm not so sure that it translates into all planning being a waste of time. When you're choosing to pursue something instead of something else, you're doing a type of planning, and you might as well choose a general direction (maybe a field, or area of interest, or type of activity) that suits what you're currently enjoying or curious about -- for me, that's all planning is.

There seems to be this idea that career planning for high school students is about picking the exact job description you'll be employed in six or eight years down the road...and if that's the case, I'd have to agree with this assessment that it's a waste of time. It's not about the end goal; it's about process: finding meaningful tasks, developing skills, and building connections in an area of interest that will likely become sustainable work if you really care about it.

This is probably too critical -- I hadn't seen this excellent blog before and probably shouldn't take issue with a single post when there were so many other good ones...oh, well.

Recreational Shopping

2007-01-23T13:21:00.000-08:00

Recreational shopping could lead to 'consuming crisis': Lots of interesting quotes and tidbits in this short article, but of course I was most into the bits about lifestyle expectations:

"The study also found that 37 per cent of Canadians worried that they wouldn't be able to sustain their current lifestyle in 10 years time, noting they expected to have to tighten their spending habits. Another 24 per cent predicted their lifestyle would be about the same, while 32 per cent said they expected to have more."

Reel Life Wisdom

2007-01-17T09:33:00.000-08:00

I got a copy of Doug's (Proactive Living blog) new book before Christmas, Reel Life Wisdom, and I sure have been enjoying it. A simple concept, really -- a collection of inspirational movie quotes organized around important themes -- so you can pick it up any time and open it to something interesting. The supporting web site is turning into an impressive resource by itself, with tons of quotes, articles and mini film reviews accumulating in the archives.

Worldmapper

2007-01-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

Worldmapper: Work

For the right kind of person, this site could suck hours and hours of time out of the day. I'm one of those. It's pretty simple -- you choose the measures (work, health, education, poverty, etc) you're interested in and then get to see maps of the world with the relative weight for those measures represented. Hundreds of them.

Thanks to elearnspace for the pointer...

Mind Over Money

2007-01-01T10:16:00.000-08:00

Some fascinating concepts and studies in this fairly in-depth article -- Mind over money: Studies indicate cash affects our social interaction. I thought this closing quote from one of the authors of a cited study was most interesting:

"If it's more important to have self-motivation it might be good to have reminders of money," Vohs said. "If group harmony is important, it might be a good idea to keep the idea of money down. People will have to decide what goals are in the best interest."

Update: Another article about the same studies: Mere Thought of Money Makes People Selfish. A quote:

"In a series of nine experiments, researchers found that money enhanced people's motivation to achieve their own goals and degraded their behavior toward others. The concept of money, they suggest, makes a person feel more self-sufficient and thus more apt to stand alone.

The scientists said the study had nothing to do with making a person feel wealthy. When real or fake money, or even a photo of cash, was placed in sight of participants, they became selfish."

Feeling Stressed?

2006-12-20T08:36:00.000-08:00

There's nothing too new in this article, but it's interesting to think about how our choices affect our stress levels. I wonder if we wrongly equate all stress with negative results and health problems -- of course those are valid concerns -- but when you set up your life to minimize all stress, you reduce opportunities for growth and challenge. Difficult, risky and uncomfortable experiences cause stress, but life would be pretty dull if you avoided anything that took you out of your comfort zone. Anyway, here's the article from CBC: Feeling stressed? You're not alone, new poll says.

Five Things You Didn't Know About Me

2006-12-11T23:22:00.000-08:00

Doug at Proactive Living tagged me with the challenge to list five things you wouldn't know about me:

I've seen Metallica in concert...twice.
Instead of renting a car or cabbing it in Los Angeles this weekend, I bought a bicycle and put 50 miles on it...also took some photos along the way.
I raced competitive motocross (off-road motorcycles) for years, including events in arenas with 10,000 spectators watching...and won.
I've never really liked pets -- and sadly, I've noticed that this makes it difficult for pet owners to like me.
I have four active blogs (and several other lapsed ones): this one, my personal blog, my work/learning blog, and a song blog...all of which are in danger of lapsing. More if you count my Flickr photos or 43Things as other types of blogs.

Thanks for the tag, Doug -- I'm sometimes too serious over here, and this is a good reminder to be a real person behind the links and writing.

And now for my five tags, selected not because I necessarily think they will take the challenge, but because they have consistently challenged me to think. The common thread -- great writers tackling difficult material and really living it...then sharing what they're learning:

Penelope, the Brazen Careerist
Christian at think:lab (and his inspiring list)
Chris at Parking Lot (and his excellent reply)
Shamash at Shamash Says... (with yet another fantastic glimpse into her past)
Jill at Legacy Matters (and her amazing response)

Note: I didn't tag my Vancouverite blog-friend Brian, but I loved his response to the tag as well. As if we've both seen Metallica twice! I'm just glad I didn't get shot at either time.

Disparity

2006-12-05T13:33:00.001-08:00

40% of world's wealth owned by 1% of population...

Kelowna Real Estate

2006-10-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

Some national recognition of the stupidity of the housing market where we live: Kelowna house prices move ahead of Calgary, Toronto. In Canada, only Vancouver remains more ridiculous.

Take Back Your Time Day

2006-10-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

Bet you didn't know that today is Take Back Your Time Day:

"Overworked and time-starved Canadians and Americans need to take time Tuesday to cancel an appointment, play with their children, go for a walk or plant a tree, says a group promoting Take Back Your Time Day."

Update: I missed the CBC's In-Depth feature on the topic -- By the numbers: time poverty. Lots of fascinating stats about work and overwork, particularly in comparing the U.S., Canadian and European situations.

Work and Depression

2006-10-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

CBC reports that 1 million Canadians are dissatisfied with their jobs, many depressed. Although that does sound like a bummer, does that mean that the other 90% of workers are pretty happy with their jobs?

Decision-Making Biases

2006-10-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

I was fascinated by this Wikipedia list of decision-making and behavioral biases, with links to each one (including references!) like the
Planning Fallacy.

Update: Mutual Improvement deconstructed a suspect study connecting alcohol consumption and higher incomes with another list of cognitive biases taken from Wikipedia.

Update 2: I was looking through a list of del.ici.ous links on decision making and found this article: 10 reasons people make stupid decisions -- it's funny and references some solid background material.

More Happiness Research

2006-10-02T20:28:00.000-07:00

A Jolly, Socratic Science takes a look at the best of happiness research and digs up this excellent presentation from Daniel Gilbert: How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times. The other item in the post was a link to How Not to Buy Happiness (pdf) by Robert Frank, which covers some very interesting territory:

"Considerable evidence suggests that if we use an increase in our incomes, as many of us do, simply to buy bigger houses and more expensive cars, then we do not end up any happier than before. But if we use an increase in our incomes to buy more of certain inconspicuous goods–such as freedom from a long commute or a stressful job–then the evidence paints a very different picture."

Aerons and Air Hockey

2006-10-02T20:25:00.000-07:00

In Aerons and Air Hockey Kathy Sierra explains why cool workplaces matter, reminisces about the workspaces she's had that really worked, and gives everyone a peek at her new office -- a beautiful vintage Airstream trailer. Love it!

Consumer Life

2006-09-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big fan of the title of CBC's Consumer Life section, but it's proven to be a great source of news about the choices people are making. The focus is particularly in how we spend our money, but covers safety, work issues, personal finance, housing market, and topics in those areas -- definitely worth following, and they even have an RSS feed to keep readers up to date.

Balancing Work and Aging Parents

2006-09-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

Baby Boomers are having challenges balancing work with caring for their aging parents -- I'm seeing this coming up more lately as an issue for people I know in their 50s. The ones who have their own businesses seem to be in a much better position to make the adjustments they want/need to make.

Welcome Beckett-to-Be

2006-09-06T00:46:00.000-07:00

Christian from think:lab is a prolific blogger, inspirational thinker, school designer, lifestylist and new dad. Congratulations to Christian and his family as they create a new life together.

More Income and Happiness Research

2006-09-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

From Princeton this time: Link between income and happiness is mainly an illusion. I thought this quote really captured the compromises we make without really thinking about how it will affect our well-being:

"In some cases, this focusing illusion may lead to a misallocation of time, from accepting lengthy commutes (which are among the worst moments of the day) to sacrificing time spent socializing (which are among the best moments of the day)."

Via Mutual Improvement, which looks to be warming up nicely.

silverorange

2006-09-05T09:56:00.000-07:00

Last year, I linked to some stuff about a cool design shop in PEI. This week, Robert Paterson interviewed the guys from silverorange about their unique approach to business. Self-actualization appears to be woven into their DNA, with recognition of how work might be better integrated into life. It's worth reading the whole thing, but here's a taste:

"Rob: So what then is your organizational goal?

I think that it is to foster an organization that supports our 'Whole Lives'. To create and maintain a platform that enables each of us to do the things that we want to be able to do. To set in motion an organization that would be self-sustaining and that we can rely on to support all of us for a long long time."

Who wouldn't want to work there?

Nests Not Empty

2006-09-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

There's lots of talk about Twixters, Yeppies, Boomerang Kids, Grups, and other labels that are supposed to describe people who are extending their adolescence for various reasons, but you rarely hear from the parents of these grown-up kids. In this column from CBC, the author takes a quick look and her findings might surprise you:

"When surveyed, parents with adult children living at home expressed no frustration over their living arrangements. In fact, they were more likely to be very satisfied with the time they spent with their children than parents whose children were out on their own."

Update: CBC followed this up a couple of weeks later with For Generation Xers, there's no place like parents' home, referencing a recent StatsCan study.

C'mon, Get Happy

2006-09-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

This excellent article from In These Times looks at the common strands and differences in several of the more popular recent books on happiness. In reviewing Daniel Gilbert's work, the author summarizes with this gem:

"The vision we have of what will make us happy in the future is a mere reflection of our present. But our imagination is as unreliable as our memory; we can’t correctly foresee what will make us happy in the future."

Via Mutual Improvement.

Mutual Improvement Blog

2006-09-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

Mutual Improvement is a new blog from the creators of 43 Things, which I'll be studying for my thesis (and I've written about it here before). The blog is ambitious, covering "ideas about personal development, happiness, statistics, emotions, neurobiology, cognitive science and all the things that make life worth living." Sound familiar? Definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Why Best Buy's Employee Parking Lot is Empty

2006-08-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

Nine Shift answers the question in greater depth, but I'll give away the punchline: Best Buy is encouraging employees to work from home.

"They have discovered (yes, it's true) that telecommuters are more productive than office workers."

An indicator of a larger trend? We can only hope. Driving around L.A. last week (and everyone apparently drives everywhere there) for the first time made me wonder if you could possibly conceive of a system that was any more dysfunctional than suburban sprawl combined with centralized offices.

Moms, Dads, Kids and Work

2006-08-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

Penelope the Brazen Careerist should be queen of the work blogs. Maybe she is already. Anyway, I so often read her posts and nod along, thinking "wow, she really nailed it here." Then I save the post in Bloglines or Blogger and a month later it's still sitting there. In these two, she digs into the tensions, challenges and opportunities of how to divide up work and childcare in a family with two parents. It all rings so true to me, having spent the last five years attempting to find the magic formula that combines family and work bliss.

The new stay-at-home dad paves new paths for moms:

"In fact, most men do not set out to be stay-at-home dads. They just want to make sure they get to spend time with their kids. A survey by American Demographics revealed that eighty percent of men ages 18 to 39 said that a flexible job to accommodate kids takes a higher priority than doing challenging work or earning a high salary. The new stay-at-home version of dad is how they reach this goal."

The advice that jumps out at me in that post is to make sure the primary caregiver also has some work (or non-kid projects, at least) on the go. If I put all of my friends with young kids on a spectrum from happiest to most frustrated, the ones in the happy zone have kept working at least a few hours a week...not so much for the money, but for the sanity. At the other end are the ones who work full time or not at all.

Your family would be better off with a housewife. (So would mine.)

"The point is that marriage and family work best when one person is taking care of them full time. Duh. Everything in the world is best off when it is cared for very carefully. I wish everyone would stop trying to deny this."

I don't think many men would attempt to publish an article like this...but it's a shame, because the tone is spot on and honest to the core. The conversation should be happening, with a healthy questioning of values and what we're really trying to accomplish in our families, marriages and jobs. Lots of good thoughts in the comments to that one, too.

One of these articles pointed to stay-at-home-dad site Slowlane, and I followed a link to a very personal and enlightening article from a mom working full-time: Anatomy of a Working Mom's Brain. A quote, to give you the flavour:

"I was very overwhelmed, one of my experiences and I still experience this: I’m extremely overwhelmed being married to a work-at-home-dad. Are any of you work-at-home-dads and not stay-at-home-dads? It really makes a big difference. I don’t have a Mr. Mom at home. When I come home the laundry’s waiting for me, the dirty dishes are waiting for me, all of the housework is waiting for me. And that makes a big difference because not only do I work full time but that house is entirely my responsibility."

Try Bolivia

2006-08-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

Think you're having a hard time balancing your work with your family and lifestyle desires? Bolivians head abroad looking for work, torn over families left back home:

"Every year, hundreds of thousands of migrants look to better their lives outside Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. With nearly 1.5 million Bolivians - a fifth of the population - living abroad, few families are untouched by the exodus.

Bolivia's story is like that of many other poor countries that ship off their only viable export product: their people. The migration often eases unemployment at home, but increases social pressures at their destinations."

Once in a while I need a reality check like this.

What a Printing Company in Montana Can Tell Us...

2006-08-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

think:lab finds out What a Printing Company in Montana Can Tell Us About School Design and Leadership, but I think it's as fascinating from the perspective of envisioning effective workplaces. I especially loved his description of the company's approach to childcare:

"Day Care and 'family' is built in; there are no other options! The first thing you see when you come walk the parking lot to the front door are little kiddos playing under the Montana sky. All employees pay a pitance to have their young kids on site with them. It's a fundamental. Andrew made it a key design driver. And the # of Baby Bjorns in the office was an indicator that for many of the employees, a family 'quality of life' decision was made without compromising their careers. And its a spectacular daycare. Small adult/kid ratio. Healthy environment. Kids loved. And obviously very happy teachers and parents on site. It wins all visitors over the second they come into the building."

The company in question is Printing for Less, and they're really playing on lifestyle factors to attract skilled people -- check out the graphic comparison on their employment page.

Money Matters

2006-08-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

Work from Within talks about how to get to the point where following your passion also pays the bills. Her advice? Be thankful for what you've got, and be patient:

"I regularly hear from people who are following their own authentic career path, 'So, I'm doing the work I love, but where's the money?' You know, Marcia Sinetar's classic book, Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow should add the word 'EVENTUALLY' at the end."

Harold also echoes what I've heard from many free agents in the time between contracts: "This year I don’t have any major projects scheduled for the Fall; which is not good from a financial perspective but it does mean that I can be open to any possibility." It seems like the work arrives eventually, too, but that uncertainty can be very hard on some people.

Career Planning Guideway

2006-08-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

That last post reminded me of a feature we built last year in Choices Planner that lets a student integrate all kinds of personal assessment results into a career planning process. They start by completing the Interest Profiler (Holland codes) and Work Values Sorter (both career assessments), then combining those results with any other characteristics they want (earnings, job growth, working conditions, etc.). From there they choose a career from the resulting list and build a potential plan around it, including high school courses, post-secondary programs/paths, colleges, careers and lifestyle goals. The final step is to do a journal entry about the process. The student's final report might look something like this (pdf), and they can make as many different plans as they want to, or tweak existing ones.

It's a pretty cool way to "try on" possible selves, and I keep wondering why we aren't hearing more feedback about the feature. In less than an hour, anyone could create a pretty solid career plan matching their unique personality and needs.

Do What You Are

2006-08-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

There are lots of these online, but I thought this Personality Type Quiz was simple and smart, letting you find your Myers-Briggs type with four quick choices and then exploring the implications of your type. I'm solid INTP, meaning that I tend to be (quite accurately):

"quiet, independent, and private; logical and unemotional; creative, ingenious, and innovative, global thinkers; curious and driven to increase their competence; casual, and adaptive; nonconforming and unpredictable."

My list of suggested careers and the advice on how to love me seem pretty close, overall.

A lot of people make fun of these quizzes, but I think they're good tools to get you reflecting about who you are and to trigger ideas for how to align various parts of your life (work, especially) with your identity. Bridges Transitions (my current employer) also offers a subscription-based version for schools that has a similar flow, but with more in-depth questions, richer reports and professional resources.

Thanks to Penelope for reminding me to dig around in this stuff some more.

Soul Owner

2006-08-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

7 Rules For Going Solo is a quickie article from the founder of Clif Bar on the benefits of entirely owning your own company (as opposed to partnerships, venture capital or IPO), but the part I'd like to hear more about is this:

"Nearly five years ago, I came within hours of selling Clif Bar Inc., the energy and nutrition foods company I had co-founded, for $120 million. Instead, I chose to buy out a 50 percent partner and go it alone."

So he left $60 million sitting on the table (I'm assuming half of the sale proceeds) and decided to go into huge debt to take full control of the company instead? Dude must really love his job. I did some googling and found this more detailed account of his decision:

He told his parents, his friends, his wife. They all supported him. They all knew he wasn't being honest with himself. As he waited to sign the contract that would make him rich, Erickson started to shake. He couldn't breathe. He took a walk around the block and began to weep.

"I felt in my gut, 'I'm not done,' " he writes in his book, and then, "I don't have to do this." He felt free "instantly." Back at the office, he told his partner, "Send them home. I can't sell the company."

It was a bet-the-company move. He needed $80 million to buy out his partner and service the debt. Clif Bar had to grow fast to handle it. He took back the CEO reins from his partner and ran Clif Bar for four years.

Another Life Planner

2006-08-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

GoalsUnlimited is a for-fee online life planner (but you can play with some of it in the free trial). It's got some very smart, slick features that help you focus on the important characteristics of goals you want to achieve, complete with reminders and other tools to help you make future decisions.

Choose Your High School Archetype

2006-08-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

So, which character from the the John Hughes filmography did you relate to best: Criminal, Basket Case, Jock, Princess or Brain? This article is a few years old, and I post it mostly for fun...but I've always been fascinated by how we perceive ourselves in high school and how those perceptions change as we grow up. A quote:

"Life is like high school, according to two researchers who tracked a sample of high schoolers through their early 20s to see if the teenagers' perceptions of themselves accurately predicted what they would be like as young adults."

For a more official account, check out the associated academic paper (pdf) with some conclusions about the impact of engagement in extracurricular activities (sports, clubs, bands) for teens:

"We have found that our measure of activity participation at grade 10 is related to identity, peer group composition, and to achievement-related values. It is also an important predictor of alcohol use, GPA, educational and occupational attainment, civic engagement, and psychological adjustment."

Road Trip Nation

2006-08-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

I can't remember how I arrived back at the Road Trip Nation site, three years after reading the book and loving their project, but it's worth a visit for pure inspiration. The initial road trip was five years ago, with a few college students touring around the U.S. in a green RV interviewing interesting people about their life paths. Apparently there have been follow-up trips as well, and the collection of video interviews is extensive. Looks like they released a new book last year as well.

Moving With the Brazen Careerist

2006-08-14T11:48:00.000-07:00

Brazen Careerist says, "I'm moving out of New York City", which by itself wouldn't interest me much, but the post is a rich mine of lifestye values and choices, all with happiness as the goal. She wisely leans on Daniel Gilbert's genius to try to apply what he's learning about happiness to her decision on where to move.

This reminded me of my enthusiasm last year about about Find Your Spot. I wonder if Penelope would have arrived at Madison, WI if she had done their quiz? Probably would have been somewhere on the list. My obsession with mountains seems to plant me firmly in Oregon when I do the quiz.

It's cool to have the freedom to choose from anywhere in the country (or the world!) to live, based on school quality, crime rates, real estate prices, or whatever...but I have two main reservations about this approach.

The first also comes from research that shows that meaningful relationships are probably the greatest predictors of happiness. Moving away from friends and family might satisfy other lifestyle values (leisure, work, climate, culture), and I guess most people are better at making new friends than I am...but it would seriously compromise my happiness to start new somewhere, for relationships alone. It's probably true that "People are happy if they earn what their friends earn", but I don't think it follows that having no friends in your new location is going to make you feel rich (financially or otherwise).

The second reservation is more of an observation triggered by The Clustered World, which basically translates into the idea that we tend to have more in common with people in our lifestyle cluster no matter which city they live in. There are a few neighborhoods in nearly every city on the continent that would fit my preferences and values. I wonder if we'd be better off finding the best (for us) neighborhoods close to our families and friends, rather than looking at the averages for entire cities far away from our networks and resources.

All of this said, I love Penelope's approach to this adventure. I also strongly agree with the belief that people are terrible at predicting what will make them happy. Even if you had the perfect tool for simulating your life in a new place, it would be very, very difficult to figure out how you'd really feel about it in the real world, in real time. At some point, you just have to try it and see.

An Introduction to the Commons

2006-08-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

Harold Jarche explaining the background and purpose of his excellent third-space project: An Introduction to the Commons.

"Take a look in any city and you will see people working with wireless enabled computers in what has become the default third-space – the coffee shop. Now, a new third-space, the work commons, is being created where workers pay a monthly membership to have access to shared work areas and business services. No one owns an office, because no one needs a full-time space. It would be a waste."

I love this concept -- it seems to be one more piece in the puzzle in helping people find better integration of their work, learning, community and family lives. You can see how the availability and use of these spaces could cascade through individuals' lifestyle choices.

Perhaps easy access to offices, equipment and interesting colleagues makes it that much easier to envision and facilitate self-employment. And maybe more self-employed people could live in smaller homes, closer to city centers if they didn't require home offices contained inside, saving energy and other costs. Maybe these commons will all integrate short-term drop-in childcare so Mom or Dad can finish a project or have a meeting when the need arises. It seems like these things could emerge as a sort of dynamic community center.

Reminds me that I SO need to visit the Queen Street Commons.

Update: Rob points to a new organization in Vancouver called Workspace, which looks more business- oriented (as opposed to community/social-oriented, I guess) and posher than some of the others, and the higher prices reflect that. Lots to love about this model, and you'd think that there will be the critical mass within Vancouver to make it work.

Global Happiness

2006-08-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

Garth has been finding some goodies lately on global comparisons of happiness: The World's Happiest Country and Another Study of Well-Being, both linking to some fascinating articles and resources like this world map of subjective well being (PDF). Of course these overviews of national mood don't tend to tell you much about how individuals are faring in these countries; only that their averages are higher or lower...but still interesting to think about.

The Other Side of Self-Employment

2006-08-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

Brazen Careerist also linked to David G. Blanchflower, another economist looking at happiness. From Self-employment: more may not be better (PDF):

"It does seem likely that people have an unrealistically rosy view of what it is like to be running their own business rather than staying with the comparative security of being an employee. A surprisingly high proportion of employees say they would prefer to be self-employed. Despite the fact that very high proportions of employees say they would like to set up their own business the reality is something else."

Theory of Well-Being

2006-08-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

Brazen Careerist linked to Richard Easterlin, an economist doing some interesting cross-discipline work researching happiness and economics. His article Building a Better Theory of Well-Being (PDF) is powerful stuff, slicing and dicing existing research on happiness and blazing a new path. A lengthy quote, to help me remember later why this matters:

"More income may contribute to a more comfortable family life, and may facilitate health through exercise machines and recreational expenditures. But time spent in the pursuit of income takes away from the time available for family, exercise, and recreation. Moreover, the net balance of
effects tends to be negative. This is because of the inability of people to foresee the differential change in aspirations by domain. This failure to anticipate the change in aspirations assures that the allocation of time to the pecuniary domain will be excessive and that the more rewarding domains of family and health will consequently receive insufficient attention. In family life, the result is a substitution of goods for time spent with one’s spouse and children.

One may ask if social learning occurs – don’t people eventually realize how their material aspirations escalate with economic achievement, and become aware of the self-defeating nature of the pursuit of pecuniary goals? Perhaps, but the evidence on material aspirations that I have given fails to show evidence of such social learning. Moreover, the change in material aspirations itself works against social learning. When asked how happy they were five years ago, people, on average, systematically underestimate their well-being at that time, because they evaluate their past situation in terms, not of the lower material aspirations they actually had at that time, but on the basis of the new higher level of aspirations they have now acquired (Easterlin 2001a, 2002). As a result, they tend to think they are better off than they were in the past, rather than realizing that there has been no net improvement."

Freedom vs Your Job

2006-08-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

Rob pulls together some great resources and personal experiences in More on Freedom vs Your Job, providing a much needed kick in the ass.

Navigating the Quarterlife Crisis

2006-08-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

You've already heard of the "quarterlife crisis", but check out this great overview from Brazen Careerist, including links to books and interviews on the topic. I followed one link to The Lost Girls, an account of three young career women quitting their jobs and taking off on a world tour to find themselves -- great, great stuff.

Prepare for Uselessness

2006-08-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

A fairly gloomy article about coming changes in work, focusing on skill obsolescence and aging: Out with the old. A quote:

"The education system turns out large numbers of graduates who will not find work in the jobs for which they trained; more people will lose work to those in other countries who work for less; still others will find that as they age, their experience matters ever less. These are the spectres of uselessness today - images not of people confronting a broken economic machine, but of their own irrelevance in a system that works efficiently, and profitably."

Via Mark Lloyd.

Really Real Estate

2006-07-31T16:36:00.000-07:00

Do you rent or own your home? We rented for years and loved the freedom of it, but when rents way outstripped the costs of buying a few years ago, we bought a place. Paying the bank didn't feel much different than paying the old landlord, but our housings costs did go up; requiring more work and other kinds of belt-tightening decisions that sit right in the middle of this lifestylism exploration.

It feels like we're experimenting with a bit of lifestylism ourselves this week, putting our townhouse in Summerland, BC up for sale. I suppose by Vancouver (or other big-city) standards, the price would probably seem very affordable, but real estate has boomed here the last two years (without wages going up) and we're "getting out" of the market with only minor trepidation. We can't afford to buy anything else (since this is just about as cheap a home as anyone could buy in our area), so we're planning to rent for a while and figure out our options.

Since housing costs make up such a high proportion (and rising) of our incomes, these kinds of decisions weigh heavily, and they're part of the complex stew of options surrounding how we really want to live. We're opting for the relative security of paying off debts, upgrading our dying car, and the potential freedom to travel or live somewhere new for a while: perhaps this heavenly spot in PEI or something more adventurous like helping out at an orphanage in Ecuador for a few months (run by family friends we've supported for years and would love to see in person).

We feel like we're running counter to the American Dream right now, and it's quite liberating. Anyway, if you or someone you know is looking for a move to (or investment property in) British Columbia's sunny Okanagan, in a quiet lakeside town surrounded by mountains, head on over to http://summerlandtownhouse.com and we'll get things hooked up.

Brazen Careerist

2006-07-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

Via Proactive Living (which I caught up on this morning -- Doug's been blogging up an excellent storm over there) comes a link to Brazen Careerist. I hadn't ever seen this one before, but at first skim, it's fantastic -- great tone and interesting career advice. I'll be following it from now on.

Work and Chores

2006-07-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

CBC says that Gender gaps remain over work time, chore time, bouncing off a new report from a new StatsCan report on work:

"Dual-earner couples who worked long days doing their job plus housework and who had dependent children at home were less satisfied with their work-life balance. They also felt more time-stressed, particularly women.

However, despite these stage-of-life pressures, the majority of dual-earner husbands and wives felt satisfied with their life as a whole, the study found.

Women generally tend to feel more time-stressed than men, regardless of length of workday or presence of children. For example, among couples with the longest workday and children at home, two-thirds of the women felt time-stressed compared with one-half of men."

Dandelife

2006-07-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

Dandelife is a neat tool for creating personal histories, complete with a really nice timeline view and connections to other people's stories. Check out a profile for a taste.

Purpose Gift Passion

2006-07-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

How to Save the World had a great post about choosing your entrepreneurial path earlier in the month -- the graphic alone is worth the trip over to check it out.

Positive Futurist

2006-07-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Roaring Zeros must have seemed bizarrely optimistic when it was published in 1999, at the height of the Y2K scare. Optimistic futurism seems almost out of style, but super-lifestylist Kevin Kelly's predictions of a hyper-prosperous North America for decades makes for a great read:

"Fast-forward to 2020. After two decades of ultraprosperity, the average American household's income is $150,000, but milk still costs only about $2.50 a gallon. Web-enabled TVs are free if you commit to watching them, but camping permits for Yellowstone cost $1,000. Almost everyone working has signed up for a job that does not exist (at the moment); most workers have more than one business card, more than one source of income. Hard-hat workers are paid as much as Web designers, and plumbers charge more for house calls than doctors. For the educated, the income gap narrows. Indeed, labor is in such short supply that corporations 'hire' high school grads, and then pay for their four-year college educations before they begin work."

The Paradox of Choice

2006-07-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

I linked to some stuff about the Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz last year, but didn't really follow it up. Now I'm studying it for my thesis and finding all kinds of fascinating ideas around the concept. The New Yorker review and an interview with the author are a good place to start, and his earlier paper introduces many of the main ideas in the book -- Self-Determination: The Tyranny of Freedom (pdf). One of the main studies supporting his ideas is outlined here -- When Choice is Demotivating, by Sheena S. Iyengar, who has done amazing research in this area.

Why does this matter? At the root of this lifestylism project is my belief that we don't tend to make lifestyle decisions that reflect our core values. Anything that helps us understand that process is a step toward developing better ways to make those choices.

Commuters spending more time in transit

2006-07-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

Canadians spend an average of 63 minutes a day commuting, and that number has increased since 1992. Increased, during a time of rising gas prices, improving environmental awareness and continued urbanization. Ugh.

Market Segmentation Research

2006-07-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

The smart folks at Claritas let me know that they've updated their lifestyle segments (clusters) site. It's just way too much fun to see which segment you might fit into and see how it connects you to similar people elsewhere. If you live in the U.S., you can punch in your zip code to see how your neighborhood is classified.

Does Fatherhood Make You Happy?

2006-07-07T15:58:00.000-07:00

Although this article by Daniel Gilbert coincided with Father's Day, the insights can certainly be applied to moms as well. It's short and oh-so-smart. Are parents lying when they say their kids are their greatest source of happiness?

"Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television. Indeed, an act of parenting makes most people about as happy as an act of housework. Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact."

He offers some fascinating reasons why we love our kids so much despite the lack of evidence that they make us happy -- read it to find out what they are.

I liked this article so much that I went into a web of stuff by the author. I was most interested in his talk on Affective Forecasting, which is basically studying how people predict they will react to future events (both negative and positive). A flavour:

"What's interesting to me is that while money is weakly and complexly correlated with happiness, and social relationships are strongly and simply correlated with happiness, most of us spend most of our time trying to be happy by pursuing wealth. Why?"

Kunstler Blogs

2006-07-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

I didn't know that James Howard Kunstler had a blog. It's got his usual cantankerous tone (and a language warning), covering all kinds of big issues. His books about urban planning rocked my world -- it's a huge area of concern when you're thinking about aligning your lifestyle with your values and finding that the housing options available (and semi-affordable) tend to be mostly so undesireable:

"A substantial amount of total house sales are made up of new suburban McHouses built in places at the furthest extreme distance from employment centers -- because that's where the remaining cheap land is after sixty-odd years of suburban development. How many prospective house-buyers will close on those things with gasoline over $3 a gallon? Probably fewer than are required to sell them all."

Thanks to Tom Hoffman for the pointer.

Thank Goodness

2006-06-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have enjoyed the links on happiness here will happy to know that today is the happiest day of 2006.

Self-Actualizers

2006-06-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

Comments summarizing Maslow's take on self-actualization, from a book on Self-Direction in Learning:

"Maslow has also identified a number of characteristics shared by self-actualizing people. According to Maslow, self-actualizers tend to, among other things: possess a more efficient view of reality and a corresponding tolerance of ambiguity; be accepting of themselves and others; demonstrate spontaneous behavior that is in tune with their own values and not necessarily tied to the common beliefs and practices of the culture; focus on problems that lie outside of themselves, thus demonstrating a highly ethical concern; maintain a few extremely close interpersonal relationships rather than seek out a large number of less intense friendships; and possess high levels of creativity."

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

2006-06-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

Life 2.0 comments on another commencement speech by Steve Jobs and provides the video through YouTube. Inpiring, thoughtful stuff.

There is No Try

2006-06-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

Doug invokes a classic Yoda quote and offers some simple advice in Choose Your DO:

"This quote has come to mind lately whenever I hear individuals say what they were 'going to do' or 'wishing they could do'. These people always have lots of reasons why they don't live the life they say they would prefer. In the end, they're just talking (the easier thing to do).

It's not my position to be somebody else's personal Yoda. But in my mind, when I hear these people yearning for their theoretical lives, I'm thinking, 'Do or do not. There is no try.'

Either you're pursuing the life you wish for, or you are not. Either you have a project or two that means something to you or you don't. Our world would be a whole lot more fulfilled if we each agreed to let our actions do our talking for us."

Happiness Formula

2006-06-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

The BBC has a fantastic section on their site called The Happiness Formula. It has articles, videos, and happiness tests, all covering the pursuit of happiness and what it means to be happy.

On a related note from the UK, Pat Kane talks about how happiness and well-being are sneaking into politics: Well beings or ethical beings? Lots of lifestylism in there, particularly in reintroducing the question of whether happy people are necessarily great citizens.

What to do With Your Dots

2006-05-31T18:15:00.000-07:00

Dan Russell had an interesting post this week on the Creating Passionate Users blog: What a graphic can tell you. Take a look at the graphics and ponder how well you're using your dots.

Up With Grups

2006-05-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

Up With Grups

Regular readers already know that I'm a sucker for new labels to describe groups with shared lifestyle characteristics -- Gen X/Y/Next, Twixters, Yeppies, Grunge Parents, you name it -- so this is another one I got a kick out of, probably because much of it describes my current lifestyle (minus the $300 jeans and obviously high income), especially the stuff about music, work and kids. The entire article is fun and worth a read but here are the topic headings to give you the flavour:

The Grup Music, or the Brand-new Sound of Twenty Years Ago
The Grup Look, or I Swear These Jeans Were Here a Minute Ago
The Grup Children, or Daddy, Please Turn That Music Down
The Grup Career, or Take This Job and Allow Me to Do It From Home, With Occasional Snowboarding Trips

Via Half an Hour.

Update: Additional commentary from Semantic Compositions

More than One Life

2006-05-22T22:18:00.000-07:00

Shamash says, quite reasonably, that she wants to be More than One Person. I keep coming back to this post since she put it up a while back, pondering the wisdom and learning in her searching. A quote:

"I am a pie, parceling out my life into slices, never completely satisfying any dream. In giving a little here, a little there, every portion is half-assed. I am exhausted with it all."

As I commented on her site, when I started collecting things for this project, I had this vague idea that if only we could align our lifestyle choices with our values, integrating the most important parts of our lives into one optimized, meaningful superlife...then everything would be all good. And it might be all good if you could pull it off, but it may be impossible.

So many of our values (and dreams and goals) -- even core values -- are mutually exclusive. They can't be integrated into one life. Instead, we're stuck deciding which ones we want to compromise on, which ones go on the backburner, and which ones get current attention. And life often intervenes to pull us in different directions, spreading us too thin even when we think we've got things set up pretty well.

Dreams and Goals and Plans

2006-05-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

I was poking around in this list of business and career blogs and found a few gems around the concept of setting goals and following dreams. I wasn't really looking for them, but that's what seemed to stick...a quote from each:

Life 2.0: How big dare you dream?

"As we achieve our goals we push back the boundaries of what we think ourselves capable of - almost like blowing up a balloon one breath at a time. Yet for many of us there's a deep nagging suspicion that we don't need to keep pushing back those boundaries - that we are capable of far more than think, that we could in fact simply prick the balloon and be done with boundaries and limitation for good."

Making A Difference: Envisioning your dreams

"Blast off into the future - take a quick ride in a time machine out 5, 10, 20, 30 years - where your dream is realized. You've done it. It's happened. Take a look around at what's going on around you in this future place and time. In this future, what's different - in yourself, in the world? Where are you? What are you doing? Who else is there? What's accessible to you that seems out of reach today?"

Escape from Cubicle Nation: Before you create your business plan, create your life plan

"I cannot tell you how many miserable multi-millionaire entrepreneurs I met in my years in Silicon Valley. I believe they were miserable because they got too enamored with business growth at all costs and didn't see creating a great business as a means to create a great life."

Career Plans by Age 12?

2006-05-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

Career plans by age 12? Maybe in Florida:

"Do children barely out of elementary school have the knowledge and experience to declare a career path? Brianna's feelings on the subject are shared by some adults, who also worry that a career curriculum would come at the expense of other activities such as music, art, and sports.

But supporters of the proposal say it gives kids a taste of the real world and encourages them to widen, not narrow, their sense of career options."

The arguments against this type of learning seem a bit weak to me. Career exploration and learning about how different career pathways require different kinds of educational planning don't at all imply that anyone is forcing a kid to choose a career in Grade 7.

Artist as Lifestylist

2006-05-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

From Meghan Hildebrand's artist's statement accompanying a new show of her paintings:

"This blaring cacophony of data is driving me to accept it; to reject originality and true richness, to shop constantly and to accept decisions made on my behalf. Instead of joining it, my decision is to gently mock it, by combining with it an element that is inherently splendid, and can not be commercialized or streamlined. Colour, pure colour that remains genuine whether it's nostalgic mint green auto paint, the green-gold tips of moss or the steaming mustard-yellow of a sulphur sludge pool."

Maybe it's a stretch for lifestylism, but there's something beautiful about the idea of pure colour as an authentic response to the overloaded expectations of society. There's an inherent activism in her art, I think, and even the act of painting itself must reflect an alignment of her values with how she chooses to spend her time and resources. Inspiring!

Skip College

2006-05-14T17:41:00.000-07:00

In Go Ahead; Skip Classes...and Why College Might Not Matter, Christian points to an interesting Forbes article on why to skip college:

"1. You'll be losing four working years.
2. You won't necessarily earn less money.
3. In fact, you could probably make more money if you invested your tuition.
4. You don't need to be in a classroom in order to learn something.
5. Plenty of other people did fine."

The Happiness Hypothesis

2006-05-12T15:07:00.000-07:00

The Happiness Hypothesis is a site accompanying a book, but by itself it offers some interesting tidbits about the pursuit of happiness. It's broken down into five steps (easy!) with an explanation of each:

Step 1: Diagnose Yourself
Step 2: Improve Your Mental Hygiene
Step 3: Improve Your Relatedness
Step 4: Improve Your Work
Step 5: Improve Your Connection to Something Beyond Yourself

Feeling Your Financial Age

2006-05-11T18:04:00.000-07:00

Jory is Feeling My Financial Age, and like usual, I'm glad she's sharing those feelings:

"I'd like to see a magazine that addresses how to use financial tools when money dries up for months at a time, when someone has to get out of a job and doesn't have six months of savings, when someone decides that financial risk is worth greater potential happiness, when we have to shoulder the entire burden of our health insurance, when we realize we can't plan the swerves and curves of opportunity."

In Defense of French Dirigisme

2006-04-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

In Defense of French Dirigisme opens with a question -- "They live longer. They eat better. They work less. So why do Americans want to beat up on the French?" -- and closes with some potential answers -- "This might be mildly funny but for a 2005 French government study that found that the 35-hour week created about 350,000 jobs, from its application in 1998 through 2002, and that the affected businesses enjoyed productivity gains of 4 to 5 percent during the same period."

The Theory

2006-04-06T10:58:00.000-07:00

Seb sent me a link to an old Gaping Void post about how we often try to balance different kinds of work in our lives -- his theory on creative work:

"The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended."

As I wrote in my response to Seb, one of the things I like about this representation is that he doesn't lapse into the old stereotype of the artist having to wait tables or dig ditches to pay the bills...in most of the examples he's using, the artist is doing related (but not likely passionate) work to pay the bills, which is probably more accurate for more people. Many of us try to at least find work in in the right field for us, if not the ideal job description within the field that will pay us to do what we love.

I suppose the holy grail is passionate work that also pays well and leaves time for other important areas of our lives, but I don't see many people pulling that off. Seems to make most sense to try to keep living expenses low so that the day job doesn't have to consume as much time, freeing up more resources to pursue the creative work that could at some point pay for itself.

Life as a Free Agent

2006-04-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

I like Harold's list of what it means to have a Life as a Free Agent. It seems to be chock full of lifestylism, that elusive integration of work, life, values and sustainability:

"10. Doing my own tech support
9. Only working seven days a week
8. Paying cash & avoiding monthly payments
7. Time for exercise and reading
6. Lots of short breaks, but no long holidays
5. Getting asked to volunteer more
4. Seeing more of my banker
3. Seeing more of my family
2. Looking forward to Mondays
1. Creating my own opportunities"

Think:Lab

2006-03-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

Christian Long is another lifestylist. In his ongoing thinking about the future of learning and the design of schools, he's also digging into big questions about what constitutes a meaningful life and how learning prepares us to do good work. His writing has been so intense and prolific lately that's it's hard to keep up. From Will That "What I'm Gonna Be After Graduation" Job Even Exist When You Graduate?:

"All well and good to ramp up on math classes and get the kids to 'pass the test.' But, and maybe I'm 'off' a bit on this, if we don't spend a fair amount of time helping the same kids/students with some visioning exercises as to what they might 'do' with their lives once they graduate, it will seem to be a lot of skills without an arrow attached. Or even a rubber band to at least help them adapt and rebound as the future changes much of the game of work."

He's not off at all. I consider this a major failing of the school system right now. Envisioning, finding and creating a meaningful life path is a skill (or set of skills) that does not get taught in schools, and most parents are clueless about it except to scare their kids into college as if that was the automatic guarantee for great jobs and passionate work. So if schools and parents aren't going to do it, who is? From Vocation Vacations for Test-Driving a New Career:

"Okay, if I didn't already have my dream job, I'd be giving serious thought to this opportunity created by a corporate dropout named Brian Kurth who figured out that there may be a way to help a few other good souls wrestling with a career change try on their fantasy career for size."

And one more that digs into some of the skills kids will need:
Forget College. But Can You Interview? --

"Because at the end of the day, the future belongs to those who can tell a great story, demonstrate passionate interest combined with the ability to problem solve and 'figure it out' on the fly, and who have the audacious ability to care enough to 'go after it.' Teachers and parents: what have you done lately to help your 'little one' be in this position?"

New Moms Exhausted

2006-03-19T20:42:00.000-08:00

From the Business of Life, bouncing off a new study -- New Moms Exhausted:

"Or to learn that 76 percent of working mothers return to work within a year after the birth of their child. Forty-one percent of working mothers are back within three months, and nearly one in six is back within the first month after delivery."

It boggles the mind to imagine the societal (and lifestyle/family) implications of half of the kids in an entire generation being raised by institutions from the time they're three months old. She also had an interesting recent post about contempt for parenthood:

"The painful paradox is that while women have liberated themselves from being defined by their biology - the fate of the girl in many African and Asian societies who is not truly a woman until she has given birth - mothers have ended up relegated to the status of constant abject failure in a culture driven by consumerism and workaholism."

What's Next for Vocational Education?

2006-03-14T12:45:00.000-08:00

What's next for voc ed? covers the marginalization of vocational education programs in Michigan in favour of college-prep academic programs. Meanwhile, we're seeing demand (and wages) rising in the skilled trades. It just doesn't make sense.

Thanks to think:lab, where Christian posts:

"Just when 'vocational' programs have finally come out of the dark ages and gained a little bit of respect in the new guise of CATE (Career and Technology Education) Centers, the following article comes out and makes you wonder if the support will remain. Not because they don't work...sadly."

Authentic Happiness

2006-03-07T09:20:00.000-08:00

I can't remember now how I came across
Authentic Happiness: Using the new Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, but it's really fascinating stuff. They've got a bunch of questionnaires to measure your happiness, including overall happiness, optimism, gratitude, grit, close relationships, meaning, strengths, and many others. Once you register, you can see all of your results in one place, along with analysis of your approach to life.

Built-in Altruism?

2006-03-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

Phatgnat linked to this BBC article: Altruism 'in-built' in humans. It seems pretty light on facts, but I find this train of thought fascinating. One of the problems I've found with the lifestylism concept is that values are so relative. If you're aligning your lifestyle with ugly values, the resulting lifestyle will be ugly. But what if we're inherently good?

Working the Network for Web Work

2006-03-02T09:52:00.000-08:00

I've never met Will Pate, but I've been checking in on his blog since he was out in the Maritimes. This morning I swung by there and found a fascinating post: Web Marketing Prodigy and Sales Rainmaker Seeks Awesome Job.

I guess I've seen people use their blogs to find work and initiate transitions before, but it just hit me again how the web changes turns these things upside down. Instead of the solitary job-seeker firing out resumes to oblivious HR departments, or even working the phones to see if anyone in their network can help hook them up, they can put the word out online with posts, resumes, profiles, work samples or whatever (and still work the traditional back channels). Will wants to stay in Vancouver, but lists some other places he'd move to for the right opportunity -- the potential web of connections and interested groups could be pretty big.

Then the strength of weak ties can really work some magic, when the distributed network starts stumbling across (and sending links around about) someone looking for work and seeing their interests, skills, voice and network displayed in one place with a great deal of depth. A powerful model, especially when an employer can use the medium to find and communicate with others in the job seeker's network. Within a few clicks, I could find the blogs (and contact information) of pretty much everyone Will has worked with in the past year -- if I'm looking to hire a web marketing and sales specialist, that information is invaluable.

The other thing I find interesting about this phenomenon is seeing these young, smart webheads leaving great jobs in web companies on the rise -- it seems to be happening all the time. Will pointed to another one using his blog in the same way. Job turnover isn't surprising, and the whole free-agent ethos isn't new, but something feels right about working at a place long enough (18 months? Two years?) to learn some new skills and help an organization with a specific goal, and then move on to new challenges before the old ones get stale.

Update: Just in case anyone wonders whether Will's job-hunting approach worked, he got interest from 30 companies and picked one.

Flow and Happiness

2006-03-01T22:30:00.000-08:00

Csikszentmihalyi's secrets of happiness:

"Over the years, I came up with the expression 'flow': a term to describe the common denominator among those people who deemed themselves happy. The most obvious component of happiness, I found out, is intense concentration, which is the main reason that activities such as music, art, literature, sports and other forms of leisure have survived. The essential ingredient for concentration — whether it happens when reading a poem or building a sand castle — is that it involves a challenge that matches one’s ability. The only solution to achieve enduring happiness, therefore, is to keep finding new opportunities to refine one’s skills: do one’s job better or faster, or expand the tasks that comprise it; find a new set of challenges more appropriate to your stage of life."

Thanks to Chris Corrigan for the pointer to this article. I've been a fan of flow for years -- it's one of those ideas that pops up over and over in unexpected contexts.

Planner

2006-02-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

The Business of Life blog pointed to this Life Events & Financial Decisions Planner. It's basically just a way of browsing their articles, but the life-wide structure is interesting.

Design Your Life

2006-02-27T20:31:00.000-08:00

think:lab linked to the Design Your Life Blog, which looks really promising. They've even got a life planning category.

Dilbert Wisdom

2006-02-24T14:39:00.000-08:00

Today's Dilbert just nails the lifestylism concept. How should I take this when my boss sends it to me in an e-mail?

Detroit's Wild Kingdom

2006-02-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

Apparently there are inner-city areas in Detroit that are being reclaimed by nature, because homes and entire neighbourhoods have been abandoned for years. As they get torn down or gutted (but not replaced), trees take over. Neglected and empty skyscrapers and buildings downtown have trees growing on roofs and pigeons taking over inside. The images are truly striking:

Article (with photos) from Land and Living
Wild Kingdom, an excellent blog entry

Meanwhile, the suburbs and exurbs keep growing and sprawling out away from the city -- and all the people moving/living out there have to drive to get anywhere. There's something so Mad Max about this story, but the apocalypse seems to be happening so slowly.

Man on a Mission

2006-02-23T14:05:00.000-08:00

I'd say that Aiden Enns sounds like a lifestylist (in a good way). The founder of the Buy Nothing Christmas and past managing editor of Adbusters writes about his efforts to align his values with his lifestyle:

"To address a chronic self-dissatisfaction with my lack of radicalness, I've tried to adjust a few things. Like expectations for retirement, for example. At this rate we'll have a nice house and a long resume filled with non-profit entries. My retirement plan includes basic gardening skills, geothermal heat, solar electricity, cylcle-powered clothes washer, manual coffee grinder and, if we're lucky, rental income from housemates. And I promise never to get sick, and I'll be healthy and able-bodied till the day I die. Uh, I guess there's a couple holes in my dream package.

But this, according to my gut, is still better than getting a day job, fueling the big-bank business and supporting the free trade, crazy-market game. Why, even the very category of life called 'retirement' is problematic - it's like we work most of our life (i.e., slave away at jobs that keeps us from family, home and personal passions) and then finally get to rest. I'd rather live most of my life (i.e., pursue my passions and 'hunt and gather' food along the way) and then when I'm old, I'll live some more (yes, my inner rationalist is nervous at the thought)."

I love the wonderful honesty and sense of searching here, and the strong undercurrent of activism that brings me back to the anarchist roots of the term I used to dub this whole experiment.

Mapping Personality Visibility

2006-02-19T22:53:00.000-08:00

A fascinating and simple way to figure out (and represent) how you're perceived by others: Interactive Johari Window.

Are We Happy Yet?

2006-02-18T16:37:00.000-08:00

The Business of Life linked to this fantastic study on happiness. It looks like in the U.S., your best chance to be very happy is to be married, religious, Republican, rich, white, and living somewhere warm. The analysis of the study results is breezy and fun, with lots of interesting observations:

"Keep in mind, however, that even taking into account all these factors, we don't actually improve by very much our ability to predict which specific individual is likely to be very happy. If we knew who'd been fired last week, or who's a glass-is-always-half-full kind of person, we'd probably do a lot better."

Shamash was also thinking happy thoughts this week:

"Though I can appreciate his sort of "ethical happiness", I simply love those few times during the week where I just have to smile at how big and beautiful this world is. What lovely creatures walk this earth, and how honored I am to have been able to meet and learn to know a few of them."